ForeignPolicy – Page 14 – The Wrongologist

Iran: WMD 2.0?

The Republicans job of whipping up support to override an Obama veto of the bill to kill the Iran deal got tougher since Kerry just secured limited support for the deal from the Gulf States. The NYT reports that Khalid al-Attiyah, the foreign minister of Qatar, who hosted the meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council, said:

This was the best option among other options…We are confident that what they undertook makes this region safer and more stable.

With that, most Democrats who are on the fence will likely be convinced to support the deal.

Republicans should be convinced as well, but most won’t be. However, one Republican, Pat Buchanan, thinks they are wrong:

It appears that Hill Republicans will be near unanimous in voting a resolution of rejection of the Iran nuclear deal. They will then vote to override President Obama’s veto of their resolution…

Buchanan goes on to say that, if Republicans override the veto, the US will vote in the UN Security Council to lift sanctions, along with the UK, France, Germany, Russia and China, and:

A…vote to kill the Iran deal would thus leave the US isolated, its government humiliated, unable to comply with the pledges its own secretary of state negotiated. Would Americans cheer the GOP for leaving the United States with egg all over its face?

And if Congress refuses to honor the agreement, but Iran complies with all its terms, who among our friends and allies would stand with an obdurate America then? Israel would applaud, the Saudis perhaps, but who else?

Now, it seems that applause will not include the Gulf States. Here’s Buchanan’s money quote:

And how is Israel, with hundreds of atom bombs, mortally imperiled by a deal that leaves Iran with not a single ounce of bomb-grade uranium?

Word. Another Republican, David Stockman, (former OMB Director for Reagan) had this to say about the deal and its Republican support: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

Indeed, it was the same crowd of Cheney, Wolfowitz, Bolton, Feith et.al. [who]…falsified the WMD claims against Saddam Hussein, [and] have been beating the war drums so loudly about the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program.

Stockman concludes: (emphasis by Stockman)

So it needs to be shouted from the rafters at the outset that all the arm-waving and screeching against this deal by the GOP war-mongers and the Israeli lobby is grounded in a Big Lie. The whole Iran-is-after-the-bomb narrative is just WMD 2.0.

Finally, some clear thinking by a few Republicans on Iran.

The Iraq War was one of the most important and damaging episodes in the history of US foreign policy. And everyone remembers that the war was based on a lie, and that the lie was brought to you by Republicans.

Can Republicans explain why their demand for total capitulation by Iran is so well-suited to creating a winning position for the West? How can these Republicans pretend that nothing has happened over the last 15 years that throws their neo-con, chicken-hawk worldview into question?

It’s fair to ask Republicans who championed the Iraq War to explain the differences between the Iraq WMD debacle and the current situation in Iran. If they are compelled to debate why we should bomb or invade, and how that outcome would be any better than it was in Iraq, the debate over the Iran nuclear deal might turn out not to be much of a debate at all.

Sadly, most Republicans are not thinking clearly regarding Israel vs. Iran. In April, the Wrongologist reported on a Bloomberg poll showing that Republicans think that “patriotism” doesn’t mean they must support America’s interests first when it comes to Israel. From Bloomberg:

Republicans by a ratio of more than 2-to-1 say the US should support Israel even when its stance diverges with American interests…Democrats, by roughly the same ratio, say the opposite is true and that the US must pursue its own interests over Israel’s.

American Republicans said that Israel comes first by a 67/30 margin.

Learn from that, and don’t vote for ANY candidate who says that Israel’s needs come first in the debate about the Iran deal.

Israel Pays to Play

The Hill reports that on Monday, almost every freshman member of the US Congress jetted off on an all-expense paid trip to Israel for a week of briefings and lobbying. This year, the trip is intended to ensure they vote against the Iran nuclear deal.

The junket is an annual affair organized by AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, and just 3 freshman are not going. 67 of the total of 70 are expected to go this year, flying business class and staying at five star hotels. AIPAC’s stated goal is that 80% of any Congress has been on one of its trips to Israel at least once. Among the world’s democracies, it is an unparalleled example of one country’s attempted influence on the political system of another.

The trip is paid for by The American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), the educational wing of AIPAC. According to the National Journal, over the past 14 years, the foundation has spent more than $9.4 million on Congressional travel. There are two separate trips organized along party lines, one for Democrats, and another for Republicans. The Democrats’ trip begins on August 3, and will be led by House Minority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland). The Republican trip begins on August 8, and will be led by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California).

Wouldn’t it be nice if Congress had as much interest in the concerns of America as they apparently have for the concerns of Netanyahu? The ~~bribe~~ visit comes during the 60-day period in which Congress is reviewing the deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program. President Obama has threatened a veto if the GOP-led Congress votes to reject the agreement. That would place the onus on lawmakers to muster enough votes to override the president, and the trip gives Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, a fierce critic of the Iran deal, another chance to make his case directly to lawmakers.

This despite polls showing that 84% of US Jews favor Iran nuclear deal. The trip draws new attention to the fact that just about the ONLY opposition to this deal (discounting oil sheikhdoms) comes from the Republicans and Bibi. It will make it even more obvious that those Congress people who oppose the agreement do so not out of loyalty to their own country, but to Israel. But, a look at 2014 pro-Israel donations to Congress critters shows that Republicans have no monopoly on Israeli money. The data below are from OpenSecrets.org:

This is just what they gave in 2014. When will we demand that our Congress act to benefit Americans before seeking to benefit another country?

Think of the hypocrisy. We send $3.1 billion each year to Israel. Since 1948, we have sent $121 billion in total to them, all paid by taxpayers, most in the form of military assistance. And some of that money comes back in the form of donations to our Congress.

Israel is not our 51st state, yet we’ve sent them our dough rather than using it to repair our roads or to build new bridges at home. We’ve allowed them to meddle in our internal politics, we’ve invited them to disrupt our presidential elections.

Now, we will release Jonathan Pollard on parole after 30 years in prison. Pollard is a spy who stole US defense secrets and gave them to Israel. Pollard will be greeted as a hero in Israel, should he get to leave the US as a condition of his parole. Pollard’s release is dubious because he provided Israel with information during the Cold War that allegedly was then traded to the Soviet Union (reportedly in exchange for allowing Jews to emigrate). Think about it: Our #1 ally sent our secrets to the Soviets?

How long before Americans see the Israeli effort to buy Congress for what it is?

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 26, 2015

Happy Sunday! Americans hate theocracy everywhere but at home. According to the Pew Research Center, 49% of Americans think churches should speak out about political matters, while 48% disagree, reflecting our divided politics. This has changed since 2010, when 52% wanted preachers to stay away from politics, and 43% didn’t.

The new urge to hear their pastors pillory politicians is supported mostly by Republicans. About 63% of Americans still think churches should stop short of endorsing candidates for office (vs. 32% who favor endorsing), but the gap has narrowed since 2010 when it was 70-24%. Moreover, only 29% of Americans see the Democratic Party as friendly to religion, while 47% see the Republicans favoring religion.

So in the most devout parts of the country, Democratic candidates tend to distance themselves from the party’s national stereotype. You will see this again in 2016.

Churches as institutions should be apolitical. And conversely, the political process should not explicitly favor members of certain religions for office. If it is really true that pious people are more honest or ethical, that fact will be clear when individuals are evaluated during the campaigns. On the other hand, nothing is easier to fake than religious faith, precisely because we can’t see into the heart of another person.

While politicians must pander to lobbies or to wealthy individuals that pay for their election campaigns, if they pander to religion, it makes a hole in the fabric of US politics. Having religious organizations directly sponsor political candidates would be so much easier. After all, “God wants you to vote for John Doe” is a pretty irresistible campaign message. Luckily, that isn’t America – yet.

Another week of summer with more Trump, Iran, and killings in Louisiana. Kerry met with the Senate:

Boehner has a strategy for Iran deal:

GOP has to scratch its itch:

Trump also deserves a medal:

Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press

Fugelsang nails it about mass shootings, this time in Louisiana:

The Louisiana gunman’s rage dates back decades. CBS News in Louisiana reported:

A local TV host frequently invited him as a guest, knowing he’d be a lightning rod who could light up the phone lines with rants against abortion and working women…

So he was part of what Donald Trump and Ted Cruz affectionately refer to as “The Base.”

Obamacare: A Success?

Gallup and Healthways 2015 Q2 survey shows that the uninsured rate among US adults aged 18 and older was 11.4% in the second quarter of 2015, down from 11.9% in the first quarter. The uninsured rate has dropped nearly six percentage points since the fourth quarter of 2013, just before the requirement for Americans to carry health insurance took effect. The latest quarterly uninsured rate is the lowest Gallup and Healthways have recorded since daily tracking of this metric began in 2008. The recent Supreme Court ruling in King v. Burwell affirmed the legality of subsidies provided to those obtaining insurance through the Affordable Care Act via a federal or state exchange. Here are Gallup’s findings:

So, a byzantine insurance scheme originally designed by the Heritage Foundation as a way to keep the insurance cartel from suffering too much, now looks like a success, if reducing the numbers of the uninsured was the goal. But, once it went into effect, it became collectivism to Republicans, with the label “Obamacare” as if it had sprung fully formed from the mind of a Kenyan Socialist.

Here is a second data point, the use of subsidies by ACA insured by state:

Why Bloomberg thinks Massachusetts is a red state is unexplainable, despite the fact that it has a Republican governor. But, it does serve to lower the red state average a bit. Poor states use more subsidies. Not exactly a surprise:

• These are the states where workers regularly vote against unions, even when it means job losses as in the case of Volkswagen in Tennessee.
• Where else but in a red state could the US manager of the new Mercedes plant be arrested at a traffic stop as a potential illegal immigrant?
• Where else would they fly a rebel flag 150 years after surrender? Many of these same states also get large federal agricultural subsidies, but that is acceptable, because the subsidies mainly go to wealthy individuals and corporations.

But, almost half of Americans still oppose Obamacare. Failure was inevitable, success inconceivable, and therefore failure must have happened.

Now there is an agreement in principle to the Greek debt crisis after all. Here, as explained in terms of Grease the musical, is your cliff notes version of the situation. You will not be disappointed if you watch:

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can view the video here.

Monday Wake Up Call – July 13, 2015

Today’s wake-up call is for the Eurozone. Despite Wrongo’s generally pessimistic worldview, it was hard to imagine that we’d arrive at the insane juncture we have now reached, that of a Grexit (Greek withdrawal from the Eurozone), but it is all but certain. As this column is written, the Guardian is reporting that a four-page proposal is now circulating in Brussels that indicates that Greece could be offered a ‘temporary’ exit from the Eurozone if it doesn’t agree to a deal with its creditors.

If a Grexit comes to pass, it would be catastrophic, most of all for the Greek 99%. But it should blacken the names of everyone involved, most of all German Prime Minister Merkel. This sorry trajectory is occurring despite the Greek government prostrating itself, offering to meet much more stringent conditions than its voters overwhelmingly rejected in a referendum less than a week ago. Krugman writes that Greek PM Tsipras allowed himself to be convinced, some time ago, that euro exit was impossible. It appears that Syriza (the leading Greek political party) didn’t do any contingency planning for a parallel currency. This has left PM Tsipras in a hopeless bargaining position.

But surrender isn’t enough. There’s a substantial faction of the other Eurozone leaders that want to push Greece out. Germany seems willing to welcome them as the most Southern province of the new German Empire. They are asking for control of $50 billion of pledged Greek assets. This really means control of Greece.

It gives the Eurozone leaders a failed state as an object lesson for the rest of Europe’s near-deadbeats.

Since there are only terrible alternatives at this point, here is a wake up tune for the Eurozone leaders. Perhaps it will help Merkel find a way to offer a less destructive plan to Greece. Perhaps she can remember the debt relief and credit support given to post-Nazi Germany by the Allies, who wrote off 93% of the Nazi era debt in the early 1950s and stretched out the pre-Nazi debt incurred during World War I and the Weimar period well into the 21st century.

Here is our 2nd song of summer, Sheryl Crow’s “Soak Up the Sun”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecW0nSrMEY4

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can see the video here.

Sample Lyrics:
My friend the communist
Holds meetings in his RV
I can’t afford his gas
So I’m stuck here watching TV
I don’t have digital
I don’t have diddly squat…

Your Monday Hot Links:

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft took the first detailed photos of Pluto. The image below was taken on July 9, 2015 from 3.3 million miles away, with a resolution of 17 miles per pixel. It took nine and a half years to get this close, but at this range, Pluto is beginning to reveal the first signs of discrete geologic features:

London has become the money-laundering center of the world’s drug trade. According to an internationally acclaimed crime expert, UK banks and financial services have ignored so-called “know your customer” rules designed to curb criminals’ abilities to launder the proceeds of crime. The National Crime Agency (NCA) states:

We assess that hundreds of billions of US dollars of criminal money almost certainly continue to be laundered through UK banks, including their subsidiaries, each year.

Google’s algorithm shows prestigious job ads to men, but not to women. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University built an app that found that when Google presumed users to be male job seekers, they were much more likely to be shown ads for high-paying executive jobs. Google showed the ads 1,852 times to the male group, but just 318 times to the female group. Well, you know Google’s use of its corporate motto “Don’t Be Evil”, ended in 2012 so this is probably OK.

Utah Valley University creates a ‘texting lane’ for busy staircase:

Good idea? You be the judge.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 12, 2015

In recent years, many on the right talk as if they have inside knowledge of what the Creator wants us to think and do. As reported here last week, we have been arguing about the role of religion in our politics since the founding of the Republic. In 1789, George Washington declared a day of “public thanksgiving and prayer.” 12 years later, Thomas Jefferson abruptly canceled the ritual. The First Amendment, explained Jefferson, erected a “wall of separation between church and state.”

But Jefferson’s contractor failed to make that wall strong enough.

So, Wrongo is adding a book to his summer reading list. It is “One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America” by Kevin Kruse. The book tries to explain the religiosity in our politics. Kruse investigates how the idea of America as a Christian nation was promoted in the 1930s and ’40s when industrialists and business lobbies, chafing against the government regulations of the New Deal, recruited and funded conservative clergy to preach faith, freedom and free enterprise. He says this conflation of Christianity and capitalism moved to center stage under Eisenhower’s watch in the ’50s, when the words “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and the phrase “In God we trust” was inserted on the back of the dollar bill.

This week saw the USA Women’s soccer team take Manhattan, the NYSE go dark, Greece on the verge of going dark, the Confederate flag comes down in Charleston and Trump jumps into the lead in Republican opinion polls.

Women’s soccer is America’s new role model:

Stock Exchange glitch wasn’t explained clearly, so speculation ensued:

South Carolina makes something old new again:

Socratic Method not enough to fix Greek quagmire:

Trump divides Republicans:

And forces a new strategy:

While W keeps rolling along:

The Story Behind Iran’s Nuclear Story

Reuters reported last night that Iran and major powers extended the deadline to negotiate an agreement on the Iranian nuclear program to at least Friday. The comprehensive deal under discussion is aimed at curbing, and reversing in some cases, Iran’s nuclear work for the last decade or more, in exchange for relief from economic sanctions that have slashed Iran’s oil exports and crippled its economy.

It is unclear whether an agreement will be reached, but it is sure that few in Congress will be happy with the outcome, regardless if there is an agreement or not.

It may be useful to remember that Iran’s Nuclear Program was a child of Washington in the first place. It is possible to date the start of Iran’s nuclear program to December 8, 1953, the date that President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered what was later called his Atoms for Peace speech to the UN.

Eisenhower laid out a program to use atomic energy “to provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world.” Under the program, the US would provide research reactors, fuel, and scientific training to developing countries eager to harness the power of the atom.

Among the first countries to take the United States up on its offer was Iran.

In 1957, Tehran and the US signed a nuclear cooperation agreement, called the Cooperation Concerning Civil Uses of Atoms. Two years later, in 1959, the Shah of Iran created a Nuclear Research Center at the University of Tehran, and in 1967, the US delivered a five-megawatt nuclear research reactor and the enriched uranium needed to fuel it. In addition, the Atoms for Peace program offered Iran a chance to study in the US, since they had no homegrown nuclear experts. This lack of nuclear engineers meant that Iran could not use the US-delivered Tehran research reactor for nearly a decade.

Needing nuclear experts, Iran turned to MIT in 1975 to create a special program to provide Iranian experts with scientific and technological training on nuclear energy. This program gave Iran its first group of professional nuclear engineers. The first nuclear reactor that we provided would later be used by Tehran to carry out some of its more controversial work, including some of the country’s earliest experiments with uranium enrichment.

Iran later admitted to using that same reactor in the early 1990s for the production of small amounts of Polonium-210, a radioactive substance that could be used to start a chain reaction inside a nuclear weapon.

Iran signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) in July 1968, on the first day it was opened for signature. Tehran ratified the treaty in 1970, putting it among the first states to do so and on paper, giving it the right to enrich uranium.

It is useful to remember that Israel, the most vocal critic of a nuclear deal with Iran, remains one of just four nuclear capable states (India, Pakistan and North Korea) that have not signed the NPT.

But despite early cooperation, signs of distrust between Washington and Tehran emerged early. Like today, Washington was concerned with Iranian plans to reprocess used (“spent”) nuclear fuel. The separated plutonium from this process can be used to fuel reactors, but also can be used to make nuclear weapons. To make sure nuclear materials were not diverted to making weapons, Mr. Eisenhower proposed establishing a watchdog within the UN. That watchdog would later become the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that we rely on today for nuclear inspections.

Juan Cole reports that, according to declassified national security documents, from 1975 and 1976, Washington opposed Iranian plans to build a nuclear reprocessing facility, and the issue became a major sticking point in negotiations to sell US nuclear power reactors to Iran:

The US used to have a policy of promoting reprocessing because it was a way of recycling useful atoms…But this policy changed right at the end of the Gerald Ford administration and then reinforced by Jimmy Carter…to no longer support, and, in fact, to oppose reprocessing.

Washington’s nuclear cooperation with Iran came to an abrupt halt in 1979, swept away by the Iranian Revolution that ended the rule of the Shah. With the capture of our embassy in Tehran and the holding of American hostages for 444 days, all formal ties between Washington and Tehran were cut off until the start of the current nuclear negotiations.

Atoms for Peace provided Iran with a foundation for its nuclear program. It offered both key technologies along with education in nuclear engineering and physics. The program clearly helped Iran move up the nuclear learning curve.

Now, the question is, can Secretary of State Kerry put the toothpaste back in the tube?

Sectarian Divide Could Destroy Iraq

Yesterday we explained that, although Kurds are Sunnis, they fight ISIS, which is a Sunni movement. Today, we look at an example of how the Sunni-Shia divide elsewhere in Iraq seems deep enough that it might never be resolved.

The Wall Street Journal has a report on the efforts to resettle Sunnis into areas that were held by ISIS and liberated by Shia: (brackets and editing by the Wrongologist)

ISIS was driven out of Mohamad Mutlaq’s hometown in central Iraq six months ago, and since then, he and his family have tried every few days to…go home. But…each time [Sunnis] approach a bridge to cross back into the town of Yathrib, Shiite tribesmen at a checkpoint beat the Sunni refugees, saying: “Don’t even try to come back…”

The WSJ calls Yathrib a failure in Iraq’s efforts to repopulate ISIS-held Sunni areas, and it points to Tikrit as a success. Tikrit was recaptured from ISIS three months ago, and it is now at the center of a government campaign to rebuild and repopulate the area. But, the challenges are huge:

Tikrit and Yathrib, both in Salahudeen province, illustrate the challenges Iraq faces in trying to resettle…nearly three million displaced people in areas recaptured from ISIS.

Most towns and villages retaken from ISIS remain largely unpopulated as the government struggles to build a process that will return residents to their home towns. Security preparations, mine clearing and infrastructure rebuilding contribute to delays. Yathrib has been empty for six months since its 60,000 people fled ISIS. From the WSJ:

Instead, they couldn’t get past the checkpoint run by a Shiite tribe known as Bani Saad. An Iraqi army unit and three Shiite militias are posted inside the town, but there is little sign of any reconstruction.

When WSJ visited, they saw pockmarked walls of empty homes. Acres of grape vineyards have gone unattended for months. The ceilings of most houses leading into Yathrib are completely collapsed, suggesting they were blown up with improvised explosive devices. Yathrib residents and tribal leaders say Shiite militias aided by the town’s Shiite neighbors have blown up some buildings, while members of the Shiite militia stationed in the town say ISIS fighters blew up the buildings before retreating:

Residents of Yathrib and its neighboring Shiite hamlets are descendants of the same tribe, split into Sunni and Shiite branches. Shiite tribal leaders accuse their Sunni brethren of enabling ISIS to stage attacks against them from the town last summer. They have demanded their Sunni neighbors be allowed to return only on certain conditions.

The neighboring Shiite tribes suggest punitive measures for Sunni Yathrib residents. They included blood money payments, buffer zones between the town and its Shiite neighbors, and even a separate water supply. The Sunni and Shiite areas would report to separate local administrations.

Some of Yathrib’s Sunnis acknowledge they supported ISIS but refuse to apologize for it. The Shiite leader whose tribesmen guard one crossing into Yathrib, said his tribe would accept only blood money paid by the Sunni tribes themselves, not the government, saying:

If the government brings back the people of Yathrib without meeting our conditions, we are going to kill them all.

Tikrit is a different story. Last week, there was an orderly return of 1,400 families to Tikrit, a fraction of the 160,000 people originally displaced from the city.

Iraq’s government claims the return of Tikrit residents is an example of Sunni cooperation with the Shiite-majority militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces. Those forces led battles across Salahudeen province, and now are in charge of the repopulation effort. The plans for the orderly return of the population took months to get established, and local Sunni tribes that joined Shiite militias to fight ISIS have helped those militias and local officials set up an elaborate screening process. From the WSJ:

Other tensions remain. Sunni policemen stationed around Tikrit said some Shiite militiamen have refused to withdraw from the city despite government orders. In the city itself, they remain an intimidating presence, where residents complain their homes have been searched aggressively and some stores have been looted.

The Obama administration knows that the resettlement process is a make or break issue. If there isn’t a broader and successful reconciliation in Iraq, efforts to beat back ISIS will fail.

Yugoslavia went through the same thing after Tito’s death. There the conflicts were between Christians and Christians and Muslims.

The result was the creation of new nation-states organized largely around religion.

If it was ok for Yugoslavia, why not for Iraq?

A State for the Kurds?

The Kurds are on the verge of creating a homeland of their own, despite Iraq and US efforts to avoid it. If they do, the Middle East may never be the same. The Wall Street Journal had an interesting report about the possibility of an independent Kurdish state:

Amid an imploding Middle East ravaged by religious hatreds, the Kurds are providing a rare bright spot—and their success story is finding fresh support and sympathy in the West. By contrast with the rest of the region, all the main Kurdish movements today are broadly pro-Western and secular.

There are 30 million Kurds in the ME and only 4.5-6 million live in Iraq. Their language, Kurdish, is part of the Indo-European family of languages—close to Persian (Farsi) but unrelated to Arabic or Turkish.

Unlike Iranians, who are mostly Shiite Muslims, most Kurds are Sunnis. Despite that, they are confronting the Sunni ISIS, and the Shiite-supported Syrians.

Here is a map of the potential Kurdish state:

In Iraq, the autonomous Kurdish Regional Government, (KRG), was adopted by the new Iraqi constitution after the US invasion. Kurds control their own affairs. This has allowed the Kurds to achieve a boom in investment and construction that has produced new highways, hotels and shopping malls.

The Kurdistan government in northern Iraq maintains its own armed forces, known as the Peshmerga (literally, “those who confront death”), and no Iraqi troops are allowed in the region. The KRG controls its own borders, and Westerners can fly into the region’s capital, Erbil, without a visa. Kurdish is used everywhere as the official language, and few young Iraqi Kurds can speak fluent Arabic.

Yet, political divisions hamper the Kurds’ fight against ISIS, and their prospects for self-rule. Only a minority of Peshmerga brigades on the front lines are under KRG command, while the rest still report directly to one of the two rival political parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party or the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

From a regional perspective, Iran has a significant Kurdish minority that it has suppressed in the past. Now, it is strengthening ties with the KRG, since Iran views the KRG as an ally in the fight against ISIS.

In Syria, the civil war has enabled Kurds to set up a wide area of self-administration in the northeast of the country, eliminating the border between Syrian and Iraqi Kurds, who now travel back and forth across it without visas.

And in Turkey, decades of outright denial of the existence of Kurds, (they called Kurds “Mountain Turks”) led to a bloody war between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. The fighting ended only after a cease-fire was proclaimed in March 2013. The PKK was once an ally of the Assad regime, and is still classified as a terrorist group by the US and Turkey.

But, in the just-concluded Turkish elections, Kurds voted for the Kurdish People’s Democratic Party, or HDP, which won 13% of the national vote and gained 86 seats in the Turkish parliament. The Kurds demonstrated they can serve as check against the anti-democratic aspirations of Turkey’s President Erdogan.

But neither the Iraqis nor the US want an independent Kurdistan, despite the possibility that Kurdistan as an independent state would be a buffer against the expansion of ISIS. They act as a “Northern Front” in the war against ISIS, and ISIS will be forced to commit resources to the area, as demonstrated by the Kurds seizing the crucial border crossing, Tal Abyad, cutting ISIS supply lines and uniting Kurdish areas that now stretch from Iraq halfway to the Mediterranean Sea.

Yes, an independent Kurdistan would mean the “fragmenting” of Iraq, which Mr. Obama does not support. But Iraq was never a real country; it was cobbled together after WW1 by European bureaucrats drawing arbitrary lines on a map, with no thought to historical or cultural realities. Like Humpty Dumpty, no one knows how to put those historical anomalies “Syria” and “Iraq” back together again. They’re going to be a mess for a while.

The Kurds are different. They have the makings of a state − an area that enjoys the allegiance of its people, has civil order that allows it to raise taxes and create an effective army. It is doubtful that the US will formally recognize a Kurdish state anytime soon, but the ME is a place where that is irrelevant.

No need to recognize the Kurds as a state, just treat them like one. Buy their oil (as Israel does), and give them weapons and humanitarian aid.

They may richly repay the investment.

Turkey’s March Towards an Islamist Presidency Stalls

Results from Turkey’s parliamentary elections Sunday show that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP party lost its majority in Parliament.

With 99.9+% percent of the vote counted, Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) garnered the support of 41% of voters. That would give it some 258 seats – 18 below the minimum needed to keep its majority. In 2011, the AK Party received 49% of the vote, 8 points higher than in 2015. This is the first time the AKP fell short of a majority since it came into power in 2002.

The election was widely perceived as a referendum on Erdogan’s plan to change the Turkish constitution in order to grant himself sweeping, unprecedented presidential powers. Because Erdogan’s record shows tendencies toward authoritarianism, many observers in Turkey and outside believed that his proposed constitutional amendments would not just change the structure of Turkish democracy, but pose an existential threat to it.

Erdogan began the campaign asking voters for 400 seats, which would have allowed the party to change the role of the presidency unilaterally. The AK Party needed 330 seats of the total 550 to call for a national referendum to change the constitution, but they stalled at 258, so that will lead to a coalition government, and no immediate ability to change the Turkish constitution.

The Kurdish HDP, now the first Kurdish party ever to be seated in Turkey’s parliament, won 80 seats. Most westerners like the Kurds, for their resistance around Mosul in Iraq and around Kobani in Syria. They also support women’s rights and gay rights. Kurds are the Muslims who are closest to western values. From BBC: Who are the HDP?

• The HDP was founded as a pro-Kurdish party in 2012
• There are 15million Kurds in Turkey, 20% of the population
• It had the only openly gay candidate in Turkey’s elections
• A higher proportion of women ran for the HDP than any other party

Here is an election results map from the Daily Hurriyet:

Voter turnout was 85%. The map shows the AKP in orange, the CHP party in red and the HDP in purple. It is clear that the HDP made its gains in southeast Turkey, the area most at risk in the ISIS and Syrian uprisings. HDP leader Selahattin Demirtas called his party’s showing:

A fabulous victory for peace and freedoms…As of now the discussions on a presidential system, a dictatorship, has come to an end

The Daily Star reported on the dilemma Erdogan faces. Under the current constitution, the president position (that Erdogan now holds) has limited powers. He campaigned to change the constitution, but the election’s result could leave Erdogan stranded in the presidency without the powers he sought. Bottom line: While Erdogan’s plan for Islamic presidentialism has been defeated, the AKP is still in control of Turkish politics — and likely will remain that way for a long time.

The reasons for the loss seem mostly driven by the Turkish economy and Erdogan’s policies on Syria. For the past decade or so, the AKP has ridden high on a dynamic record of promoting economic growth. But recently, the economy has been slowing down. The Turkish lira has lost considerable value, the economy has not grown anywhere near the rate that it had in the past, and there are worries about an economic collapse. And many were afraid of Erdogan’s plan for deepening Turkish involvement in Syria, Iraq and the greater Middle East.

Today, Erdogan is a wounded politician, and the AKP is weakened. This will lead to infighting within the AKP and maybe even a split of the party into several factions. In all this result will likely leave less capacity in Turkey for adventures in Syria and Egypt, or with ISIS and the AL-Qaeda affiliated Al-Nusra front.

As the Guardian said:

None of the four parties in the new parliament are able to form a single-party government, meaning Turkey is entering a period of volatility. Erdogan approaches politics as a binary contest between winners and losers in which the decisive aim is to secure a majority. On Sunday he lost…

The country had been sliding into an Islamic autocracy under the guise of democracy, but the Turkish electorate have called a halt to that.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: ForeignPolicy