How to Stiffen Europe’s Resolve After the Iran Nuclear Deal

July 21, 2022

Israel and its Arab friends should visit the Continent’s capitals and deliver a message about the danger.

This article first appeared in the Wall Street Journal on July 20th, 2022. Click here to view the original article.

President Biden admitted last week that his long-suffering efforts to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal were finally nearing their end: “We’re waiting for their response. When that will come, I’m not certain. But we’re not going to wait forever.” Of course, we’ve been hearing this since December 2021, even from the Europeans, the deal’s most devoted acolytes.

The cascade of White House concessions during the negotiations, Iran’s additional time to advance its nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs, and the loosening enforcement of U.S. sanctions, have considerably emboldened Tehran’s ayatollahs. While the current ambiguity is far from their ideal, they may well accept living with it indefinitely.

That should not, however, satisfy Washington. Instead, the U.S. should fashion diplomatic strategies to align the original deal’s other Western parties (France, Germany and the U.K.) with Israel and the Arab states most threatened by Iran. For two decades, America’s Middle Eastern and European allies have taken opposing views on how best to prevent Iran from obtaining deliverable nuclear weapons. This divide has sometimes been public, sometimes not, and preferred policies have shifted, but the Europeans have generally stressed negotiation while the regional allies have taken a tougher approach. Unsurprisingly, with the two most concerned groupings of American allies in disagreement, Iran has been able to traverse the disarray, coming ever closer to producing deliverable nuclear weapons. Fixing this problem is a top priority.

Since negotiations have failed repeatedly, Mr. Biden’s main diplomatic goal must be cajoling Europeans into adopting a harder economic and political stance, and accepting that clandestine military actions [BY WHOM?] against Iran’s [YES?] nuclear program have already begun. Even harsher measures may be necessary. If the Europeans share America’s view that a nuclear-capable Iran is unacceptable, they should be prepared to act on that belief.

An initial diplomatic step would be to have those most immediately endangered by Iran, both from its nuclear aspirations and as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, take the lead with our European friends. One could imagine a delegation of, say, Israeli, Bahraini and Emirati foreign ministers visiting their European counterparts to urge a united front against Iran. What an impressive display that would make in Paris, Berlin and London. The tour could include Tallin and Warsaw to symbolize for other Europeans the dangers of living near hostile neighbors.

This joint Arab-Israeli flying squad would bring compelling arguments beyond the global threat of Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. The White House has revealed that Iran is near to selling several hundred “attack-capable” drones to Russia, almost certainly to use in Ukraine. Sending drones to Russia is in keeping with Iran’s policy of supplying Yemen’s Houthi rebels with drones and missiles, which are often used to target civilian Saudi and Emirati airports and oil infrastructure.

Iran’s oil sales to China, evading U.S. sanctions weakened under Mr. Biden, have also increased dramatically. By contrast, the Bahraini and Emirati foreign ministers, on behalf of the hydrocarbon-producing Gulf Arabs, can be part of Europe’s solution to its catastrophic mistake of becoming overly dependent on Russian exports.

The traveling foreign ministers could also emphasize that the original deal never delivered the increased visibility into Iran’s nuclear program the world was promised. Instead, Tehran has ignored both its 2015 commitments and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Europe’s leaders, strong U.N. adherents, should be deeply disturbed by International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi’s criticisms of Iranian obstructionism. The IAEA board of governors agreed overwhelmingly in June to censure Iran’s noncompliance, with only Russia and China voting against.

The diplomatic mission can also stress that Tehran’s intransigence over nonnuclear issues ultimately torpedoed revival of the 2015 agreement. Demanding that Washington de-list Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps as a foreign terrorist organization is completely unrelated to nuclear issues. Of course, the IRGC has threatened terrorism in Europe, such as the foiled 2018 attack on an opposition rally in Paris. Incredibly, Belgian legislators are now considering releasing the Iranian “diplomat” convicted of this bomb plot; perhaps Brussels should be the Middle Eastern flying squad’s first stop. Moreover, albeit under the flawed “universal jurisdiction” concept, Sweden recently convicted Iranian agents for prison murders shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution [WHAT’S THE CONNECTION??].

And, as for potentially using force against Iran’s nuclear efforts, who better than Israel’s current prime minister, Yair Lapid, to deliver the message? As he said during Mr. Biden’s visit: “The only way to stop them is to put a credible military threat on the table.” The Europeans should hear that from Mr. Lapid directly, one-on-one, in their capitals.

America’s counter-proliferation diplomacy on Iran will need to be much more extensive, accompanied by far-tougher economic sanctions and assistance to legitimate opposition groups to overthrow the ayatollahs. A joint Israeli-Arab, foreign-minister traveling team would be a good start.

Mr. Bolton is author of “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.” He served as the president’s national security adviser, 2018-19, and ambassador to the United Nations, 2005-06.

Part VI: Should Jordan’s Neighbors and Allies Confront or Indulge Amman?

July 18, 2022

In previous parts, we reviewed Jordan’s current problematic behavior and the shift over the last years which that behavior represents not only vis a vis Israel but with respect to its other neighbors and geostrategic alignments. We also examined the foundations of the Jordanian state and the discouraging historical record of previous attempts to co-opt or preempt Arab and Palestinian nationalism. It emerges from these inquiries that Jordan and the problem of its policies reflect several much broader trends and questions concerning how the West, Israel and some of our other regional allies have traditionally understood the region and responded to it. Specifically, the unique tensions between the tribal and locally traditional structures of power, influence and access in Jordan – and even in Judea and Samaria – have faced a nearly two-century assault by external forces to upturn those traditional structures. Moreover, attempts to appease or co-opt those intrusions have only enflamed the situation and weakened calmer and stable structures.

Which brings us back to our original question: what does all this suggest to us regarding the right path to take in response to Jordan?

The choice

In the last five years, Jordan has crossed several red lines against Israel. And the pace is accelerating. It has dismissed Israeli (and Jewish) historical claims that touch upon the very foundation of Israeli and Jewish identity and interests. It has weakened Israel’s ability to control events in Jerusalem, which has led to a vacuum which radical forces are filling – the same mistake King Abdallah II’s father made in weakening the Hejazi tribal control in Judea and Samaria in 1957-1970, which let the PLO in. King Abdallah II has forced the further empowerment and vast expansion of the Waqf – the Islamic religious council in Jerusalem – at the same time that it has radicalized, restricted Christian and Jewish rights substantially over the last decades, and begun to provide safe haven for violent attack on Israel and Jews. Jordan also upheld the letter but damaged the spirit of peace by curtly demanding Israel return leased, farmed areas, such as Naharayim.

Not only have these policies failed to control incitement against Israel, but it has violated the peace treaty by itself inciting against Israel for violence and prolonging crises rather than calming them. Jordan also now harbors mass-murderers of Israelis and Americans (civilians and soldiers), such as the unrepentant Ahlam Tamimi, and gives terrorists who killed many Israeli children light sentences (Ahmad Daqamseh, who killed the schoolchildren at Naharayim). It balks not only at extraditing these criminals to either Israel or the US but fails to subject them to any sort of justice at all (they are given comfortable haven) in some cases. Ultimately, Amman has most recently escalated significantly by not only engaging in offensive, deliberately humiliating historical denial of any connection of the Jewish people to Jerusalem but is peddling position papers to regional powers and the United States that seek to reassert absolute Islamic control over Jewish and Christian holy sites in an attempt to turn the clock back to the Ottoman-era status quo of 1852.

Amman’s government-supported mouthpieces have descended the dark path to Holocaust denial and reopened not only the questions of 1967 – the dispensation of Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Jerusalem – but the questions of 1948 – whether Israel should even exist.

Amman has also tempered its strong affiliation with the Western camp globally to support Russia in its latest Ukraine adventures. And it has acted against its Gulf Arab neighbors by trying to weaken, or even sabotage outright, the critically geo-strategic Abraham Accords in order to replace them with the three-decade failed and bloody Oslo process again. And Jordan has begun to set powerful tribal forces of the Hejaz adrift – which can also profoundly threaten the stability of the Saudi Kingdom — by shifting the foundations of the Jordan state in favor the Palestinians.

This parade of genuinely dangerous statements and actions by Jordan certainly raise the temptation by Israel, among some of Jordan’s neighbors, and even the United States to abandon their patience and indulgence of Jordanian noxious policies. Voices are multiplying that argue the time has come to finally draw red lines and demand from Amman a shift back to older foundations. Some have even suggested that perhaps the time has arrived to just cut Amman loose and outright abandon the constant effort to meet the incessant demands from Amman to help the Crown “save” itself at the cost of a pound of flesh, and then some, from Israel, Saudis, and even the West.

And yet, in Jordan’s defense, one must acknowledge that it is plagued by an impossible array of pressures (political, geo-strategic, economic and societal) and is forced to navigate a narrow bridge to survive. There is no indication that King Abdallah II holds any particular animus toward Israel or the Jews. His history, in fact, suggests he does not. The peace treaty with Israel — while fraying – more or less continues to hold. Geostrategic cooperation on keeping Iran and the eastern threats to the Levant at bay continue to both Israel’s and the West’s benefit. Jordan imperfectly but genuinely does try to keep its territory from becoming a free-flowing conduit of terrorist arms to Palestinians in Israel. The border with Jordan remains largely peaceful and prevents another front from emerging against Israel akin to what is happening on the Syrian and Lebanese borders. And while the Crown’s relations with the tribal structures underpinning the state are stressed, ominously simmering, and even rancorous, and while dangerous ideological trends appear to be filling the vacuum caused by the tribes being jilted in favor of new foundations being laid for the state, the Hejazi tribes remain, thus far, restricted in their growing opposition to letters and threats but have not erupted violently into a profound threat to both Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The lid on these problems may be rattling – indeed rattling menacingly — but it still sits atop the pot.

These considerations would countenance continued strategic patience and indulgence from the United States, the Gulf Arabs and Israel, if not even cooperation in helping Amman co-opt the dangerous undercurrents which could threaten Abdallah II’s regime by trying to preempt their underlying grievances (address their roots causes). In other words, despite aggravating policies pursued by Amman, Jordan’s collapse is a grave threat to be averted at all costs, not a solution to be sought. And if the price to pay to help Amman survive is to try to reignite the Oslo process at all costs, and at Israel’s expense, then there are those who would countenance that so be it. Larger interests are at stake.

So which is it: confront or indulge Amman?

For those who advocate the first path, the choice is simple: demand Jordan abandon its attempt to appease radical forces locally, regionally and globally, return to the outlook and grounding of the Hashemite state of his father after 1970, and deepen strategic cooperation between Amman, the United States, with the Saudis and Israel to manage rather than champion Palestinian-Arab radicalism, reestablish the importance of the traditional leadership of the tribes and re-anchor Jordan to them. If Amman refuses to do so, then strategically Amman has chosen an adversarial path which none of its neighbors needs to suffer or indulge, especially at their own expense, vital interests, and identity.

The downside, of course, is that the United States, Israel and Jordan’s neighbors would essentially be proactively surrendering on a peace treaty which as rickety as it may be, still more or less holds, at least for the moment.

The other route is more complex. Can indulgence save the crown? Again here, the historical record is quite instructive. It warrants further investigation since the attempt to indulge Amman – attached as it is if not to hopes for potential success then at least to the promise of avoiding further harm and danger – is grounded in two critical but unexamined assumptions: the very concept of a “Palestinian” issue and the usefulness of addressing ostensible “root causes:”

The specific construct in question here – the Palestinian issue – has traditionally served as an artificial cover for a much more dangerous and disruptive body of ideas: the destruction of traditional Arab society. Nor is this recent, but dates back at least a century and a half.
The historical record of attempts to co-opt or preempt radicalization by championing their ostensibly underlying grievances has consistently failed, not only in Palestine (land of Israel), but in Syria and Egypt as well.

As such, given the problematic nature of these two assumptions, the attempt to create a stabilizing and quiescent Palestinian nationalism may not only be impossible at this point, but the very effort to do so deepens the crisis.

In other words, the idea that indulging Jordan is only mildly harmful when balanced against the potential for saving the Crown and the peace might be wrong. The harm might not be as negligible as assumed, and indeed might accelerate the demise of Jordan as we know it.

What is the essence of the Palestinian national movement?

Palestinian Arab nationalism never was a movement organically emerging from indigenous communities of Judea and Samaria. It always had been instigated and dominated as a tool of external forces that sought to use the Palestinian issue as a dagger-bearing tentacle aimed at traditional Arab power structures and states. That was true regarding the interplay between the Ottoman Sultan and the local populations as it is regarding the interplay between Iran and local traditional forces. The Palestinian issue is the language of radicalism through which the inter-Arab, inter-Muslim or geopolitical rivalries are conducted.

Traditional forms of authority – much of which was tribal, some of which was urban but still largely clan-oriented – has for the better part of the last two centuries been besieged from forces seeking to either clip, suppress or altogether eliminate traditional forms of authority in the region. In Ottoman times, the internal exile of problematic Muslims from other parts of the Ottoman empire were transplanted to the Palestine province to challenge local power brokers whose fealty to the Sultan was increasingly dubious. The Tanzimat reforms largely attempted to rationalize and centralize authority in the empire, and this challenge to local authorities inevitably generated resentments. The Ottoman Sultan hoped that a dislodged community imposed over a hostile local population would owe its allegiance ultimately to the imperial power protecting it rather than the neighbors who bristle at the intrusion and subjugation.

Enter the British in World War I and its effort to turn besieged Arab tribes and clans against their Ottoman-imposed local representatives and instigate a revolt. The point of the meticulous intelligence work of Sir T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia) and Lady Gertrude Bell was to understand and navigate these traditional power structures who were becoming so frustrated with the pressures from Istanbul that their increasing alienation from the Sultan and their local allies could be turned as a useful asset to mobilize against the Ottoman Empire in the approaching war. It was no easy task since the fissures among tribes, and the law of tribal life, demanded great insight, empathy and acumen to manage properly and avoid simply instigating anarchy. For they knew that erasing Ottoman authority comes with a price, namely a vacuum. Filling that vacuum was a tricky affair, navigated somewhat well by the first team (Sir Reginal Wingate, Sir T.E. Lawrence, Lady Gertrude Bell, etc.), but not well at all by the follow-up replacement in the Levant and Egypt (Lord Herbert Samuel, Lord Alfred Millner).

But during and after World War I as the Ottoman empire collapsed, Lawrence’s and Bell’s efforts paid off and these traditional Arab and Muslim structures in Mandatory Palestine and elsewhere became the foundation of British power in the region. Which meant the German Kaiser and inter-war German intelligence – who hardly had reconciled to the permanence of British predominance — naturally settled on tapping into and expanding those forces in region that challenged that traditional power structure. They focused particularly those elements that had now been orphaned by the collapse of the Sultanate (the crown of the Ottoman Empire), or even the Khaliphate (the mantle of leader of the faithful). As such, the great power competition between Germany and Great Britain, and then between the West and the Soviet Union animated an upheaval wherein Germany (interwar and in World War II) and then the Soviet Union (post-War) was a battle of radical, externally encouraged forces laying siege to traditional power structures. And it has been an ongoing struggle over which the West, its foreign office elites and its local allies (Israel and Jordan) have often lost their focus, or even departed from its comprehension.

The reason for the enduring particular attraction of Palestinian Arabs to radical ideas, which has rendered them consistently the incubator of regional radical ideas, emerges from this founding and history. As the Hashemites in Jordan grew out of the British-mentored tribal Arab revolt against the Ottomans, and have thus ever since been aligned with occasional deviations with British and American strategic objectives, the Arab and Muslim nationalist movement (for they were not separate in the 1930s) emerged as a politically organized modern movement intertwined with the original German subversive networks between World Wars I and II, and then as part of the Nazi subversive networks during the war, of which Haj Amin al-Husseini and the Arabs of Palestine were the vanguard. Those networks never went away, but passed to Soviet control after World War II and then became loose cannons available to any movement radically challenging the reigning order and traditional political structures of the region.

In other words, until the mid-1960s, the anti-Zionist project in Palestine did not assume or refer to a unique Palestinian national character, but was really a concept embodying a radical, upheaval-seeking form of revolutionary politics. One need look no further than the leadership of the Arab Palestinian nationalist movement itself for confirmation of this. In in 1937, the founder of the pan-Arab nationalist Istiqlal party, Awni Bey Abd al-Hadi, who paralleled Hajamin al-Husseini’s radical pan-Islamic leadership of the Arabs in the area: “There is no such country as Palestine. Palestine is a Zionist term invented by Jews. Palestine is alien to us. There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria”¹ He saw the Arabs of Palestine not as a unique people, but part of far broader Islamic or Arab entity, and politically – if the Arab nation were not unified into one – at least as part of the Syrian nation that was being formed.

Indeed, Abd al-Hadi’s political activity — including the reason for which he created the Istiqlal party — was animated primarily around an attack on the Nashishibi family – namely a revolutionary struggle against the most established and prominent Arab leadership.² His co-founders of the party were  Fahmi al-Abboushi, Mu’in al-Madi, Akram Zu’aytir, ‘Ajaj Nuwayhid, Rashid al-Hajj Ibrahim, Subhi al-Khadra, and Salim Salamah – all of whom were the central leaders of the 1936-39 Arab revolt in Palestine. While ostensibly the revolt was about destroying the Jewish national endeavor and expelling the Arabs, it was a bloody orgy of killing against fellow Arabs as part of a purge of the traditional Arab leadership and suppression of their remnants into quiescence on behalf of pan-Arab nationalism.

As such, Abd al-Hadi’s real aim – as was his more Islamist equivalent, Hajamin al-Husseinei –was not Arab enfranchisement, but the diminution, indeed, defeat, of traditional grand Arab families/clans of Jerusalem, Samaria, Judea, Syria and the Trans-Jordanian Palestinian area. It is no wonder then that he spent most of the rest of his life in Egypt, with the exception of the five years before the 1958 upheaval in Jordan.

This rejection by the Arabs of Palestine themselves of a unique Palestinian peoplehood or nationality – and the use of their struggle as part of a pan-Arabist radical regional revolution against existing elites — persisted until quite recently, in fact. Hence the jolting assertion (in terms of today’s discourse) by a member of the PLO’s executive committee, Zahir Muhse’in, as late as 1977 to a Dutch newspaper, Trouw, that: “The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against Israel and for our Arab unity [italics mine]. In reality today, there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people.”³

But the 1960s were a time of change and geopolitical competitions answered also to a new Soviet overlord. The PLO was created by Nasser as a weapon internal to Arab politics to destabilize key traditional governments and as a weapon against traditional society, not as agent of peoplehood, and by the Soviet Union – using the model deliberately and in consultation with the Vietcong and French FLN – as part of a global strategy to tap into de-colonization to undermine the West’s containment and circumvent the stalemate it created in Europe globally to change the overall “international correlation of forces,” project a rising Marxist tide and crumbling Western world.⁴ The PLO’s employment of the concept of unique Palestinian peoplehood and championing of self-determination was thus only acquired in the following years (1970s onwards) by the Soviets, and was directed at doting self-flagellating Westerners. Indeed, not only did it become part of the overall Soviet national liberation ideological universe exploiting the West’s anti-colonial self-immolation emanating intellectually from Europe’s growing leftist fad of nihilism and existentialism thought developed by Franz Fanon, but it became one of the most important protection, training, logistical and ideologically-inculcating structures of that universe. The Palestine liberation cult assumed the leadership and umbrella structure of the hydra-like world of chic liberation guerilla movements.

In other words, Palestinian nationalism is not led by those who unwisely chose the wrong side of history; it was a creation of those forces. It is not plagued by radicalism; it is the embodiment of radicalism. It was always a means to assault the underlying power structures which even before World War I were seen as threats needing harnessing or erasing by the Ottoman Khaliph, and as a result naturally gravitated toward the British and then Americans.

The framers of the Oslo “peace” process had erroneously hoped that Palestinian nationalism could be domesticated. They imagined that Palestinianism was a bounded quest by local inhabitants for political enfranchisement and increasing autonomy. But, the record shows it was far from that either modest or introverted essence. Palestinian nationalism in fact is a movement inherently existing only as a vehicle for revolutionary struggle and radicalizing upheaval. Which is why every genuine attempt at granting the inhabitants of Judea and Samaria any “national” authority of any sort or any level of sovereignty descends instantly into a brutal assault on the local Arab population (and traditional Jordanian-aligned or tribal elites) – since that is the essence of the movement – and a perpetuation of conflict with Israel – since that is the validating cover of this eternal revolutionary upheaval – and a geopolitical alignment with the world’s global aggressive powers, since it was ultimately created and sustained by them. And it also why no matter what Jordan, Israel or the West try to do, Palestinian nationalism will inherently gravitate toward any regional ideology and geopolitical force advocating upheaval, revolution and the overturning of the traditional order of Arab society. And it is also why any great external power will see in the structure of Palestinian nationalism a ready and valuable asset. Taming Palestinian nationalism, or its Arab nationalist umbrella, is thus not only impossible, but dangerous.

Again, the very construct of a “Palestinian people” is really a recent vehicle (last 150 years) for the radical upturning of traditional Arab order, and thus the elites of Palestinian nationalism are inherently a revolutionary elite against traditional elites. But they cannot in their failed exhaustion moderate. The immense destruction wrought on Arab and Muslim society by this revolutionary clique not only was destined to fail but also to leave a vacuum in the wake of their failure that would be filled not with the reemerging traditional elites, but a parade of ever more violent, radical forces. In other words, there is no promise of a better future without a fundamental, bottom-up rebuilding of the Arab polity in in Judea and Samaria – an enterprise of generations, not months – to replace the amorphous vehicle of radical destruction, namely Palestinian nationalism, with normal politics based on local communities and the remnants of traditional leaderships (tribal, sectarian or clan) aligning in pursuit of introverted objectives of self-interest.

Moreover, it is unlikely that this can be done through independence and internally only, since the prejudice for radical solutions will continue to tempt and succeed. The Palestinian national project stands as the barrier to that evolution because it will be intentionally encouraged and dominated by any new radical ideology seeking to overturn the region since at its core, that has always been the purpose of that fantasy.

Since Palestinian nationalism did not choose to side with the wrong side of history, but rather was an integral part of it, will likely require an external overlay while local Palestinian Arab structures might evolve bottom-up and emerge over time into a self-sustaining and self-absorbed political body.

This is not to say that the populations of Judea and Samaria, and the non-tribal population of Jordan, should remain entirely disenfranchised and abjectly powerless. But what it does mean is that a new foundation of politics would need to be nourished based on restoring the residual tribal, clan, sectarian and familial power structures (inasmuch as they still exist) that had existed in the centuries prior to the last century of radical challenge and distortion of Arab society in the areas of Israel, Jordan and Palestine. While perhaps too distorted, a successful return to that structure of authority and order essentially returns the populations to an era prior to the rise of Arab nationalism and “Palestinian” identity – to before World War I – which was purposefully designed to embody any regional radical idea to challenge the presence of Western powers, undermine the Jordanian monarchy’s continuation, and destroy Israel. This, however, is the enterprise of generations, not years and even decades.

Until then, that political body will continue to be plagued by the domination of the latest regional radical challenges. And the PLO – whose weakness does not make it more moderate, just weaker – hasn’t the substance and following any more to compete in that marketplace of radical brutality. Its success in destroying the old elites, however, has also meant that there is no structure to which one can turn back easily to re-anchor Palestinian polity. That would have to be encouraged and resurrected from the bottom up, or with the help of the traditional elites in Jordan which the Jordanian Crown is abandoning at the moment.

The record of co-opting underlying grievances (root causes)

But could one perhaps at least address the underlying grievance that lent appeal to the radical sentiment so effectively captured by the Germans, the Soviets, Gamal Nasser, Rouholla Khomeini and Ghassan Soleimani, Tayyip Erdogan, and so forth? It is a question not only about policy toward Jordan, but the region more broadly. What fuels the rage, and what can be done to douse it?

There is a history of Western powers attempting to preempt radical challenges to the traditional order of things in the region by either co-opting their grievances directly or by including supposedly “moderate” forces which share with radicals their claim to grievance. Sadly, this history has a long, unbroken historical record of failure reaching back to the end of World War I. Indeed, not only did it fail, but it consistently increased, rather than decreased, the violence, intensity and currency of the radical challenge. And this is true in Palestine and Egypt, and in Syria and Iraq:

The efforts of Lord Samuel begot Haj-Amin al-Husseini, the Arab Revolt of 1929 and 1936 and the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood aligned with Hitler – and eventually the PLO.

The efforts of Lord Baring, the 1^st Earl of Cromer, and Lord Milner in Egypt begot Saad Zaghlul, the Wafd Party and his campaign of Egyptian unrest and assassination in the 1920s, followed by the rise of other radical pro-Nazi movements, and then Nasser and the pro-Soviet camp after World War II.
After the French conspired to oust Faisal, the son of the Hashemite Emir of Mecca in 1920, from Syria (the Hashemites briefly were given reign over Syria immediately after its capture by British troops in 1919), Paris courted radical Syrian nationalists by creating a unitary Syrian state, which was the underlying factor triggering the Syrian Revolt, starting with the revolt of the Druze.
The British White Paper of 1939 radicalized and stimulated rather than calmed Arab nationalism in Palestine.
Western attempts to appease Nasserite Arab nationalism in the mid-1950s led to the threat to Lebanon and Jordan by the end of the 1950s.
Jordanian King Hussein’s attempt to indulge the PLO led to Black September in September 1970.

In short, the historical record of attempts to appease radical sentiments by trying to co-opt their underlying grievances has an unbroken record of validating the grievance, inciting further rage, and more rapidly and thoroughly undermining the more conservative, calm traditional indigenous Arab leadership. And this record holds true for both Westerners and Arabs who have tried to employ this policy of co-opting radicalism.

Palestinian nationalism thus is not led by those who chose the wrong side of history; it was a creation of those forces. It was always a means to assault the underlying power structures which even before World War I were seen as threats needing harnessing or erasing by the Ottoman Khaliph, and as a result naturally gravitated toward the British and then Americans.

In other words, although the framers of Oslo had erroneously hoped that Palestinian nationalism was a bounded quest by local inhabitants for political enfranchisement and increasing autonomy, the record shows it was far from that either modest or introverted essence. Palestinian nationalism in fact is a movement inherently existing only as a vehicle for revolutionary struggle and radicalizing upheaval. Which is why every genuine attempt at granting the inhabitants of Judea and Samaria any “national” authority of any sort or any level of sovereignty descends instantly into a brutal assault on the Palestinian population (and traditional Jordanian-aligned or tribal elites) – since that is the essence of the movement – and a perpetuation of conflict with Israel – that is the validating cover of this eternal revolutionary upheaval. And it also why no matter what Jordan, Israel or the West try to do, Palestinian nationalism will inherently gravitate toward any regional ideology advocating upheaval, revolution and the overturning of the traditional order of Arab society. And it is also why any great external power will see in the structure of Palestinian nationalism a ready and valuable asset. Taming Palestinian nationalism, or its Arab nationalist umbrella, is thus a fool’s errand carrying dangerous consequences.

The king’s col de sac

For these two reasons – the toxic essence of Palestinian/Arab nationalism and the historical record of failed attempts to appease radicalizing trends by co-opting underlying grievances (root causes) – it is highly likely that King Abdullah II will eventually find himself at a dangerous impasse. His efforts to tame, harness and ultimately integrate Palestinian nationalism will not only fail catastrophically, but they will accelerate the mortal threat they pose to his realm.

As if that is bad and threatening enough, the real problem is that King Abdallah II has done so at the expense of the cultivating the solid foundation of Hejazi tribes upon which his reign ultimately rests and which might help him survive the tempest, as the evidence of the episode of the Huweitat tribe of 2017 (discussed in part IV) and the letter of criticism sent by tribal leaders in 2011 both demonstrate.

King Abdallah has not helped himself in this regard. Indeed, this is the one area he has demonstrated a bewildering cluelessness in is his insensitivity to the tribes – bewildering since its mastery was so crucial to the way his father had reigned and survived. As a preeminent historian of Jordanian history and politics, Asher Susser, noted in comparing the ways of King Hussein, the father, with King Abdallah II, the son:

“Hussein, since his youth, learnt the ways of the tribes through his intensive exposure to their values and traditions under the watchful eye of King Abdallah I, his dear grandfather and political mentor. Conversely, King Abdallah II’s upbringing did not include intimacy with tribal mores and politics, which were second nature to Hussein. Abdallah was even disrespectful at times towards tribal elders, whom he once dismissed impatiently as ‘dinosaurs.’“⁵

Dinosaurs are big. Offending them is dangerous. The depth of crisis in the monarchy between the King, the Hejazi tribes and the elements of the Hashemite family who remain popular among the tribes — and who fear for the survival of the state as currently constituted – has led by 2021 to something never before seen within Hashemite circles: the public criticism of the King by another close-in member of the royal family, Prince Hamza.

In April 21, 2021, Prince Hamza, whom King Hussein had on his death bed instructed become Crown Prince under King Abdallah II when he ascended the throne, was suddenly placed under house arrest. Some of his advisors and confidents were arrested, and one — Bassem Awadallah, who was also close to the Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MbS) — was arrested essentially for treason and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Upon his house arrest, Prince Hamza released a dramatic tape to social media with ominous undertones, suggesting he would likely disappear from visibility upon arrest. But he justified his actions as the voice of despair over the precipice over which he felt King Abdallah II was throwing the Kingdom. He echoed the tribes’ letter of 2011 by claiming he could no longer remain silent over the corruption and the Kingdom’s demise to which this would lead.

This was a serious moment, exposing the deepest roots of the structure undergirding the monarchy’s survival and essence. It was not just a sibling affair; that was only a vehicle for far more alarming forces at play. As described by Susser:

“The ‘Hamzah Affair’ was not just another spat in the family. It was an unprecedented clash of personalities and politics that might not be easily resolved. It represented a coalescence of forces between Jordan’s disaffected East Banker opposition and a spokesperson for their cause from the inner core of the royal family.”⁶

Moreover, the serious accusations against Bassem Awadallah – essentially suggesting he worked with a foreign country (which everyone assumed was Saudi Arabia given that Awadallah was seen as the closest Jordanian to the Saudi Kingdom) – raised the idea that this was the beginning, or perhaps initial planning, of an aborted coup attempt by the Saudis to change the direction of Jordan’s succession and alter the developing, new nature of the Hashemite monarchy. It had been long rumored that CP Muhammad bin Salman of Arabia held King Abdallah II of Jordan in low esteem.⁷ King Abdallah II’s dismissal of the importance of the Hejazi tribes was not only baffling in terms of Jordanian stability, but also represented an internal concern for the Saudis. The political stability of the Hejazi tribes – which King Abdallah II was cutting loose and adrift by re-anchoring his Kingdom – rattled Riyadh’s complicated control over the Hejazi areas of the Saudi Kingdom and presented a critically dangerous challenge that if left unaddressed, could even bring the Saud’s own stability into question.

Whether the Saudis were involved or not, and whether it was a coup attempt or not, it was clear that King Abdallah II saw Crown Prince Hamza as challenging his authority. He also understood that Prince Hamza governed the loyalty of the tribes with whom the King never had a common language and over whom the King was losing whatever residual loyalty he still held. In contrast, Prince Hamza, as his father King Hussein had been, was successfully among the tribes which King Abdallah II distinctly was not. As described by the regional correspondent of the Financial Times:

“[Prince Hamza’s] alleged pursuit of the tribes’ backing — two Jordanian officials describe it as the first stage of seeking their formal allegiance — struck at the very core of the legitimacy of King Abdullah’s reign. The tribal leaders who spoke to the Financial Times describe the king as distant, surrounded by a coterie of city-dwelling advisers and deaf to the suffering of his people.”⁸

In contrast, according to the Financial Times correspondent:

“Prince Hamzah, 41, has pursued a different track — making deep inroads into the far-flung and disaffected tribes that a century ago helped create what grew into the modern state of Jordan. Now a minority in their own country, some tribal leaders complain of being left behind, with their young people unemployed. In the prince, they found a sympathetic ear.”⁹

Susser was even more specific:

“Hamzah was popular, especially in the tribal hinterland of the south. In many respects, Hamzah was exactly what Abdallah was not. There was a striking physical resemblance between Hamzah and the revered late King Hussein. They looked alike and their voices and diction were almost identical. Hamzah was brought up in Jordan and interacted intimately with the tribes since his youth. He knew their ways and spoke the language as they did, in stark contrast to Abdallah’s foreign upbringing, his imperfect language, his cultural and mental distance and apparent disdain, at times, for tribal norms. As much as Abdallah was as an outsider, Hamzah was one of them and he had spent years building up a loyal base of support among the tribes.”¹⁰

The tensions between the tribes upon which the entire edifice of Jordanian survival is rooted and the Crown is showing no signs of improving. First of all, fate was not kind to King Abdallah. Internationally, a leak of 11.9 million documents of offshore accounts, knows as the Pandora Papers, implicated many leaders and elites of nations in maintaining secret wealth out of sight and reach to their countries’ people. King Abdallah appears glaringly in these:

“Last year, a massive leak of more than 11.9m confidential files revealed that between 2003 and 2017, the Jordanian king had amassed an international luxury property empire that includes 14 homes across the US and UK, from California to central London.”¹¹ 

The public perception of corruption thus continued to swell.

Then, or perhaps in part because of this, King Abdallah’s attempt to remove the thorn of Crown Prince Hamza by placing him under house arrest last year seems to have put little, if anything, to rest. Indeed, the King once again over the last months had to act against Crown Prince Hamza since the problem with him seems to only have grown. In March 2022, King Abdallah forced Prince Hamza to issue a rare public apology, in which the Crown Prince was forced to say:

“I have erred, Your Majesty, and to err is human. I, therefore, bear responsibility for the stances I have taken and the offences I have committed against Your Majesty and our country over the past years … I apologise to Your Majesty, to the people of Jordan, and to our family, for my actions which, God willing, will not be repeated,”¹² 

Apologies go only so far. Suppressing the unwanted hardly goes farther than even that since Prince Hamza himself is not really the problem. Prince Hamza’s apology might have been genuine or not, but it was irrelevant. The underlying reasons that lead to Hamza’s behavior and lends him currency are the font of the real problem bedeviling King Abdallah. Thus, these underlying trends will with certainty return to haunt the King.

Indeed, they have returned to haunt the King already scantly a month later. In a terse statement on April 3, Hamza renounced his title as crown prince – the first voluntary move as such in Jordanian history although it is reasonable to assume it was not as voluntary as publicly suggested. As if this sign of unresolved royal tensions was not bad enough, Prince Hamza left the stage with a parting, caustic slap at King Abdullah II and his policies:

“I have come to a conclusion that my personal conviction and principles my father (the late King Hussein) instilled in me are not in line with the path, directives and modern methods of our institutions…”¹³ 

In other words, former CP Hamza accused King Abdallah of betraying the legacy of his father and the foundations of State.

“Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,” Shakespeare wrote in Henry IV. And indeed, King Abdallah II appears to have purchased little respite. His troubles only mounted since last spring as the tribal opposition boils further over. In early July, the heads of all the major tribes gathered in Amman. Many of the large, key tribes upon which the Crown’s structure rests were all there: the Huweitat, Majali, Abadi, and Bani Hassan tribal heads. Angry over the increasing wave of arrests of their members, they criticized the King and ominously warned:

“There are many sons of officials who get jobs and are paid thousands of Jordanian dinars per month without any accountability. What they do is monitor political opponents, make their lives difficult, put pressure on their work, and prevent the right of assembly which is guaranteed by the constitution … Where is justice in the reign of the renaissance of King Abdullah II?”¹⁴

Bad enough indeed, but the crises over Prince Hamza and over the tribes are ever more converging into one and the same, meaning that the tribes were not only directing their anger at the King, but focusing their energy increasingly toward an alternative. As one tribal member near Amman described the image of Hamza among the tribal communities:

“It’s his way of talking, his modesty … [When Hamzah visited us] he came without guards or anything, he was just driving a truck … This is how the people of Jordan love their leaders.”¹⁵

Another tribesman from Madaba added:

“I like all of the Hashemite family [the Jordanian monarchy], but what I like about him [Hamzah] is that he’s very humble and he’s closer than the other princes and princesses to the citizens.”¹⁶

Troubles do indeed come in battalions, so in a very unusual and novel development, these voices of frustration managed to find media outlets. The press in Jordan has always been very tightly controlled, but it is precisely because of this that it is paradoxically not surprising that sentiments of frustration are finding their paths into the public. In order that journalists bend to the interests of the Hashemite state, it was inevitable that most of the journalist elites over the decades in Jordan are creatures of that very Hashemite state. But this means that they reflect and come from the very same traditional structures undergirding it – namely the tribes – that King Abdallah II is seeking to supplant. Dissing those who narrate your reign leads to bad press.

In response, the King now tries to suppress rather than address the problem. As Mohammad Ersan, the editor of two major Jordanian media outlets, said recently:

“The Jordanian authorities want to silence opposition voices and this is terrifying … Especially if you are an independent journalist – you worry every day that someone will knock on your door to arrest you.”¹⁷

And his colleague, Khalid Qudah, who is on the board of Jordan’s Press Association, chimed in:

“Our silence proved again that we are controlled, we work within a certain agenda, that we are not independent nor partial,”¹⁸

But like with his brother Prince Hamza and the tribes, the press in this case are mere vehicles to expose the problem. They were not the problem itself so their suppression only produces the lulling but misleading silence before eruption.

The King’s gambit goes bust

The real problem is that we are now seeing that all these forces – some of which are entirely of his own making, none of which King Abdallah is able to control, and many of which he cannot address by asking for help from traditional external because of the policies he has chosen – are converging to devour his crown:

The Iraqi tribes remain unsettled and a hotbed of Islamic radicalism.

The Palestinians, are radicalizing yet further despite, or indeed to some extent because of, King Abdallah’s misguided focus on undermining Israel’s control over Jerusalem and attempted replacement by the politically deceased PLO – a deadly combination which only creates a vacuum for Hamas and others, not for Jordan or the PLO, to fill.
The Hejazi tribes are drifting away – jilted, orphaned and increasingly vocal, and potentially threatening even to the Saudis if the drift continues; and
Parts of his own family are acting increasingly in despair over the precipice they feel the King is taking them.
He is increasingly offending even his own “controlled” press.

Unlike his father, King Abdallah has burned his bridges with the one sure-fire structure upon which his reign is built. Neither the US nor the PLO, nor even Israel, can replace the importance to his survival of the tribes he has discarded. And unlike the bitter lesson his father learned about Arab and Palestinian nationalism – there is no path to integration of it. Individuals can be integrated, but the Arab nationalist movement and its particular Palestinian manifestation cannot since its very purpose always was to overthrow the traditional order of things, beginning with challenging the tribes.

Moreover, the determination to continue down the shibboleth on which King Abdallah has strayed is amplified rather than discouraged by its key partners, Israel and the United States both in their own attempts to satiate Palestinian nationalism as well as in their efforts to try to help Amman co-opt and champion the Palestinian cause to avert the specter of its further radicalization.

For entirely understandable reasons, therefore, the Hashemite King has with the best of intentions embarked on a deadly path. And yet indulging him, either out of personal empathy or out of a strategic outlook, will only encourage him to travel further down this path. And that would only hasten his reign’s reckoning and make less likely its eventual survival through this reckoning.

Indulgence dooms the Crown

Is that it, then? Is the Jordanian Kingdom then doomed?

Perhaps, but Jordan’s weakness and instability is not pre-ordained. The real threat is in fact the self-inflicted wound, but that also means a change of course is within King Abdallah’s – or at least the Hashemite family’s — power, and if taken can perhaps still heal that wound.

But make no mistake; although out of good intentions, the Hashemite Kingdom has mis-stepped so gravely in the last five years that it threatens its own demise, the advanced signs of which we are seeing now in this crisis. And though also largely out of good intentions, the policies of the West and Israel, which alternate between encouraging that misstep and indulging Amman in patience, have only exacerbated the malaise.

In short, indulgence is not helping, but hurting. It hurts not only Jordan’s neighbors, but ultimately the Hashemites themselves.

To be sure, Jordan is a sovereign country that cannot be saved despite itself; the only path to Jordan’s survival lies in Amman – not Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Manama, Jerusalem or Washington. And yet, because this will have significant implications for the United States, Israel and the Gulf Arabs, it would be prudent for them to enter into quiet strategic discussions to stand ready to help Jordan change course, or if Amman is unwilling and disaster becomes inescapable, to contain the effects of its collapse.

Conclusions

The point of this series of essays was neither to denigrate Jordan nor to cast it and the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty away glibly. The peace has served both Israel and Jordan well for three decades, and there is little point in intentionally discarding it. The point is to warn that Jordan’s recent behaviors are symptoms born of a dangerous strategic miscalculation, which is partly of Jordan’s own making. And answering Jordan’s increasingly desperate situation by deepening its descent into the failed strategy which led to the despair is not only unwise but will help plunge Jordan even further into its crisis.

Already in 2016-7, the Jordanian Crown decided the foundation of Jordanian foreign policy lies in his championing of Arab, and particularly Palestinian, nationalism and integrating the Palestinian majority’s role into the core of Jordan’s identity more than in continuing to cultivate and protect the Jordanian state’s tribal Hejazi moorings. Jordan will fail in its efforts to indulge, co-opt and ride ideological challenges. And it will undermine Israeli and Saudi efforts to control the collateral damages caused by these policies as well because it has created two dangerous conditions:

It replaced the strong and focused Hejazi tribal foundations upon which the survival of his realm is based with an unsustainable and ultimately threatening Palestinian one.
It ceded Jordan’s vital role as strategic partner with Israel in managing the Palestinian issue and instead demoted Amman to being a mere vessel for Abu Mazen and his failed, irrelevant and illusory authority.

Since Abu Mazen hardly even commands the Mukatah compound, Jordan’s tethering to him created a vacuum of power over a role which Amman had previously filled but is now the subject of a scramble between Hamas, Turkey, and Iran to fill – especially the more Israel pulls back in deference to Jordan’s demands to further reduce the Jewish states’ profile.

In short, Jordan’s attempt to co-opt Palestinian radicalism will, as it traditionally always has, deepen its crises and most profoundly threaten the survival not of only the monarch, but of the very essence of what the Jordanian state is. Given the immense weakness Jordan faces already which has generated the despair that led to this miscalculation, it is quite possible that Jordan will be unable to survive it unless there is quite soon a dramatic change of policy by Amman and its neighbors…and then without guarantees.

Jordan’s policies not only fuel the violence rather than just being fueled by it, but they lead Jordan to starkly depart from its previously amicable relations with Israel and rattle the foundations of peace. Unfortunately, those policies are a more extensive embrace of a policy whose milder versions in the past have proven nearly fatal for Jordan. And the prospects are quite real that this far more extensive embrace of this strategy could likely lead to even worse results. Thus, prudence demands of its neighbors and allies to plan for such eventualities.

Looking ahead

The King of Jordan has reached a dangerous state of affairs in his realm. His regime is threatened, in large part because of grave mistakes he himself has made over the last years. Faced with an increasingly desperate circumstance, he has flung himself, royal prestige, and his family fully into the Palestinian issue to emerge as its champion and, he hopes, to navigate a path to survival through this.

Maybe he will succeed, and we should all hope for it, but if the past is any guide, he has taken several large steps to his regime’s demise. His plunge into the abyss of Palestinian politics is a darkness from which he more likely will not emerge. His father – who erred onto that path occasionally but certainly not as wholeheartedly (not even a fraction of it, in fact) – needed foreign intervention to survive. But assuming this time it is even something that is feasible, who exactly would come with military intervention to the King’s aid now? Jordan’s neighbors would be well-advised to pull back on their indulgence of his policies in as much as it weakens not only them and damages their own interests, but also undermines the Jordanian Crown.

Jordan needs to be strongly discouraged to engage in peace process fantasies and encouraged instead to return to the essential foundations that define the state structure, and that it understands that its fundamental role now has shifted away not only from championing the Palestinian Arabs but to understand that its primary purpose is to help stabilize the Hejazi tribal universe and isolate it from the threats from Tehran, Ankara and others. Sadly, because of its missteps, for the foreseeable future, Jordan’s role in any capacity to moderate, control or manage the Palestinian issue on behalf of itself or others has reached its end.

It would be irresponsible for Jordan’s neighbors and allies to ignore the very real problem that the current path of the monarchy could lead to its dissolution and create a stage upon which the region’s worst actors can play out their horrific conflicts in one of the most important strategic pieces of regional real estate.

These parameters, thus, suggest two things:

First, the assumptions underlying counseling patience and yielding to the strategic utility of indulging Amman in its increasingly provocative and hostile behavior are flawed. As such, it is not only futile, but also imprudent to indulge Jordan – especially if it weakens Israel and Saudi Arabia, and forfeits an opportunity to bring other states at peace with Israel into the equation — since it will not help, and indeed only enables Amman’s continued plunge into the abyss; and

Second, Jordan’s neighbors and allies should hope the monarchy navigates itself into safe haven, but plan for the worst and lay out a strategy and prepare foundations for stabilizing the Hejaz were that to happen. The area between Amman and Mecca – and the far-reaching implications of its potential instability — are far too important to continue to ignore.

Should Amman refuse or fail to restore its tribal moorings, however, it would be wise for its neighbors and allies to begin self-protectively to plan for the day after he does not pull it off and contemplate a world in which Jordan is either unstable, or worse.

The death of Shinzo Abe is a loss to the U.S. and its allies

July 08, 2022

This article first appeared in the Washington Post on July 8th, 2022. Click here to see the original article.

John R. Bolton served as national security adviser under President Donald Trump and is the author of “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.”

Shinzo Abe’s assassination was a brutal and completely unforeseen end to a life of public service to the people of Japan. The shock of his death will not dissipate quickly. He was a visionary leader, someone who believed his country was capable of taking a central, and responsible, role in international affairs. His loss will be deeply felt in part because he had more contributions to make.

Americans should appreciate how important Abe was for our nation. Over the past several decades, Japan had sought a role behind the historic memory of its part in initiating World War II and its conduct during that conflict. Abe agreed that Japan was right to believe, after this discreet but public soul-searching by his fellow citizens, that they lived in a “normal” country. And as with any “normal” country, Japan was legitimately entitled to defend its interests, especially in the hostile geography of Northeast Asia.

This Abe was determined to achieve, and he made giant steps toward reaching that once impossible goal.

Abe knew his country’s history well, but he could also see that it was time for Japan, and the rest of the world, to move beyond 1945. Germany had done so, forming a full military defense capacity (albeit one that has fallen into ill repair), and becoming a NATO member. Why shouldn’t Japan be able to do the same? And why shouldn’t the United States fully support Abe’s aspirations, not for Japan, but for ourselves and our other friends and allies in the Indo-Pacific and around the world?

I first met Abe in the early days of the George W. Bush administration, during a visit to Tokyo. At the suggestion of the U.S. Embassy, I had breakfast with Abe, then the deputy chief cabinet secretary and little known outside Japan. Our diplomats had tagged Abe, scion of a prominent political family, as a rising star, and so I found him to be, over 20 years ago.

He had focused on the threat of the North Korean nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs. As a Diet member, he made uncovering the fates of dozens of Japanese hostages kidnapped by Pyongyang a major campaign theme, demanding their safe return to their families, or at least a full accounting of what had happened to them. He never wavered from that goal. When he was assassinated, he was wearing the blue pin representing solidarity with the hostage families on his left lapel.

Through several U.S. administrations during his two stints as prime minister, and as a private citizen and political leader when not in office, Abe never tired of explaining to U.S. officials why they had to take the North Korea threat seriously. No one needed to convince Japan that Pyongyang was dangerous. Nonetheless, naive, ill-informed and obtuse leaders from more distant lands often needed to have the obvious explained to them.

I never saw Abe lose his sense of humor or his patience, as he tried repeatedly to stress why commitments made by various Kim dynasty leaders from the North shouldn’t be trusted. We could have used more of his wise warnings over the coming years. Now, that is not to be.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting in Nara, many instant commentators have said that Abe’s policies were “divisive” and “controversial.” That tells us more about the ideological biases of the commentators than about Abe himself.

He was prudent in his approach, meticulous in his planning (in politics and foreign policy) and resolutely calm in his demeanor. What distinguished him was the strength of his beliefs, despite adversity — adversity so intense that, in 2007, he resigned prematurely from his first term as prime minister, leaving the cognoscenti certain that his political career was over.

But Abe, who was as resolute as any politician in the contemporary democratic world, fought back. Five years later, he was reelected to lead Japan again and became its longest-serving prime minister. What really irritated his opponents were his successes, not his failures.

Abe’s international view is more important today than it ever was. He understood the long-term, indeed existential, threat posed by China, in all its spreading ramifications.

In the last years of his administration, Abe more than anyone else stressed the possibilities of a new constellation in Asia, the Quad: India, Australia, Japan and the United States. Initiated roughly 15 years ago but never developed effectively, Abe saw its potential, quietly pushing other Quad leaders to see what he did.

Especially as nations came to understand China’s role in the coronavirus pandemic, heads of governments in many Indo-Pacific countries intensified their search for more effective ways to constrain China, and they too see the Quad as an important building block.

We do not yet know the motives of Abe’s assassin. He might simply be a madman. But we should not let Abe’s tragic death obscure the permanent contribution he made to his country’s progress, or his friendship toward the United States.

The Case For American Leadership

June 27, 2022

This article first appeared in the Washington Examiner on June 27th, 2022. Click here to see the original article.

This week, President Joe Biden attends the G-7 summit in Germany and a NATO summit in Spain.

These meetings of the free world’s major economic powers and its paramount political-military alliance are particularly significant. America and its allies, seeking recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, have spent their way into dangerous inflation and the face grim prospect of an imminent recession. NATO is engaged in proxy military hostilities with Russia in Ukraine as Europe’s worst land war since 1945 grinds on, producing death, destruction, and global economic consequences. Looming above all else is China, the existential threat for the West’s foreseeable future.

In Henry Luce’s “American Century” (his 1941 aphorism), these diverse, menacing circumstances evoked calls for U.S. leadership to solve the West’s problems. Such calls still ring out today, but few seem to know what they mean. In the United States, the low-grade infection of isolationism persists, questioning why events in the wider world should concern us so much. Ironically, this skepticism is reinforced by reflexive demands for “leadership” that prize heading the parade without actually knowing where the parade is going. It is, therefore, entirely appropriate to consider what “American leadership” means and why we have it.

We should dispense first with the myth that from independence, America had an almost entirely domestic focus, emerging only reluctantly into international affairs in World War I. Hardly. Transforming 13 weak colonies into a transcontinental giant was no mere domestic affair, marked as it was by foreign conflicts — starting with the undeclared 1798-1800 Quasi-War with France and against Barbary pirates in 1801-1805, as well as huge territorial expansion, culminating in 1900 with U.S. control over distant lands such as Alaska, Hawaii, and the Philippines.

This is not the history of an insular, inward-looking people but the most successful and enduring expansion since ancient Rome. The immeasurable economic capabilities resulting from territorial growth, the flood of immigrants to America, and our determination to maintain free, constitutional, representative government, along with soaring trade, travel, and communications, created the basis on which modern U.S. leadership rests. Three hot wars in Europe in less than a century, starting with the 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian War, followed by the Cold War, did the rest, decimating Europe and ending its global empires.

China’s empire is now the last one standing. Nostalgia for quieter times internationally has been out of date for at least a century. The issue today is whether to continue the way of life we now enjoy by acting in our own interests, together with friends and allies, to protect against common threats. It is a false choice to think we can turn away from the rest of the world and bear no consequences domestically for doing so. We exercise international leadership because we thereby better protect America’s interests, not because we feel charitable toward others. We can choose to abandon U.S. interests, as some advocate, but make no mistake: No one else will protect them for us. The absence of American global leadership produces not greater stability but either growing anarchy or the emergence of hostile powers seeking to advance their interests to our disadvantage.

President Biden should demonstrate this week that America is still capable of providing leadership to confront unprovoked aggression, whether from Russia or China; handle our economies responsibly, undistracted by fanciful economic theories and social ideologies; and strategize on global challenges ahead. Whether Biden is capable of so doing is entirely another question, and his record does not provide much confidence.

NATO is not as allied with Ukraine as the president’s rhetoric suggests; he apparently has no idea that heedless expansion of the money supply has created the inflation now endangering the global economy, and whether he understands the China threat remains to be seen. The real test of U.S. leadership lies not in international diplomatic theatrics, but in hard battles over seemingly mundane, often mind-numbing subjects like the federal budget. One such ongoing struggle is over the size of our defense budget, which has suffered for 30 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Lulled into spending the “peace dividend” in non-defense areas, the West’s ability to deter and resist growing global threats has not kept pace.

Even as domestic government spending needs drastic reductions to combat inflation, we also need a significant increase in defense capabilities across the full spectrum of military threats. The 2024 presidential contest has already begun. It is not too soon, during 2022’s congressional campaigns, to debate not just budget numbers but America’s place in the world and why our international leadership benefits us and our allies. Our greatest strength is not our political leaders but the people themselves. Treated like adults by politicians, we are fully capable of doing what is required to safeguard our way of life. Let’s see which candidates grasp that reality. There we will find the next president.

John Bolton was national security adviser to President Donald Trump between 2018 and 2019. Between 2005 and 2006, he was the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

Part III: The foundations of the Jordanian state

June 13, 2022

By Dave Wurmser

In part one, I described the harsh and increasingly hostile anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic rhetoric recently employed by Amman, as well as its attempts to champion the Palestinian cause, wrest sovereignty from Israel on the Temple Mount and resurrect a pre-1852 status quo over Muslim, if not even all, holy sites in Jerusalem into some sort of “Vatican-like” status. I also outlined the accompanying geopolitical shifts in Amman that echo Russian and Non-Aligned Movement narratives rather than its traditional more pro-Western posture.

In part two I examined the various reactions in the West and Israel to this turn of events in Jordan, and the various options publicly debated over the best way to move forward.

In this section, in order to examine further whether Jordan should be confronted, indulged/ignored, or appeased I will both:

Describe the shift in Jordan’s policy. Although King Abdallah has never been identified with either anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic sentiment, and even though in fact he has had a deep investment and history of relations with England and the United States, he had until only a few years ago shown little interest in asserting Jordan’s role among Palestinians or in Jerusalem. Since it is unlikely that something happened that caused so profound a change of heart enough to radically alter his outlook across the board, it is more likely that this shift in policy is a result of pressures and circumstances and a strategic response on how to deal with that change.

Explore the foundations of Jordan’s stability to illustrate how serious a departure this new strategy is and how askew it is of the traditional policies that have secured Jordanian stability.

Jordan’s shift in 2017

The first visible signs of a significant shift in Jordan’s strategy in dealing with the Palestinians and Jerusalem, and by extension Israel, occurred six years ago, in the summer of 2017.

The first Temple Mount Crisis (2017)

In July 2017, three Arabs from Um al-Fahm in Israel traveled to Jerusalem and used the Temple Mount complex and the al-Aqsa Mosque as a hiding place and base of operations to smuggle and hide weapons which they would three days later use to launch a shooting attack on Israeli police. Emerging from the Temple Mount through the Gate of Tribes on July 14, the three terrorists gunned down two policemen standing near the Lion’s Gate of the city and wounded two more, one seriously. The terrorists then used the sanctity of the Temple Mount and al-Aqsa Mosque as a haven into which to retreat under the assumption that Israeli police would not follow them in hot pursuit – which is precisely one of the terms King Abdallah is demanding as an absolute from the Israelis (no Israeli police on Temple Mount ever for any condition, even in self defense or hot pursuit). In 2017, however, Israeli police did follow and successfully neutralized the terrorists.

As a result of this attack and the ongoing suspicion that the al-Aqsa Mosque could become a weapons storage repository by more Palestinian terrorists, Israel decided to install metal detectors to prevent the flow of potential weapons into the compound. What particularly disturbed the Israelis was that in the investigation of the attack, it became clear that members of the Islamic Waqf willfully assisted the attackers in smuggling and storing the weapons as well as harbored them. Moreover, when Israeli police raided the Mount to pursue the terrorists, they discovered that indeed the Waqf had begun storing a substantial amount of other weapons as well, and was using the sanctity of the area as cover to prevent Israeli police presence and observation.

In other words, the danger of the al-Aqsa mosque’s becoming a protected “armory” for the Palestinian factions with the acquiescence of the Waqf was not theoretical. It had just happened, which is what drove the Israeli government to install the magnetometers and cameras, as well as to close the Temple Mount to everyone for two days to calm the situation and to prevent mass demonstrations on the Mount as police swept the area searching for other arsenals. This closure was a response to the call by the Jordanian-sponsored Mufti of Jerusalem (essentially the head of the Waqf), Muhammad Ahmad Hussein, to all Muslims to come and ascend the Temple Mount and defy the Israelis. The Waqf – instead of being an instrument of administration and a voice for calm — had been caught helping to establish a terror infrastructure and haven and then serve as the cheerleaders for ensuing violence.

Jordan – who ostensibly was afforded a special status under the Peace Treaty over the Waqf in order to ensure its peaceful behavior and prevent third-parties from attacking Israel – instead immediately responded not with an apology over having failed in what had been expected of it under the Treaty, but with a sharp rebuke of Israel for installing the magnetometers and cameras. Ignoring entirely the events that had precipitated Israel’s action, Amman escalated its rhetoric in the following days and proceeded to continue to expand the Waqf, sided with the Palestinians, took the lead in escalating and further enflaming the crisis, and accused Jerusalem of changing the status quo of the Temple Mount and began to challenge Israel’s right to even be there.

Into this climate of rising Jordanian-Palestinian incendiary rhetoric and resulting rage – instigated by terrorists, sanctioned by the Waqf and enflamed further by the Jordanian government – it was not long in coming that a Jordanian construction worker, enraged by the course of events, attacked an Israeli diplomat (the deputy head of security in the Israeli embassy) in his apartment in Amman. The result of this attack on July 23, 2017, was unfortunately not only the attacking construction worker’s death but his co-worker as well, a result of the diplomat’s having defended himself.

This eventually led to a dangerous diplomatic standoff where the Israeli diplomat was prevented from leaving Amman, and was de facto held hostage by the Jordanian government as leverage to force Israel to yield on the Temple Mount, remove the metal detectors and cameras, and allow for further expansion of the Waqf. Indeed, a few days later Israel yielded to all of Jordan’s demands and removed the metal detectors installed in the access points to the Temple Mount and allowed the Waqf to expand, in return for which, the Israeli diplomat was allowed to return home.

The return of Naharayim (2018)

It was reinforced less than a year later by another action seen in Israel as hostile, although clearly it was under Jordan’s rights under the peace treaty. When the eastern Mandatory area had been separated from the western part and made into Jordan in 1921, a small area, which included an island and adjacent land where the Yarmouk and Jordan rivers flow together, was farmed by Jews, who remained in it throughout and after the 1948 war. Because the final armistice maps showed Israeli control there, the area remained in Israeli hands ever since, even though earlier maps indicated the small strip of land actually should have been considered outside the Rhodes armistice lines as part of Jordan.

It was a small tract, but it has some importance, especially since it included a power plant – which at one time in the 1920s and 1930s had supplied most of the Mandate with its electricity — and farm in the area of Naharayim on the Jordan River. In the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty, however, Jordan asserted its claim to the land, and solution was found to formally recognize the land as part of Jordan, but that Israel could lease the land in 25-year renewable agreements. It was assumed that this was a long-term solution that would lay the issue aside for generations, but in 2018, Jordan suddenly gave notice that when the 25-year lease ended, Israel was to leave the area in entirety and simply abandon the 100-year investment in the power plant and fields. Israel complied because Jordan acted within its rights, but it left a significant amount of bitterness in Israel as behavior unbecoming of two nations in a genuine state of peace.

Traditional strategic cooperation before 2017

This episode marked a significant shift in Jordanian behavior. Amman had been careful not to challenge Israeli sovereignty over areas of Judea and Samaria. In return – as enshrined in the 1994 Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty – Jordanian interests were given special consideration and Jordan granted an outsized role in the management of Islamic affairs on the Temple Mount was tolerated. It was a strategic relationship that benefitted both parties.

Prior to 2017, Israel-Jordanian cooperation was instrumental in reversing the chaos and bloodshed that had developed as a result of the Oslo process in 1993 and Israel’s precipitous withdrawal and indulgence of Yasir Arafat. This was especially important regarding Jerusalem.

Although Jordan had formally severed its ties to Judea and Samaria in 1988, Israel re-involved Jordan deeply as the Oslo process descended into increasing instability and violence. In particular, Jerusalem and Amman worked together to block increasing PLO and Hamas efforts – assisted in this destabilization by the Turkish government — to establish themselves over Jerusalem institutions. In particular, Israel had learned by the 1990s and 2000s the painful lesson of yielding the Waqf to the PLO’s dominance earlier in the 1990s.

The Oslo debacle

In 1994, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Sulaiman Ja’abari, died. The PLO moved quickly to appoint his successor, Ikrima Sa’id Sabri. Although Sabri was of the Muslim Brotherhood, Arafat had throughout the 1990s simultaneously cultivated , employed, suppressed and controlled Hamas and the Brotherhood. Arafat thus was thus comfortable in bringing into a position of power such a dangerous figure as Sabri, largely because he was confident that he could use Sabri’s talents to enflame and destabilize to his advantage.

Jordan, however, was having none of this. Having traditionally held dominance over the appointment of the Mufti, and highly sensitive to threats posed by the PLO from bitter decades of experience, King Hussein appointed another Mufti, Abdul Qader Abdeen, who was beholden neither to the PLO nor to the Muslim Brotherhood.

In a stark departure from amicable and coordinated Israeli-Jordanian strategies in dealing with Jerusalem for the preceding 30 years, Israel dissed the Jordanians and chose instead to appease the PLO and allow the PLO’s choice, Ikrima Sa’id Sabri – a Palestinian nationalist affiliated with the northern League of the Muslim brotherhood in Israel — to become Mufti of Jerusalem, a perch from which he energized Palestinian violence, threatened Israel, and rattled Amman.

After then having faced an unprecedented wave of violence in the 1990s and first two years of the 2000s, as a result of this catastrophic misstep, Israel realized its strategic mistake and happily seized upon the Jerusalem provisions of the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty. Israel pressed the PLO heavily to relent and bent Jerusalem’s Islamic structures toward Amman and away from the PLO and Hamas. Arafat had effectively used Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and its violence as an instrument throughout the 1990s, but eventually, after Arafat’s demise, Palestinian President Abu Mazen, lacking any real gravitas and facing so serious a threat over the growing and uncontrollable power of Sabri, especially after the PLO lost Gaza to Hamas in 2006, in private happily but publicly grousing, yielded to Israeli and Jordanian pressure, removed Sabri, and replaced him with another Mufti, Muhammad Ahmad Hussein.

In the great, but very quiet struggle which ensued in the following years, Jordan and Israel cooperated closely to prevent either Hamas or the PLO from weaponizing the issue of Jerusalem, the Temple Mount and the al-Aqsa Mosque in their internal struggles. Both Israel and Jordan knew that any Palestinian role over the sensitive sites would deteriorate into an internal rivalry and lead to a chaotic situation and violence – indeed, an intra-Palestinian bidding war paid in Israeli blood and Jordanian marginalization – that would threaten both Amman and Jerusalem, let alone their respective interests there (Israeli sovereignty and ultimate control and the lead given Jordan to administratively manage the area).

Indeed, by the mid-2000s, Israel and Jordan also began cooperating on a far broader strategic threat — the increasingly dangerous Turkish, neo-Ottoman imperial project launched by Erdogan and publicly, unapologetically touted by his foreign minister, Mehmet Davutoglu, and parliament speaker, Mustafa Sentop. Jordan and Israel together worked to prevent Ankara’s attempt to mobilize Muslims on the Jerusalem issue around Turkey’s new “Khaliphate” and hand the standard of leader of the Sunni world to Erdogan.

And to be sure, it was quite a war zone.

In the first decade and a half of the 2000s, Ankara invested effort and coin to challenge both Jordan and Israel and fill the expanding vacuum left among Palestinians as a result of the increasingly impoverished Hamas and increasingly limp PLO. Ankara aimed broadly, but it focused on Jerusalem and on the Temple Mount to replace the Jordanians. In Turkey’s endeavor to invest in encouraging a new leadership over Palestinian Muslims, it focused extensively, not solely, on Hamas as much as on the Northern league of the Muslim Brotherhood under Ra’ad Salah, and … Ikrima Sa’id Sabri.

Prime Minister Erdogan himself became involved, and soon labeled the very presence of Israel in Jerusalem as an insult to Islam and launched a quiet but overt Turkish governmental effort, led by Dr. Sardar Cam (a close associate of PM Erdogan who earlier had headed his office in parliament), to operate a largely governmentally-funded foundation called “Tika” under the ostensible cover of preserving and reinforcing the Islamic heritage of Jerusalem. By 2018, this foundation had spent USD 63 million in Jerusalem. The local leaders associated with Ankara’s efforts — Shaykh Raad Salah and ousted Mufti Ikrima Sa’id Sabri – used Turkish support and monies to escalate incitement and organized violent incidents against Israel. Another foundation tied to the Turkish government funded bus services to ferry members of the Murabitun and Murabitaat — both of which are banned organizations in Israel — to Jerusalem to conduct activities, many of which result in Israeli-Arab violence. Another organization, the “Agency for Our Heritage,” operated directly out of Istanbul and spent USD 40 million in the late 2010s.

Indeed, to help entangle Israel in law-fare, Ankara also sent old Ottoman land registries (some potentially forged) and lawyers to the Palestinians to challenge Israel everywhere on land ownership.

President Erdogan also has for most of the last two decades employed an increasingly hostile and serious parade of threats. With each year the rhetoric Erdogan employs against the West and Israel grows. By 2015, he even called on the Islamic world to follow him into organizing an Islamic army to “liberate” Jerusalem, which is essentially a declaration of war.

While strategic cooperation anchored to the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty functioned well enough to hamper Ankara’s schemes in the first decade, by the mid-2010s, Israel, in an attempt to tamp down Israeli-Turkish tensions, was loathe to continue to decisively confront Ankara and thus allowed Turkey considerable latitude rather than outright shut it down.

The result was not only an increased Turkish role in many critical places in Jerusalem. It also allowed the reemergence of Ra’ad Salah of the Northern League and Ikrima Sa’id Sabri as voices for Palestinian control and incitement focused on Jerusalem – which not only invited but demanded from Hamas and the PLO a competitive scramble to assert themselves over this most emotive issue. The situation was essentially beginning to spin out of Israel’s and Jordan’s control.

To note, though, Turkey’s primary target at the time was not Jordan, but Saudi Arabia. Ankara understood that by taking the lead in Jerusalem through its institutions and foundations, and through the rising fortunes of its allies Ra’ad Salah and Ikrima Sa’id Sabri, Ankara could begin to challenge Saudi Arabia’s claim to Sunni leadership which was emanating from its custodianship of the Two Holy Mosques — the al-Haram Mosque in Mecca and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina.

The intensity of this Turkish-Saudi, intra-Sunni cold war, and the fear that any weakening of Jordan could undermine Saudi Arabia helped shift Riyadh’s perception of Jordan. From being a traditional rival over the allegiance of the region’s tribes since the late 1910s, suddenly Saudi Arabia viewed Jordan, and indeed even Israel, as a strategic partner in its rivalry against Turkey. Jordan’s partnership in helping Israel prevent the radicalization of Jerusalem institutions by either Turkey, Iran or their local proxies, also strategically helped the Saudis, who had over the last decade found themselves as gravely threatened by Turkey’s neo-Ottoman project – especially the attempt to resurrect the Khaliphate to seize the standard of Sunni Islam — as anyone else in the region.

The Saudis understood how Turkey or Iran could use of the Temple Mount to open a new, violent and highly emotive front in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict to radicalize the region.

That this structure of several Arab states working together with Israel (some openly, some semi quietly) seemed to work so well makes it all the more befuddling and disconcerting that Jordan suddenly shifted the foundations of its policy in July 2017 and became part of the confrontation front on Jerusalem against Israel in cooperation with the PLO – and through the PLO’s complete failure and unpopularity to unwittingly opening the door for HAMAS to seize the issue — rather than assist Israel in keeping the situation there calm.

Why did Jordan do this?

What is Jordan?

To properly understand what would lead to such a dramatic and potentially self-destructive move by Amman, one has to examine the nature of what constitutes Jordanian stability, and indeed, what the very purpose and essence of the Hashemite dynasty is.

To understand the seriousness of the threat, and the gravity of Jordan’s missteps now, one has to first appreciate the geography and foundations of the Jordanian state.

Jordan, north of Amman, is largely part of the urbanized Levantine Sunni Arab structure, which includes Arab Palestinians. Some of these Jordanians are refugees from west of the Jordan River, but most are indigenous inhabitants of what once was called Trans-Jordanian Palestine (mirroring Cis-Jordanian Palestine which includes all the lands west of the Jordan River). These Arab Palestinians have long-standing and deep ties to their mirrored populations across the Jordan River, such as Karameh with Jericho, Zarqa with Jenin, Amman with Jerusalem. They are intertwined populations.

It is not a clean divide. Outside of the cities, some Bedouin tribes have long lived north of Amman, such as the Bani Hassan, who inhabit the areas of Jerash and Zarqa, and the Bani Sakher, who have been in the area of Amman and Madaba. Both thus have a long history in some of those areas North of Ma’an (just south of Amman) and Amman. Moreover, those Bedouin tribes had a history of rejecting the authority of the Ottoman Khalipha, and thus were the primary targets of the Ottoman empire in the 19^th century as it tried to settle Circassian and other Muslim populations from the Balkans and other areas of Samaria to break the geographic integrity of those tribes. As such, north of Amman, and in fact Samaria north of Jerusalem, is somewhat of a mishmash of populations emerging from Ottoman policies of internal exile, with urban populations aligned with the Ottomans in distinct tension with the tribes operating outside the cities in the area, and ultimately because of their hostility to the Ottomans aligned with the Arab Revolt and the Hashemites (led by Lawrence of Arabia).

South of Ma’an, the picture is much clearer. Jordan is the northern-most extension of the realms of the tribes of the Hejaz, among the largest in the northern Hejaz being the Banu Huwaitat of the Banu Laith, who are found primarily in the Wadi Rum area and around Petra.

The Hejaz is the area encompassing northwestern Saudi Arabia, Jordan south of Amman — particularly south of Ma’an – and even southern Israel. This area is the cradle of Islam and the realm and heartland of Arab history and the dominant tribes – most of which emerged from the Nabatean kingdoms and the Ghassanid Arabs aligned with Rome a millennium and a half ago – are its aristocracy and custodians of its identity. The area includes the cities of Mecca and Medina, and the holy “Two Holy Mosques of Islam” within them — the al-Haram Mosque in Mecca and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina. Thus, the most revered family among these tribes has always been the traditional custodian of the two mosques and the core Hashemite family of the Muslim Prophet himself, Muhammad.

Clearly, the Hashemite, Hejazi pedigree of Jordan’s ruling family – the Hashemites had been the family in in charge of being the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques until the end of World War I — has in the past led Saudi Arabia, which took control of the southern part of the Hejaz and supplanted the Hashemites as the Custodians of the Two Holy Mosques in the late 1910s, into tension with the Hashemites and Jordan. And yet, in recent decades a common purpose of fighting regional forces that threaten both and could undermine the stability of both via destabilization of the Hejaz has led not only to condominium, but even a climate of coordination between the two. In short, the stability of Jordan ever since the rise of Arab nationalism and the threat to Saudi Arabia from the Yemen War (1964) has gradually become ever more a core Saudi interest, with common enemies strategically driving the two into each others’ arms.

But Jordan also assumed in its north the eastern part of the Arab populations of Palestine. While Jordan’s ruling family and its reigning pillar of allies are part of a vast north-south alignment of Hejazi tribes, the urban Arabs of Palestine are oriented east-west on both the trans-Jordanian (Jordanian) and Cis-Jordanian (Israeli) sides of the Jordan River and are part of the more urbanized Levant with a complex history very separated from the Hejazi tribes as well as the tribes further east of Jordan, Iraq and northern Saudi Arabia. Indeed, one can almost think of the Jordan River like a mirror, which were the urban centers in the north and key urban Arab clans on one side have interacted and intermarried along east-west roads with their mirrored equivalents on the other side of the Jordan River, while Bedouin tribes – deeply suspicious of the urbanized Arabs as Ottoman allies – moved about around the cities. There was, indeed, very little north-south movement or interaction of these urban Arabs of northern Palestine, and very little common identity or affinity passing from north to south.

This particular east-west orientation of politics among urbanized Arab Palestinian posed both a threat but also opportunity for Jordan and its reigning structure of tribes and families after 1948. On the one hand, it meant that any unrest in Cis-Jordanian Palestine (Israel, Judea and Samaria) could threaten to spread into Trans-Jordanian Palestine (Jordan), but on the other it also meant that Jordan could also use its sway and control over the eastern Arabs of Palestine to control their western extensions, especially by alliance with the Bedouin tribes of the area (Banu Sakher and Adwan being the biggest in the north and in the Jordan Valley, although in conflict with each other, with lesser tribes in the north as well of the Rwala nomads and the Bani Khaled, Bani Hassan, Bani Sirhan, Sardiyeh and Isa). Against these tribes stood the urbanized populations, which posed a challenge to the Hashemites, especially given their east-west orientation of influence and affinity.

As such, this complex reality upholds the delicate balance in northern Jordan. Hebron can unsettle Ma’an, or Jericho can rattle Karameh, but so too can the control over the Jordanian-sanctioned elites of Ma’an and Karameh help stabilize Hebron and Karameh.

The same dynamic as governs Jordan also applies as well to Israel.

It is precisely this reality – this duality of threat and opportunity to both Amman and Jerusalem – which underpins the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty as both have a vital national interest to work together to ensure calm among the non-Hejazi urbanized (non-tribal) Arabs of both banks of Palestine. Thus, Jordanian-Israeli relations are not based on flowery western notions of peace emanating from a treaty, but on a mutual set of strategic realities that demand from each coordination of the other which long predated any formal peace treaty.

That is why the only unrest, let alone war, that has ever occurred on either of the banks of the Jordan River among the Palestinian was not a result of a Jordanian-Israeli conflict, but a result of an intrusion by external forces to that relationship that challenged the tribes and the Jordanian-cultivated elites of the big towns. Those external forces included a parade of revolutionary agents of upheaval and disruption of the carefully cultivated balance – the German-instigated Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Soviet-inspired Arab nationalists of Gamal Abdel Nasser and his tentacles (the PLO) in 1964-1970, or through the reintroduction of the PLO after 1993 by the Israelis.

As such, other than the brief period from 1993-1996 as a result of the Oslo process, the absolute exclusion of foreign actors was a foundation of Jordanian-Israeli relations and the vital interest of their American ally.

Until now.

Part IV will examine how a series of missteps – not only by Jordan, but by the US and others – rocked the Jordanian state and made wobbly its foundations.

Jordan: Stumbling into an Abyss

June 13, 2022

Part II: Reactions to Jordan’s incitement

By David Wurmser

In part one of this essay, I described the harsh and increasingly hostile anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic rhetoric recently employed by Amman, but also its attempts to champion the Palestinian cause and wrest sovereignty from Israel on the Temple Mount, if not all holy sites in Jerusalem into a some sort of “Vatican-like” status. I also outlined the accompanying geopolitical shifts that echo Russian and Non-Aligned Movement narratives.

In this second installment, I will examine the reactions in the West and in Israel to this turn of events, which essentially break down into three types:

Those whose patience is stressed to the limit with Jordan at such a sensitive moment and who advocate ignoring Amman’s demands when they are perceived to come at such an expense of Israeli interests that they threaten the essence of Israeli continued control over either Jerusalem or critical areas of Judea and Samaria.

Those who argue that Jordan is acting over the top unjustifiably, but that the larger interests and continued cooperation between Israel and Jordan remain so important that very narrow Israeli interests save but a few truly vital ones should transcend the imperative of maintaining the peace treaty and trying to keep Israeli-Jordanian relations on an even keel.

Those who argue that Israel has only itself to blame and that Jordan is simply reacting to Israel’s failure to satiate Palestinian demands, thereby “weakening” the Palestinian Authority(PA) which puts Amman in an impossible position wherein they have no choice other than to champion the PA.

In other words, should the reaction be to reject, excuse (but not necessarily accept), or appease Jordan’s demands?

Reject Amman’s demands

In 1967, Shai Agnon, as he received the Nobel Prize for literature, ascended the podium in Oslo, Norway and spoke:

“I tell you who I am. From the midst of a historical catastrophe, when Titus the King of Rome put Jerusalem to the sword and exiled Israel from its land, born I was in one of the cities of the Diaspora. Mourning was every moment. But I imagined myself as one who himself was born in Jerusalem. In dreams, and in night visions, I saw myself standing with my Levite brothers in the Temple, as I sing with them songs of David, King of Israel. On account of Jerusalem, I have written everything that G-d has given me in my heart and in my pen to write.”¹

In this, the great writer was no innovator, but a link in a long chain, from singing on the rivers of Babylon in the Bible, to the haunting song (“Jerusalem of Gold”) of Naomi Shemer, sung by Shuli Nathan, on the terrifying eve of the Six Day War, when Israel’s rapid victory was still in the future and the very real prospect of another catastrophic destruction of the Jewish people was descending.

It was a tradition of hope, moored to the mystical attachment to Mount Moriah, the Temple Mount, the Western Wall or whatever other name it carried, that focused on that one place, the one site on the globe, that allowed every Jew personally to look beyond the moment of hopelessness to redemption.

As Rabbi Soloveichik has noted, the irreconcilable mourning over the loss of Jerusalem two millennia ago, mixed with the uncompromising, indeed unquestioned hope driven by the certainty of return (reinforced by the idea that the destruction and exile followed by redemption and return had happened once before 2500 years ago), animated each generation of Jews to not only push on and survive but to harbor an impossible sense of hope and optimism. As Soloveichik noted, this quite possibly could be seen by a modern psychiatrist as a form of insanity, but it was what drove every Jew in his darkest moments to persevere.²

The essence was perhaps best expressed not through the words of the lofty intellectual, but through the eyes of a simple 19-year old Jewish teenager who grew up in a community isolated for millennia in Ethiopia which had left Israel in the first exile and had not even heard yet of the destruction of the Temple by Titus and the Roman legions. For her, as she plodded her way with the rest of her community on foot over a thousand miles in a march through the desert which many never survived led by Israeli agents to a collection point where quietly at night they were spirited out to Israel, their desperate journey was not driven by some modern idea of self-determination, but by a primordial cry of the soul. As she said, translated and cited by Rabbi Soloveichik:

“Until the age of 19, I grew up in a world in which the Beit Hamiqdash – the Holy Temple in Jerusalem – actually existed. I grew up hearing about the Kohanim – Holy Priests – and how they worked in the Temple. I fell asleep listening to the stories about the halo hovering over Jerusalem…We prayed and performed customs that expressed our yearning for Zion. We struggle to keep going despite the terrible conditions…because of our goal to reach Jerusalem of Gold, and after so many generations to stand at the gates of the Holy Temple.”³

Although there are some Israelis, like Amos Oz, who scoff at this spiritual attachment, the vast majority of Israelis – indeed Jews — believe the idea of return to Jerusalem itself – and by that was meant the Temple Mount, not some modern suburb – both spiritual and concrete was the irrepressible force upholding the beleaguered soul of the Jewish people. The epicenter of Jewish existence and survival is, thus, the Temple Mount.

In this context, Jordan’s statements in recent crises denigrating the right of the Jewish people to have any presence or standing on the Temple Mount, obliterating verbally any connection of the Jewish people to that site, strikes not only an emotive and painful chord among many Jews, but is deeply offensive and deserves an angry response. To many, thus, no modern power, monarch or idea or even superpower stands strongly enough to compete with four thousand years of Jewish history, belief, survival, hope, imagination, attachment – and ultimately essence — to the place because compromise on this is a betrayal of the legacy of about two hundred generations and an action tantamount to suicide. As poet Uri Zvi Greenberg (1896-1981) wrote: “Whoever rules the Temple Mount, rules the Land of Israel.”

Indeed, even the annual flag march through Jerusalem and its gates, while described almost universally in the Western press as a modern, indeed very recent jingoist provocation, is in fact an evolution of a ritual of longing conducted for perhaps a thousand years. As Talmudic scholar, Jeffrey Woolf of Bar Ilan University noted:

“There is a very long-standing tradition for hundreds of years, perhaps for millennia, of walking around and encountering the various gates of Jerusalem and expressing one’s love for Jerusalem. People would come from all over the world on pilgrimage, walk and say prayers at every single gate. And they would [similarly] walk around the gates of the Temple Mount.”⁴

And thus, if forced to choose between continued peace with Jordan and the convenience – or even survival — of King Abdallah, many, indeed most Israelis see it as obvious that they, as the roughly two hundred generations before, really can only choose their attachment to Jerusalem over their own or the Jordanian King’s convenience.

The answer of Prime Minister Bennett — though leading a left-leaning coalition with an Arab party in it (led by Mansour Abbas) and another Arab Party (Ayman Oudeh) outside it providing the buffer votes to allow it to continue – can only be understood in this context. Accusing Jordan of “backing those who resort to violence,”⁵ Bennett said also:

“There is no change or new evolution in the status on the Temple Mount – Israel’s sovereignty is preserved. All decisions on the Temple Mount will be made by the government of Israel from the context of our sovereignty, freedom of religion and security, and not as a result of pressures from foreign powers or political forces.”⁶

The last phrase is a direct rebuke of Jordan’s demands. Nor was this just PM Bennett. Even Israel’s left-leaning foreign minister, Yair Lapid, was reportedly so angered by the fact that the Jordanian government was seen as fueling rather than calming the tensions, that he considered a much sharper response and course of action against Jordan during the heat of the unrest in April.⁷

In essence, as one political commentator epitomized, the thought is growing in Israel that:

“Beware King Abdullah’s scheming in and around Jerusalem. The Hashemite Kingdom may be an important partner for Israel in maintaining stability along Israel’s longest border, and an ally in the fight against Iranian hegemonic ambitions…But Abdullah today is proving to be a foe in the struggle over Jerusalem, willing to employ historical falsifications, radical rhetoric, and shameless diplomatic guile to undermine Israeli rights at the holiest place on earth to the Jewish people. And he takes on this task with hands that are not at all clean.”⁸

In other words, the more Jordan sides with the Palestinians against Israel, especially on the issue of the Temple Mount, the less use, and thus tolerance, there is among many Israelis of the King’s demands.

Excusing and indulging Jordan

There are many analysts, unrivaled in their understanding of Jordan, who countenance patience with Amman, especially in the context of these internal threats. This line of thinking is perhaps closest to the traditional way in which Israeli-Jordanian relations have been understood since the 1960s, or possible even earlier.

At its core is the belief that Jordan serves several critical strategic functions:

It helps Israel manage the Palestinian population and helps obstruct the rise of radical militia that could challenge both Israel and the Hashemite King.

It provides a stable eastern border.
It prevents the dangerous politics of the Persian Gulf access to Israel’s center (as for example Syria has failed to do regarding Israel’s north).
It provides a cooperative structure to Israel to manage and administer sensitive Islamic sites and assets in Jerusalem.

The difficulty of Jordan’s position, its inability to digest instability emerging from the Palestinian issue and its serving as a buffer against other very aggressive and dangerous regional forces and nations, is both well understood and considered. As such, there is quite a bit of elasticity in understanding, indeed tolerance, in this camp that Amman is unwillingly forced to take actions and make statements at Israel’s expense. While such statements may grate many Israelis, they argue, one must consider the cause and the alternative. Indulging Amman’s rhetoric is a small price to pay for a continued, stable and highly strategic partner across the Jordan River.

The best formulation of this argument came from Robert Satloff, whose long years of refining his expertise on Jordan demand serious consideration:

“…Despite – or perhaps because of – the much more open royal embrace of Israel than in years past, …popular opinion – such as it is – was looking for an excuse to lash out. This is manifested in the 82 out of 109 MPs chomping at the bit to score a political point by urging [the] government to expel the Israeli ambassador, an act which could have triggered terrible downward spiral in this vital relationship. In this moment came the provocative comments by the Jordanian PM … not unreasonably interpreted as celebrating those actions of the Palestinians bent on stroking tensions and promoting confrontation. Problematic as his words may have been, my assessment is counter-intuitive – i.e., that his remarks were designed to get ahead of the parliamentary mob in an effort to defuse that explosive moment and ultimately protect the fundamentals of the Jordan-Israel relationship.”⁹

This is probably the most astute and accurate analysis of what is motivating the Jordanian leadership, none of whom have ever shown any particular penchant for wanton Israel-bashing. In the context of this outlook, one is hard pressed not to feel some sympathy for the Jordanian leadership in navigating its despair.

The security and diplomatic establishments in Israel, as well as some Jewish journals also advocate such a response, which is indeed very close to the traditional half-century paradigm of Israeli-Jordanian relations (long predating the codification in the 1994 peace treaty) and the spirit behind the strategic and security cooperation clauses of the peace treaty.

So, it was little surprise that just before the violence during Ramadan broke out, but after the wave of terror against Israel began, a series of high-level Israeli leaders traveled in a concentrated effort to Amman to enlist Jordan’s help in calming the situation, as has always been done to good effect until recently. One Israeli paper on March 30 noted the bewildering pace of Israeli travel to Amman in this context:

“Israel has pushed closer to Jordan in a massive effort to prevent an outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian violence next month that could destabilize both countries. President Isaac Herzog is set to make the first-ever “public and official” visit to Jordan, either by himself or by any of his predecessors since the country’s founding in 1948, …[to] discuss “deepening Israeli-Jordanian relations, maintaining regional stability with an emphasis on the upcoming holiday period, strengthening peace and normalization, and the many latent opportunities in relations between Israel, Jordan and the wider region … Herzog will meet with Abdullah in his palace, just one day after Defense Minister Benny Gantz visited and a week after Public Security Minister Omer Bar Lev was in Jordan to meet with the country’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi. Both countries understand that should security ties fail, not only will the king face instability at home, but the Jordanian street violence could spill over the border to Israel.”¹⁰

So as to put emphasis on this point, the Russian withdrawal from Syria resulting from Russia’s redirecting its efforts as a result of the Ukraine war has left a vacuum which is being filled by Iran, placing the IRGC and other Iranian terrorists not only closer to Israel’s border, but also along Jordan’s border. In the last weeks, this presence has begun to turn into terrorist operations against Jordan, about which King Abdallah said:

“We want everybody to be part of a new Middle East and to move forward, but we do have security challenges. We’re seeing border attacks on a regular basis and we know who’s behind that… Unfortunately we’re looking at maybe an escalation of problems on our borders,”¹¹

The King later was more specific:

 “That vacuum [left by the Russians] will be filled by the Iranians and their proxies..”¹²

Jordan’s role as a buffer to the Persian Gulf state system remains a vital Israeli as well as Saudi and US concern.

The violence in Jerusalem, and Jordan’s apparent encouragement of it, in the weeks following the rapid succession of visits by President Herzog, Defense Minister Gantz and Internal Security Minister Bar-Lev have placed the paradigm informing this effort under great stress. And to be sure, those who argue that Jordan should be indulged do not deny that Jordan is behaving inappropriately and provocatively, nor do they necessarily embrace the idea of Israel’s conceding to Jordan on Israel’s sovereignty over the Temple Mount. They simply argue that Israel must not give in to frustration and should instead keep its eye on the larger picture. Is the assertion of Israeli pique and the insistence on the application of its rights fully, they ask, worth jeopardizing the peace treaty, if not even Jordan’s survival, in the larger geo-strategic context? And is not Israel’s power and societal strength so solid that it can digest this indulgence?

As such, the conclusion is to counsel Israel to exercise strategic patience and work through the “noise,” to just digest the rhetoric or react moderately with measured response, and to some extent tred lightly in engaging in any further actions that could enflame the circumstance.

This argument is essentially an appeal to uphold the paradigm of Israeli-Jordanian relations reigning for the last six decades at least.

Appeasing and leveraging Jordan’s demands

Those far less sympathetic to Israel seek to exploit Jordan’s weakness and despair, and the threat of collapse, as leverage to further pressure Israel into concessions on the Palestinian track. Sadly, at this point, it is likely the US government under the Biden administration falls into this category.

In contrast to the argument made by those who are sympathetic to Israel who believe it is precisely Israeli strength that unlocks the potential for peace and allows Israel latitude of action,¹³ the Obama administration and indeed President Obama himself – the intellectual forerunner of the current administration – appears to have reversed that concept into policy a decade ago (August 2014) and argued that the central obstacle to peace is Israel’s failure to be more flexible, which is in essence a result of Israel’s immense power and consolidation which tempers its eagerness for peace.¹⁴ In other words, Israel is too strong to want peace.

Thus, the path to peace would necessitate some weakening of Israel not as a consequence of, but as a prerequisite for, achieving peace.

For this community of policymakers and opinion-setters, the exploitation of Jordan’s despair and the benefits provided by Israel’s central seven-decade long interest in maintaining Jordan’s survival and in a state of peace are highly useful assets into which to tap and to leverage to force Jerusalem to concede.

As such, the answer of this latter crowd is to demand rather than suggest Israel’s indulgence of Jordan’s hostility, as well as to cede sovereignty in part or in whole. In fact, Jordan’s hostility ultimately is understood as being a result of Israel’s failure to advance an attainable peace because of its intransigence and ultimately lack of interest in peace. In other words the message to Israel is: “It’s your fault anyway, so deal with it.” Leveraging Amman’s despair to weaken Israel both advances peace, and through that, shores up the Jordanian regime.

In this context, it was no surprise that the White House issued a statement on April 25, 2022, that essentially sided entirely with Jordan and abandoned any pretense of support or sympathy with Israel’s situation regarding its frustration with Jordan, let alone the issue of the Temple Mount. Issued after the harshest volleys of statements from Jordan by Prime Minister Kasawneh and Foreign Minister Safadi, the White House issued the following formal communique:

“Jordan is a critical ally and force for stability in the Middle East, and the President confirmed unwavering U.S. support for Jordan and His Majesty’s leadership… The President affirmed his strong support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and cited the need to preserve the historic status quo at the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount. The President also recognized the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan’s crucial role as the custodian of Muslim holy places in Jerusalem. The leaders discussed the political and economic benefits of further regional integration in infrastructure, energy, water, and climate projects, with Jordan a critical hub for such cooperation and investment.”¹⁵

Apart from completely ignoring Jordan’s role in fanning the flames of tension in the preceding weeks, the communique represents a shift in policy in many aspects and is a loaded statement full of coded language:

It recognizes Jordan as the custodian of the Muslim Holy places in Jerusalem.  Jordan was never “the custodian” of the holy places under any agreement.  Under the peace agreement, Israel is committed to giving preferential consideration to Jordanian — as opposed to other nations’ – concerns, and in this context, gives Jordan a special status in helping Israel administer the sites, but no more. Israel never agreed with Jordan in any document to cede its ultimate sovereign control over the Temple Mount.
The US now recognizes the Temple Mount as a whole as a Muslim Holy site, not just the al-Aqsa mosque.  While Israel has allowed the Waqf a role there until now, the whole area was formally never was considered a Muslim holy site other than the al-Aqsa mosque itself.
The “historic status quo” to which the President says the US now supports was never a term or concept until now.  Indeed, the term status quo refers to the situation as it was between 1967 to now, although that has constantly evolved, mostly to the detriment of Jews and Christians. Jordan has seized on this term “historic status quo” and then proceeds to define it in its recent policy paper in the context of the deterioration of Muslim rights since the 1852 circumstance, namely full Muslim sovereignty and control over ALL holy sites.  This concept was reinforced at the end of April by the foreign minister of Jordan, when he called Israel’s presence there illegal and ownership over the Temple Mount as being exclusively Palestinian.
The White House called Jordan helpful in calming rhetoric and preventing provocations. This is an outright inversion of truth. Jordan has not been helpful at all, and in fact, it has been one of the lead inciters over the last months. Indeed, its prime minister praised rioters, condemned Israeli Arabs who work with Israeli authorities, and encouraged more rioting attacks on Israelis in Jerusalem.  One does not need to humiliate Jordan in such a communique by criticizing King Abdallah during his visit, but praising Jordan as a partner in fighting and calming the raging rhetoric is inverted and — since the situation is highly charged (in good part because of Jordan’s rhetoric) and such incitement has led to dozens of dead Israelis thus far — itself incendiary.

And finally, in a completely new jab at Israel, Jordan has for several years been insisting that the resources of the entire Palestinian-Israeli-Jordanian area — including the water of the Sea of Galilee — be shared as a moral obligation. As such when Israel gives Israeli resources to Jordan under an agreement (such as sending large amounts of its precious water from the Sea of Galilee), Jordan regards it more as a payment of an owed debt or obligation by Israel rather than a willing concession. Since Jordan’s new policy sees itself now as the champion of the Palestinians and their advocate and strategic partner against Israel, Jordan also sees itself at the center of authority to properly manage the allocation of Cis-Jordanian (Israel and the Palestinian Authority) and Trans-Jordanian (Jordan) resources, and has thus arrogated to itself the controlling role of being the central hub, rather than Israel (which isn’t mentioned in this capacity), for distributing all of the resources of the area. Astonishingly, the US signed off on this concept in the last sentences of this communique.

On each point, the US echoed Jordan’s positions and distanced from Israel, ignored Israel’s interests and even showed little if any concession to Israel’s sovereignty.

Beyond these three basic outlooks, there are several other lines of thought emerging on Jordan. In particular, one should take note of an idea appearing in one of the leading periodicals published in the United States identified with the left side of the Democratic party, which outright called on Jordan to reoccupy the West Bank and make it part of Jordan.¹⁶ It is rather surprising that this argument is being made by some closely identified with Jordan since ultimately, it opens the Pandora’s box of the identity of Jordan, which is not only a Hashemite monarchy, but a state anchored to the tribal structures of the Hejaz (more on this in part III). And while those advocating this reversion to the pre-1967 situation look nostalgically on King Abdallah I’s embracing such a policy in 1950, the author conveniently ignores that Abdallah I’s moves cost him his life and nearly cost his son his throne a few years later.

At any rate, the basic question behind all these types of responses boil down to one core question: should Israel stand firm on its rights and accept come what may in Jordan, or should it defer its rights and stomach these provocations for the greater good of Jordan’s internal stability and external peacefulness?

Parts three and four of this essay will examine what the nature of the Hashemite Kingdom is in its essence, what stresses it faces to survive, and how understanding those dynamics could lead to a different, “fourth option” — or perhaps better described as a “scenario” since both the power and propriety of Israel’s or the US’s assuming they can shape Jordan’s future is far more limited than what is often assumed in Jerusalem or Washington at this point.

‘Degrade and Destroy’ Review: Illusions and the War on ISIS

June 13, 2022

A history of the struggle to defeat Islamic State in Iraq casts a cold light on America’s strategic decisions in the region.

This article first appeared in the Wall Street Journal on June 10th 2022. Click here to view the original article.

In what may be the final volume of a tetralogy covering U.S. activity in and around Iraq over the past three decades, Michael Gordon’s “Degrade and Destroy” combines Washington decision-making with battlefield reporting in ways that few other writers can manage. This account of America’s war against the Islamic State is Mr. Gordon’s first without co-author Bernard Trainor, who died in 2018, but it equals its forerunners in quality. While daily press reporting strains to draw overbroad conclusions from insufficient data, Mr. Gordon maximizes history and minimizes judgments. He presents his analysis, of course, but it’s always moored in reality. 

“Degrade and Destroy” is bracketed by two colossal presidential mistakes a decade apart: Barack Obama’s 2011 decision to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq and Joe Biden’s 2021 decision to do likewise in Afghanistan. They are proof, if proof were needed, of what Winston Churchill called “the confirmed unteachability of mankind.”

The unteachability starts with Mr. Obama, who told Mr. Gordon in 2007 that his personal engagement with Iran and Syria, coupled with America’s withdrawal from the region, would mean that “all these parties have an interest in figuring out: How do we adjust in a way that stabilizes the situation.” Mr. Gordon sees this view as “more of a projection of Washington’s hopes than a reflection of the hard realities in the region.” Mr. Obama’s words expressed his visceral opinion that America’s presence was the real problem—not the region’s long-standing animosities.

Mr. Obama confidently announced the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 2011, saying that “the tide of war is receding.” Unhappily, no one told ISIS, which launched its war shortly thereafter, or Iran, which had never given up its war against the U.S. Mr. Obama remained unteachable asserting in 2014 that if Iran would “operate in a responsible fashion”—that is, if the regime would stop funding terrorists, stirring sectarian discontent and developing nuclear weapons—we might begin to “see an equilibrium developing between” Sunni and Shia. That same year he said “it’s time to turn the page” on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, adding arrogantly: “This is how wars end in the 21st century.” In 2017, he called on U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia “to find an effective way to share the neighborhood and institute some sort of cold peace” with Iran.

Mr. Obama’s deeply flawed views shaped policy toward the ISIS threat even as he tried to conceal his intentions. Thus in 2011, while advisers urged keeping at least a small U.S. force in Iraq, Mr. Obama insisted that extending the existing status of forces agreement, or SOFA, be approved by Iraq’s parliament—a political impossibility. He then used the inevitable failure to necessitate total withdrawal. Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, thought the White House was just going through the motions. “It was pretty obvious to me that their [troop] number was zero,” Mr. Mullen said of the administration. Retaining U.S. forces in Iraq would have given Washington “an earlier heads-up” on ISIS’s rise, as Mr. Gordon puts it, perhaps averting the subsequent war against the caliphate or at least reducing its scope. When things went wrong after the withdrawal, Mr. Obama fell to “blaming the military for chaos that had unfolded following . . . the decision to exit Iraq.”

When ISIS seized Mosul in 2014, not only did Mr. Obama “have a new crisis on his hands,” Mr. Gordon explains, “but his paradigm for ending the ‘forever wars’ had collapsed.” America was coming back to Iraq. Such was Mr. Obama’s plasticity, however, that returning U.S. troops were protected by a SOFA not approved by Iraq’s parliament—precisely what he had rejected in 2011. His administration hoped that “the media would not ask too many questions.”

Mr. Gordon makes quite clear how much of Mr. Obama’s 2011-14 blindness stemmed from his focus on Iran, specifically negotiating the 2015 nuclear deal. His anti-ISIS strategy was directly tied to Iraqi Shia militia groups under Tehran’s control, resulting in close encounters with the likes of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, now deceased. Mr. Obama repeatedly accepted risks that benefitted Iran, or he probed for closer coordination or joint action with the regime and its surrogates, blissfully unaware that Iran was already fighting the next, post-ISIS war against the U.S. and its allies to establish dominance across the Middle East. Mr. Obama was determined that degrading ISIS would not disturb closer relations with Iran. Mr. Biden follows this illusion today, seeking to revive the Iran nuclear deal.

Mr. Obama focused on public opinion rather than strategy and leadership, “the tail wagging the dog,” as Mr. Gordon and Bernard Trainor previously described it. (Mr. Biden does the same now.) Mr. Gordon writes that the pattern was persistent: “The White House was not trying to wage a war as much as manage one.” Mr. Obama invariably justified his actions “in the narrowest possible terms” or, fearing a negative public reaction, tried to reassure Americans “that the military’s intervention would be virtually cost-free.” The November 2015 terrorist attack on the Bataclan theater in Paris chilled Mr. Obama because it shredded his foundational misperception that ISIS was a “jayvee” terrorist group, not as threatening as core al Qaeda. He worried that further attacks would reaffirm the idea that the threat of terrorism persisted and that it would imperil his domestic agenda. 

Mr. Obama’s reaction was the antithesis of leadership and exhibited disdain for his fellow citizens. When the threat is sufficiently grave, and the leader candid and persuasive, Americans rise to the occasion. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy to say that they are tired of “forever wars” when their leaders never explain the threats and justify the necessary responses in the first place. Mr. Obama achieved the opposite of his stated intentions, not only failing to “end the endless wars” but working overtime to lull voters into the misapprehension that there were no longer real threats in the Middle East. 

Donald Trump elaborated Mr. Obama’s mistake. Mr. Biden compounded the errors of both in Afghanistan, saying that “we’ve turned the page,” even though his appointees later explained that America would soon again be under threat of terrorist attacks launched from Afghan territory.

Whether Mr. Gordon will have a fifth volume to write may depend on whether Mr. Biden revives the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Since 1991, U.S. military interventions in the Middle East have reversed Iraq’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait; overthrown Saddam Hussein, thereby terminating his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and attacks on neighbors; eliminated the ISIS territorial caliphate and degraded but did not destroy ISIS itself; protected Israel and our Arab allies; crushed the Taliban in Afghanistan and decimated al Qaeda, until we gratuitously allowed their return to power and Afghan sanctuaries; and had a decidedly mixed and incomplete record on countering Iran’s manifold threats. 

We could have done better, but it’s good to remember U.S. accomplishments—as Mr. Gordon has done here and elsewhere—if for no other reason than to prepare ourselves to deal with a growing list of threats around the world. The lesson of the Obama years, in any case, appears clear: Constantly underestimating both our adversaries and the capacity of the American people to rise to their own defense is a losing proposition. 

Mr. Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, served as national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019.

Beyond Weapons: Time For A New U.S. Strategy On Taiwan

June 05, 2022

This article first appeared in 19FortyFive on June 5th, 2022. Click here to read the original article.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the most recent, but far from only, incident highlighting Taiwan’s vulnerability to Chinese attack. Western assistance to Ukraine, particularly sharing intelligence, has contributed significantly to its defense, but the underlying failure of deterrence was tragic. Prior to Moscow’s attack, Washington and its allies lacked credibility, unity, and adequate appreciation for larger geostrategic issues. The consequences are evident daily.

China and Taiwan are watching closely, and debate has accelerated over the military capabilities Taipei needs to maximize deterrence and defense against Beijing. Unfortunately, as with Ukraine, this debate lacks a broader politico-military foundation, which threatens Taiwan whatever its military arsenal. Biden administration myopia is missing critical opportunities to strengthen not just Taiwan, but the entire Indo-Pacific’s resistance to Chinese belligerence.

For the United States, implementing more effective deterrence for Taiwan is not simply a tactical case study. “Defending” Taiwan (or whether it has the right weaponry) is far too narrow a politico-military framework. Taiwan is not some isolated problem, but a strategically critical component of an Indo-Pacific, indeed global, counter-China strategy. Nonetheless, too many still view Taipei as an irritant to Beijing, an unnecessary burden we are protecting.

This misperception persists despite fundamental changes in Taiwan. It is no longer just the “losing side” in China’s Communist-Nationalist civil war, but a functionally independent country that intends to remain so. Its successful, growing economy is critical to America and the world, and its robust democracy has no appetite for anschluss with China. These are not just fun facts, but are integral to Taipei’s strategic position and its relationship with Washington.

Given its dramatic social, political and economic changes since 1949, Taiwan has little doubt the “one China” concept, like “strategic ambiguity,” is past retirement age. Thirty years of surveys have asked residents how they identify themselves. Those identifying as “Taiwanese” rose from 18% to 62%; “Chinese” fell from 26% to 3%; “both Taiwanese and Chinese” fell from 46% to 32%; and non-responses fell from 11% to 3%. Taiwan’s people have rejected the Shanghai Communique language of “all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait” as archaic. Perhaps more than any other reason, this is why “Taiwan” is Asia’s synonym for “Ukraine.”

President Biden has said three times that America would defend Taiwan if it were attacked, and three times his staff has tried to pretend he didn’t. Such confusion has not been limited to Taiwan. So, if Biden intended to reinforce “strategic ambiguity,” he and his administration have done a masterful job. In April, 2021, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines testified that:

“[if] we were to see a U.S. shift from strategic ambiguity…,to clarify our willingness to intervene in a Taiwan contingency, the Chinese would find this deeply destabilizing….It would solidify Chinese perceptions that the U.S. is bent on constraining China’s rise, including through military force, and would probably cause Beijing to aggressively undermine U.S. interests worldwide. That is our assessment.”

If Biden disagrees with Haines’s assessment, which counsels against a “shift from strategic ambiguity,” he needs to say so. Rather than press-question answers followed by cleanup patrols, Biden must speak comprehensively, bury “strategic ambiguity” unambiguously, and establish plainly that Washington sees Taipei as an ally. Being explicit would benefit both countries, and everyone in the Indo-Pacific who assess China’s menace similarly.

Enlarging Taipei’s military cooperation throughout the Indo-Pacific is today potentially the most effective way to break Beijing’s heavy-handed efforts to quarantine Taiwan politically. Deciding what military assets America should provide Taiwan is crucial, but the bigger picture is to interweave Taiwan into the emerging alliances and coalitions forming to deal with the Chinese threat. That would be real “integrated defense.” Taiwan’s critical geographic position in the “first island chain” between China and the broader Pacific alone explains why. Beyond the East China Sea, Taiwan has inherited territorial claims in the South China Sea; its air and naval assets could play vital roles, alongside other navies, ensuring freedom of navigation and refuting Beijing’s unfounded sovereignty claims across that critical space.

Many such duties for Taiwan come readily to mind. The recent Tokyo meeting of Quad heads of state (India, Japan, Australia, and the United States) launched the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA), an excellent initiative in which Taiwan could play a vital part. Intended to “build a faster, wider, and more accurate maritime picture of near-real-time activities in partners’ waters”, the IPMDA contemplates “immediate consultations” with others, which should obviously include Taiwan.

The AUKUS (Australia, UK, US) initiative to produce nuclear-powers submarines for Australia provides another template for mutual cooperation on sophisticated, interoperable defense capabilities in which Taiwan could be seamlessly integrated into larger Indo-Pacific coalitions. There is no imminent need, or potential, to have one comprehensive alliance structure like NATO, which itself grew and evolved over decades. But Taiwan should be a part in whatever steps are being taken in the Indo-Pacific.

It was, therefore, a significant disappointment, and a significant error, not to include Taipei in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), unveiled the same day as IPMDA. Taiwan (under the outdated name “Chinese Taipei”) is, after all a WTO member; it is manifestly insufficient to say the U.S. will continue enhancing bilateral economic relations with Taiwan as if that is a substitute for participation in initiatives like IPEF. If other IPEF members feared Beijing’s reaction to including

Taiwan, it shows they still gravely underestimate China’s threat, and will fear other necessary and appropriate steps in the near future. Such timidity augurs poorly for IPEF’s prospects.

Taiwan’s broader, entirely appropriate regional roles cannot be fulfilled merely with “defensive” weapons against potential Chinese amphibious assaults, whether in traditional or asymmetric capabilities, which Biden’s advisors are pressing. Their focus is too narrow. It undercuts effective U.S. regional strategy, including their own initiatives like IPMDA and IPEF. Properly providing for an expanded, coalition-based military role for Taiwan requires assigning responsibilities to coalition-of-the-willing members and equipping them accordingly. We will then have a realistic context to assess specific weapons systems that will assist not just Taiwan, but the larger regional program to counter Beijing’s belligerence.

Amb. John Bolton – Frankly, the war against Russia is not going well.

June 05, 2022

This Interview first appeared on Cats Roundtable on June 5th 2022. Click here to hear the original interview.

John Catsimatidis · Amb. John Bolton – Frankly, the war against Russia is not going well.

Will new evidence force Biden to admit that the Iran nuclear deal is dead?

May 31, 2022

This article appeared in The Hill on May 31st 2022. Click here to view the original article.

The Biden administration remains unable or unwilling to admit failure in its humiliating pursuit of America rejoining the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Nonetheless, dramatic news coverage may force its hand. The Wall Street Journal reported exclusively last week that:

“Iran secured access to secret United Nations atomic agency reports almost two decades ago and circulated the documents among top officials who prepared cover stories and falsified a record to conceal suspected past work on nuclear weapons…”

The Journal described how it had reviewed copies of these International Atomic Energy Agency (“IAEA”) documents and others seized by Israel in a daring 2018 intelligence raid against a Tehran warehouse. The full extent of Israel’s haul in that dramatic operation is still not public, but everything revealed to date has proven accurate.

The news story emerged simultaneously with Senate testimony by Biden’s special representative for Iran, Robert Malley, so questioning at the hearing was inevitably limited. This latest revelation about Iran’s denial and deception efforts, however, undoubtedly presages more to come. 

Until the ramifications of the Journal’s story are further researched and thoroughly considered, the administration has no warrant to proceed any further in attempting to rejoin the nuclear deal. We still need to ascertain, for example, what else Tehran may have seen, and how long it benefitted from this unprecedented access, perhaps even to the present day.

Despite understandable gaps in the Journal story, the implications are volcanic. Iran has long invested considerable time and effort to deceive IAEA officials and inspectors, conceal or destroy critical information and generally obstruct the agency’s investigations. Thus, having any sensitive internal IAEA information would be of incalculable value to Tehran. As the article made clear, Iran would obviously benefit greatly by having advance notice of the lines of inquiry the IAEA was pursuing and the questions it wished to ask.

Early warning would have provided Iran sufficient, perhaps ample, opportunity to concoct a cover story and specific responses, get all relevant nuclear personnel prepared in line with the denial strategy and orchestrate a determined deception effort against the agency. In particular, Iran has consistently denied it ever had a nuclear-weapons program, and its concealment efforts could be greatly enhanced just knowing what the IAEA suspected. 

The evident success of Iran’s disinformation campaign underscores another critical point: The IAEA is simply not capable of verifying compliance with agreements such as the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty or other arms-control arrangements without full and unqualified cooperation by all parties involved.

Notwithstanding the agency’s inability to fulfill the responsibilities the 2015 nuclear deal entrusts to it, the Biden administration still argues that the IAEA is able to detect Iranian violations. The Journal report proves the precise opposite. The deal’s already weak verification provisions were always doomed to fail, but this new evidence puts the case beyond reasonable doubt. For the White House to continue asserting the contrary borders on perjury.

The IAEA does good and important work, but assigning it tasks it is inherently unable to accomplish gravely impairs its credibility. It is not an intelligence agency. Intelligence flows to the IAEA, not the reverse. Its “breakthroughs” typically come when member governments provide information which the agency uses to confront rogue states. America’s real insurance is not international monitoring of would-be proliferators but its own intelligence capabilities.

Even so, IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi should immediately launch a wide-ranging forensic investigation into what happened, who was responsible, how much damage was done and what the IAEA can do to prevent a re-occurrence. One person with much to account for is Mohammed ElBaradei, Grossi’s predecessor in the early 2000s, when these breaches of IAEA security apparently began. ElBaradei’s tilt toward Iran was fully evident throughout his tenure at the IAEA. Given the stakes involved for America and its closest Middle East allies, Congress should also conduct its own bipartisan investigation. 

Meanwhile, Iran’s dogged pursuit of deliverable nuclear weapons continues. Since his inauguration, Biden has ignored increasingly significant Iranian violations of U.S. sanctions, particularly trading in oil and related products with China and Venezuela. There is no longer a “maximum pressure” campaign, although indeed even that effort couldn’t stop Iran’s program. Weakening sanctions enforcement, however, especially under the guise of alleviating global oil shortages caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, make it harder for other nations to maintain strict compliance.

The White House should reverse course immediately before more damage is done. We must also acknowledge that current U.S. sanctions-enforcement machinery is inadequate. Considerable improvement is required before we can honestly speak of “maximum pressure” campaigns. Having a tough-sounding slogan does not equal an effective policy.

Most importantly, Biden must admit that the Iran nuclear deal is dead and cannot be resurrected. Only by acknowledging reality can we and our European allies begin developing a new policy with some chance of achieving our common goal of stopping Iran’s progress toward nuclear weapons. 

In fact, Tehran’s Islamic revolutionary government will never give up the goal of achieving nuclear weapons, which is one more reason among many why it needs to be replaced, sooner rather than later. Either that, or we and others will have to increase the military actions needed to reduce Iran’s nuclear and related efforts to ashes. Israel, in fact, created a few more ashes last week.

Surveying the rubble of the 2015 deal, and the damage it has inflicted on every nation threatened by Iran and other aspiring proliferators, we have much more to learn and improve. Unless a nation makes a strategic decision to abandon the pursuit of nuclear weapons, no acceptable deal exists.

The Iran nuclear agreement or the prospect of one with North Korea is worth nothing unless Tehran and Pyongyang truly believe they are better off ceasing their nuclear-weapons programs than continuing them. Once that is understood, the U.S. path is clear. As Winston Churchill said in 1934 in an analogous context, “[i]t is the greatest possible mistake to mix up disarmament with peace. When you have peace, you will have disarmament.”

John Bolton was national security adviser to President Trump from 2018 to 2019, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006 and held senior State Department posts in 2001-2005 and 1985-1989. His most recent book is “The Room Where It Happened” (2020). He is the founder of John Bolton Super PAC, a political action committee supporting candidates who believe in a strong U.S. foreign policy.

Posts by: Eric Sherred

Israel and its Arab friends should visit the Continent’s capitals and deliver a message about the danger.