The democracy of the street – which 16 months ago led to the overthrow of Egypt’s longstanding president Hosni Mubarak – is claiming the same kind of people’s victory in the overthrow of president Mohamed Morsi.

There are similarities. Like in 2011, the military’s move against the sitting president was calculated as a response to massive popular protests – the military then and now claim to be operating on behalf of the Egyptian people. In 2011 people in Tahrir Square reached out with flowers to soldiers climbing down from their tanks. Yesterday the throngs crowding Tahrir Square cheered the military helicopters flying over the square.

But there are serious differences, and major dangers. This time, the sitting president was not a US-backed military dictator kept in power by US funding and political support. This time, the deposed president was Egypt’s first democratically and popularly elected president in several generations. This time, when the military deployed armoured personnel carriers in the streets of certain neighbourhoods of Cairo, it was only, apparently, in areas known as strongholds of former president Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood-based party he represents.

Whether or not the military’s removal of the president constitutes a coup, the removal of a president by force, by the military, doesn’t bode well for Egypt’s fragile, incomplete and already flawed democracy. Where has that ever succeeded? For people’s movements, the take-over by the military of implementation of the street’s demand that Morsi must go, doesn’t bode well for the future of that movement. Things remain very fraught.

Certainly the military did some things right. The announcement by General al-Sisi, the army commander, of the military’s ‘roadmap’ for the post-Morsi period, was quickly followed by statements of agreement and support for the military by a broadly representative group of leaders of key Egyptian constituencies. They included the head of the Coptic (Christian) church in Egypt; the imam of Al-Ahzar, the thousand-year-old institution known as the center of Islamic thought in Egypt; Mohamed el-Baradei, the leader of one of the largest opposition movements and former head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency; and crucially, a spokesperson for the youth-led Tamarod, or Rebel, movement that had initiated the call for these recent days’ protests. Even the al-Nour party, rooted in Egypt’s most extreme Salafi movements, which had been Morsi’s key coalition partner, participated in the parade of voices heralding the new military-led post-Morsi order.

Representing the revolution?

General al-Sisi called for a technocratic cabinet to be formed, to govern the country and to review the constitution, which he suspended. He said there would be a new election law drafted for parliamentary elections, and that an ‘ethical charter’ would be drafted to guarantee freedom of expression and free media. And he said that all measures would be taken ‘to empower the youth to take part in state institutions and to be key players in the process.’ The general claimed that the military does not want to play a political role or to rule Egypt – and on some level that’s probably true. But of course the military said that last time too, and yet continued to rule (quite brutally, by all accounts) for more than another year until Morsi managed to send them back to their barracks.

He said that the military was responding to the Egyptian people’s ‘call for help’, and that he did not intend to hold on to the reins of power but to ‘make good the demands of the revolution’. The roadmap included anointing the chief justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court as interim president, with the power to rule by decree. But the Constitutional Court is hardly an independent institution, let alone one representing the revolutionary process that began in Tahrir Square in 2011. Every judge in that court was appointed by the Mubarak regime; Adly Mansour, the chief judge and now interim president, has been on the court since 1992, and while he was chosen chief justice only a couple of months ago, he remains a hold-over from the Mubarak dictatorship – hardly a representative of ‘the revolution’.

President Morsi had made huge mistakes. Not only did he fail (as almost any new president taking power after decades of dictatorship and entrenched neoliberal economic catastrophe would have failed) to improve the lives of ordinary Egyptians with jobs, electricity, water, security, etc., but Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood that backed his party moved to strengthen the Brotherhood’s power and influence across Egyptian politics. Moves away from women’s rights and towards more conservative Islamist-oriented rules began to emerge. He consolidated his own power, rewriting key constitutional provisions while the Mubarak-era judges undermined the elected parliament. The democracy – the real democracy, not simply the election – fought for in Tahrir Square remained largely out of reach of the citizens of Egypt.

So the breadth of the anti-Morsi protests was understandable, and the mobilisation of recent months incredibly impressive. The Tamarod movement, led by an informal group of young activists, captured the increasing anger with an unprecedented petition campaign calling for Morsi to step down – exaggerated or not, the iconic claim is that they achieved 22 million signatures.

Threats of violence

But what happens now? The military is once again the centre of power in Egypt. Armoured personnel carriers are once again visible on the streets. Morsi’s whereabouts are unknown, although he is rumoured to be in the Cairo headquarters of the Republican Guards – whether he is free to leave is unclear. There are reports of 300 warrants having been issued for the arrest of Muslim Brotherhood activists.

What will happen if the supporters of former President Morsi, supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and its political party, remain in the streets? The pro-Morsi demonstrations were way smaller than those calling for his ouster; but there are still hundreds of thousands in the squares. The students at Cairo University, known as a pro-Morsi stronghold, are outraged at the APCs surrounding their campus. The threat of violence remains sky-high. At the main pro-Morsi mobilisation site in Cairo’s Nasr City, Morsi managed to get a message to the crowd via a scratchy cell phone. The song that followed his cri du Coeur that he would never step down, was a well-known Egyptian militant song whose refrain says something like ‘keep your weapons close’. Egypt remains as polarized as perhaps any country but Syria in the entire region – the threat of civil war is not out of the question.

And beyond the threat of violence in the streets, having the military in control means that US influence is much greater – because the Egyptian military is thoroughly dependent on the US for economic support and access to weapons. After the overthrow of Mubarak, the US promised around a billion dollars in economic and development aid for the ‘new Egypt.’ But less than a quarter of that has actually been sent. On the other hand, the $1.3 billion the Egyptian military receives in US tax dollars every year has continued to flow in full and on time. (It’s not clear whether military aid to Egypt even faced any sequester-based reduction, since the Pentagon has a lot more flexibility in its accounts than domestic programs do.) Eighty percent of all Egyptian arms purchases are enabled by US tax dollars, and the US (along with the UK on a much smaller scale) continues to provide training for the Egyptian officer corps. However they choose to use it, the Obama administration and the Pentagon hold enormous potential capacity to influence the military’s trajectory. And that too bodes badly for the Egyptian people’s ability to realize the goals of what they still call their revolution.

It remains unclear what the impact of Morsi’s overthrow will be in the region. Certainly Morsi’s recent move towards a stronger level of support for the Syrian rebel opposition, and parallel consolidation of his government’s ties with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar in the context of the regionalization of the Syrian civil war, fueled his opponents’ anger. He was perceived as pulling Egypt further into not only a regional war, but a sectarian one as well, and Christian, secular and even many Muslim Egyptians were not happy. What role, if any, the military and the military-backed interim government will play in Syria remains unclear.

Coups and intervention

For those of us in the US, the most important point should be to stop greater US intervention in Egypt. As it did in 2011, the Obama administration is vacillating on its Egypt position. As the Washington Post described it, ‘Just two weeks ago, the US ambassador in Cairo said Washington supported the Muslim Brotherhood-led government and felt it would be unwise for Egyptians to think ‘street action will produce better results than elections.’ After voicing support for Morsi, the Obama administration appeared to distance itself from him this week. Hours before Egypt’s generals announced that they were appointing a temporary government to replace Mohamed Morsi, however, US officials signalled that they understood and shared the concerns that sparked a rebellion against the Islamist leader.’

Part of the reason US officials will likely resist identifying the military’s action as a coup is that officially, if not always in practice, coups have consequences in US foreign policy. US law prohibits sending aid to a government which comes to power by removing an elected government by force. We can expect to hear a lot of synonyms, and not too many overt uses of the word ‘coup’. For the moment, US military aid will probably continue to flow – the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff implied that it would be how the military runs things, not the act of removing an elected leader, that will determine Washington’s position. ‘At the end of the day it’s their country and they will find their way,’ General Dempsey said, ‘but there will consequences if it is badly handled.’

For now, our main hope should be for a tamping down of the violence, and a rapid end to military governance. Egyptian society had been divided almost down the middle between supporters and opponents of Morsi, although the recent protests may well indicate that even many of his supporters, disillusioned, have moved to the other side. But there is no question that there are many people on both sides, this is not ‘the people’ against ‘the dictator,’ or even ‘the people and the army’ against ‘the dictator’. The revolutionary process that began in Tahrir Square has transformed Egypt in many ways – but it was an incomplete revolution. For now at least, it still is.

Syria – and the Middle East – are in serious trouble. Pressures on the Obama administration to engage even more directly in Syria, establishing a ‘no-fly’ zone, creating ‘safe corridors’ for the rebel forces, sending heavy weapons to the US-identified ‘good guys’ among the rebels, training even more than the 200 CIA agents in Jordan are training now, even direct air strikes on Syrian targets… all are on the wish list of the We-Want-To-Attack-Syria-And-We-Want-You-To-Do-It-Now caucus.

Most, though not all, of the calls for intervention come from the same people who led the calls for invading Iraq – neo-cons and other hard-line militarists, pundits and Congressmembers, mainly Republicans but plenty of Democrats too, including the ‘humanitarian hawks’, those who never saw a human rights crisis that didn’t require US military involvement to solve. The long-standing Republican supporter of US military action in Syria, Senator John McCain, made a highly-publicised visit to rebel-held territory inside Syria, accompanied by top leaders of the fractious rebel alliance. His trip appears timed directly to scuttle any potential for Washington’s and Moscow’s efforts to establish the new peace conference for Syria.

The drumbeat is spreading, and it’s not only from Republicans. Former New York Times editor Bill Keller, reprising his 2003 ‘reluctant’ support for the Iraq war, once again supports US armed intervention in Syria. What does he think will be better in this war? Well this time, unlike Iraq ten years ago he claims, Syria represents a ‘genuine, imperiled national interest, not just a fabricated one. A failed Syria creates another haven for terrorists, a danger to neighbors who are all American allies, and the threat of metastasizing Sunni-Shiite sectarian war across a volatile and vital region.’

Guess Keller hasn’t looked very carefully at Iraq today. His point about what happens if Syria collapses is true (despite his leaving out the far more dire impact on the Syrian people), but he ignores the crucial point that his description of a future failed Syria if we don’t intervene, matches precisely what exists today in Iraq – as a direct result of US intervention. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the exploding Sunni-Shi’a violence across Iraq and over the borders into Syria among other places – today’s post-intervention Iraq is precisely what Keller warns of if the US doesn’t join the Syrian civil war. He didn’t look at Lebanon, where the already-shaky confessional system French colonialists imposed in the 1930s is under renewed strain from the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees pouring into the country, as well as the political-military pressure of the Syrian civil war itself. He didn’t look at Jordan, where more than 500,000 Syrian refugees have stretched the country’s social fabric to a near-breaking point.

The failure of militarism

What neither side of the Washington debate have considered is that the escalating crisis in the Middle East is taking place in the context of the significant decline of US power and influence. With US economic and diplomatic power reduced, military force remains the one arena in which the US is the indisputable champ. But even the $800 billion annual US military budget no longer determines history by itself. The US-Nato campaign in Libya was partly, though not entirely, an attempt to remilitarise problem-solving in the region and thus re-legitimise US centrality. But it failed.
What the civil war in Syria and the Arab Spring have exposed is that the massive political and social transformation and real regime change underway in the region is led by people themselves – largely without military force and certainly with no role for the United States. US military involvement serves only to escalate the destruction, while distracting from other failures. The people on the ground engaged in those political struggles don’t want US military intervention; the only ones who benefit are the arms manufacturers whose CEOs and shareholders continue to reap billions of blood dollars in profit.
War hurts civilians, but US wars generally hurt and kill civilians far from the US – so direct consequences remain far from US public consciousness. The problem for US policymakers is that an arms embargo also hurts their key campaign contributors: the arms dealers. The US remains the largest arms exporter in the world; can anyone doubt that sending US arms to one side of Syria’s civil war (even, or especially, if it extends the war) helps justify things like the pending $10 billion arms deal to Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE? Or that instability in Syria, whatever its cause, can only help reinforce calls for increasing the existing $30 billion ten-year commitment of US military aid to Israel? No wonder the international Arms Trade Treaty – not to mention any potential for global gun control – remain so far from Washington’s agenda.
There is also the problem of the fundamental illegality of any US military escalation. The only two ways a military attack – including establishing a no-fly zone – by one country against another can be legal is in response to a UN Security Council authorization, which does not exist and is not likely, or in the case of immediate self-defense. And there is no way even the most hawkish warmongers in the US can claim that Syria’s civil war represents that kind of immediate national threat to the United States. Any US attack – with or without a Congressional mandate (which unfortunately would be all too likely forthcoming if requested) – would still be a violation of international law.
That is also the case for Israel’s attacks on Syria, whether or not weapons arriving in Syria may be headed for Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel’s position has wavered – until the recent strikes it had not been leading the charge against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, nor urging the US to escalate its involvement in Syria for the simple reason that Assad’s regime, like that of his father from 1970 till 2000, has been very helpful to Israel. Despite all the puffed up rhetoric about Syria as part of a regional ‘axis of resistance’, the Assad family has largely kept the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights pacified, the border quiet, and the Palestinians in Syria under tight control. Instances of cross-border violence were short-lived and rare.
It should not be forgotten that the Assad regimes have also been very useful to the United States. In 1991 Hafez al-Assad sent his air force to join Bush Senior’s Operation Desert Storm attack on Iraq. By 2002 Bashar al-Assad was a partner in Bush Junior’s ‘extraordinary rendition’ program of the global war on terror – accepting prisoners at the request of the US, including Canadian Maher Arar, for interrogation and torture at the hands of Syria’s feared security police.

So now what?

The first thing is to de-escalate the fighting – to staunch the horrific bloodletting that Syria’s civil war is creating for the Syrian people. That means stopping the arms shipments to all sides. That means negotiating directly with Russia, on a quid pro quo agreement to stop US and allied training and arms shipments to the rebels and re-establishing the EU ban on weapons to the rebels, in return for an end to Russian and allied arms shipments to the Syrian government.

Plans for a diplomatic conference under United Nations auspices must go forward, with more pressure on both sides from their respective sponsors to participate. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov described a joint US-Russian commitment, ‘to use the possibilities that the US and Russia have to bring both the Syrian government and the opposition to the negotiating table.’ That’s an important start. Those negotiations will have to include the government of Syria, the armed rebels, and the still-struggling non-violent democratic opposition movement that first launched the Syrian spring more than two years ago. To bring the sides to the table, all the regional players and the parties’ strategic backers will have to be involved as well – Iran as well as Russia, and France and Britain, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar alongside the US, will all have to play a role to push their recalcitrant allies to negotiate. That’s the context within which a Syrian arms embargo would really begin to mean something.
The US, Europe and the wealthy Gulf states should also take more responsibility for funding the cost of caring for the millions of Syrian refugees and internally displaced. The UN’s humanitarian funding appeals for Syria remain seriously under-resourced – yet too many ‘humanitarians’ continue to debate only military action.
None of this will be easy. But proposing military escalation as a response to fuzzy, uncertain allegations of chemical weapons, or imposing a no-fly zone because Israel attacked Syria, let alone threatening military force to overthrow a regime, is a far too dangerous road. We’ve been there before. Sixty-six percent of Americans oppose greater US military involvement. There’s no great eagerness from the White House. But President Obama, under pressure from London and Paris as well as US neo-cons, has yet to clearly reject the possibility.
That puts the obligation squarely on our shoulders. We need to take responsibility as people, as civil society, as social movements to raise the political costs of a new war in the Middle East so high, that it stays off the table for good.

Ferocious debates were held on the role of Islam in this renewed society, the liberation of women and sexuality, imperialism and trade unionism – not to mention debates which got completely out of hand on Western Sahara and Syria. At any point on any day, half a dozen impromptu demonstrations were held on a variety of subjects, mostly to the sound of revolutionary hip hop.

The forum was plastered with pictures of anti-imperialist ‘heroes’, some more savoury than others. Pride of place was taken by Chokri Belaid, the left-wing opposition leader assassinated only weeks before the forum was held. Belaid pulled together a range of parties and factions into the Popular Front and gave many activists here hope in a radical future government.

The fundamentalist Islamic Salafist group also made an appearance to argue their case against the secular radicals. Among the more unusual stalls were those of the Iranian government, Brazilian oil company Petrobras and USAID (the latter left rather quickly after a demonstration against them).

In the youth space – constructed of tents previously donated by the UN – three stages played host to a range a music, from electronic Arabic folk to three self-conscious looking teenagers playing alternative rock covers (with pretty good guitar work).

Alive with ideas

For all of Tunis’ laid back, French ambience – a world away from the noise, pollution and confusion of Cairo – Tunisia’s youth are alive with ideas, and don’t fit neatly into any expectations you might have of them.

For debt activists, Tunisia has particular interest, owing to its national assembly’s decision to audit the debts run up under dictator Ben Ali. This is a direct challenge to France and the IMF, eager to make new loans to the government to allow it to repay and recycle the odious debt of the past, and use these new loans to impose economic conditions on Tunisia. An IMF package is believed to be in the final stages of being discussed – a debt audit provides the first step in a very different direction.

The politics of the potential audit are made all the more exciting by the offer of help from Ecuador, the country which held the first official debt audit in the world and used the audit to declare its debt illegitimate and secure a multi-billion dollar write-off. Ecuador’s government has recently declared another audit, of its investment treaties which often act as ‘corporate rights’ charters, preventing the government interfering in the profit-making of transnational corporations in order to protect peoples’ rights.

For Tunisia to follow some of Ecuador’s policies would be a real nail in the coffin of neoliberal economics. It would also be a blow to the French government, already smarting at Tunisia’s refusal to allow its airspace to be used for the French war in Mali. But nothing is certain here. Many activists express real frustration that things have not moved faster.

Rethinking and updating

By contrast with the Tunisian energy, the ‘non-Tunisian’ World Social Forum (the bit of the event where many European, Latin American and Asian activists spent much of their time) felt bland and well past its sell by date. Geographically somewhat separated from the area where most Magreb issues were discussed (a problem created by the organisers), the space was more like a giant policy seminar than the vibrant coming together of activists and groups intended.

The World Social Forum was initiated in 2001, an expression of the anti-globalisation movement – which brought unaccountable institutions of global ‘government’ like the IMF and WTO into the mainstream of protest – as a way of bringing people together to forge new alliances and strategies for change.

Today, too many sessions are dominated by the same speakers who have been making the same speeches for 15 years, with little progress made on reaching out to new movements and building comprehensive alternatives, despite a constant refrain that ‘we need to better connect up’ our issues and organisations. Even within the international section, language and national groups often stuck together. One astonishing meeting looking at the European Central Bank was dominated by German activists who didn’t even mention the crisis in Greece.

The World Social Forum was formed long before the movements of the Indignados or Occupy, with their focus on participative decision-making and ‘taking politics to public spaces’. Probably the best aspect of this WSF was the handing over of an outside space to a group of international activists from Occupy and the Indignados, working with local groups, as the Global Squares Movement.

Starting off as a European hub, the space became more and more Tunisian, eventually moving to the centre of town where an assembly of thousands of people came together, the vast majority of contributions being in Arabic.

During the lifetime of the World Social Forum, very significant victories have been won by the networks formed and nurtured here. The World Trade Organisation and the Free Trade Area of the Americas were stopped in their tracks. Food sovereignty and a ban on genetic modification are now enshrined in many countries constitutions. The right to water and the rights of peasants are now recognised by the UN.

Yet despite these victories, we face a mountain of injustice, with crises of the environment, of the economy, of militarism and war, in many ways worse than they were 15 years ago. As new revolutions bring a new generation of activists into the global justice movement, the WSF needs a major rethink to equip it for these challenges. More focus on participation, on planning, on open spaces, on genuine learning rather than regurgitating truisms. At a national level there needs to be a better way of ensuring new activists can come and take control of the forum – a limit on how often any one individual can attend would make an interesting guideline.

Activists should look forward to the continuing of the revolution in Tunisia and the start of the revolution in the World Social Forum.

Who’s who in the Syrian uprising

The regime
Power is largely concentrated in the extended Assad family and broader Alawite community, while political leadership is closely interconnected with top military command and mukhabarat (secret police). The regime also maintains support from key business and banking powers in Syria, especially in Damascus and Aleppo. It has political support and some military assistance from Iran. Recent expressions of political support have come from the ALBA countries of Latin America (Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Venezuela) in the context of US and other western threats. It has key military and commercial ties with Russia.
The original nonviolent opposition
Broad and diverse, secular and faith based, many activists came together in new informal coalitions that bypassed older, more staid organisations. They remain opposed to arming the opposition and especially to outside military intervention. These activists were the primary force of the early uprising but had less visibility as the regime suppressed protests, international media were largely excluded and internal independent media focused primarily on attacks on civilians.
Public mobilisations, including but not limited to street protests, appear to be increasing again, especially in Damascus and Aleppo, once relative strongholds of regime support. In April a young woman stood alone outside the parliament in Damascus with a banner that read ‘Stop the killing, we want to build a homeland for all Syrians.’ Islamist forces are among those involved in the nonviolent opposition, including long-time Syrian nonviolent leader Sheikh Jawad Said.
The nonviolent opposition also includes the National Coordination Committee, made up of 13 political parties, including some leftist forces, and independent, mainly secular activists. Their leader, Hussein Abdul Azim, has said: ‘We reject foreign intervention – we think it is as dangerous as tyranny. We reject both.’ They do, however, support economic sanctions and diplomatic pressure. The NCC does not call for overthrowing the regime but for a national dialogue – conditional on the pullback of military forces from the streets, ending attacks on peaceful protests and release of all political prisoners. Some in the NCC have called for trying to replace the Syrian National Council (see below) as the recognised representative of the Syrian opposition.
The internal Syrian armed opposition
Originally based on military defectors who created the Free Syrian Army, the armed opposition morphed into assorted militias using the FSA name, but with little central coordination; it includes both defectors and armed civilians. FSA leaders have admitted they are not in control of the proliferation of groups of armed civilians operating under the FSA name. The number of soldiers reported killed has escalated recently, as have reports of direct fights between regime soldiers and armed opposition groups. Heavier weapons appear to be arriving from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Turkey is providing logistical support and the US is supplying ‘non-lethal’ military equipment, including night-vision goggles and GPS gear.
The internal/external supporters of the armed opposition
Grouped primarily in the Syrian National Council (SNC), the supporters of the armed opposition call explicitly for the overthrow of the regime. They include the Muslim Brotherhood (probably the most organised group), local coordination committees (grassroots activist groups inside Syria), Kurdish factions and others, including exile factions. The SNC originally claimed to defend the nonviolent nature of the uprising but later called for a coordinating role over armed factions inside Syria and control of all weapons going in. The FSA rejects this and says it wants weapons supplied directly. At least some SNC leaders are calling for outside military assistance. The SNC recently asked individual countries to provide the Syrian opposition with ‘military advisers, training and provision of arms to defend themselves’.
Very diverse politically, both secular and Islamist, the SNC has had continuing problems with achieving enough unity to engage with international forces. There are consistent disagreements over Islamist influence. Despite divisions, uncertain leadership and questionable levels of support from inside Syria, the SNC has been adopted by western (US, parts of EU) and Arab Gulf (Saudi, Qatar) governments and to some degree Turkey. US secretary of state Hillary Clinton has said: ‘They will have a seat at the table as a representative of the Syrian people.’
Non-Syrian armed forces
Outside forces, including from international Islamist fighting groups, appear to be arriving to fight in Syria. Goals unclear, could include opposition to Alawite/Shia government (Alawites considered an off-shoot of Shia Islam, and thus heretical to some extremist Sunni fundamentalists), and/or efforts to create chaos through military attacks resulting in power vacuums they might hope to fill.

Here we go again with the Iran hysteria. It is tempting to think this time will be just like previous periods of sabre rattling against Iran. But there are significant new dangers. The Arab Spring, Israel’s position, changes in the regional and global balance of forces, and national election campaigns, all point to this round of anti-Iranian hysteria posing potentially graver risks than five or six years ago.

We have seen all this before. The US ratchets up its rhetoric, Israel threatens a military attack, escalating sanctions bite harder on the Iranian people, Iran refuses to back down on uranium enrichment. But at the same time, top US military and intelligence officials actually admit Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, is not building a nuclear weapon, and has not decided whether to even begin a building process.

In 2004 Israel’s prime minister denounced the international community for not doing enough to stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon. In 2005 the Israeli military was reported to ‘be ready by the end of March for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran’. In 2006 the US House Armed Services Committee issued a report drafted by one congressional staffer (an aide to hard-line pro-war John Bolton, then US ambassador to the UN), claiming that Iran was enriching uranium to weapons-grade 90 per cent. That same year a different Israeli prime minister publicly threatened a military strike against Iran. In 2008, George W Bush visited Israel to reassure them that ‘all options’ remained on the table.

The earlier crisis saw a very similar gap between the demonisation, sanctions, threats of military strikes against Iran, and the seemingly contradictory recognition by US, Israeli, United Nations and other military and intelligence officials that Iran actually did not possess nuclear weapons, a nuclear weapons programme, or even a decision to try to develop nuclear weapons.

The 2005 US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) determined that even if Iran decided it wanted to make a nuclear weapon, it was unlikely before five to ten years, and that producing enough fissile material would be impossible even in five years unless Iran achieved ‘more rapid and successful progress’ than it had so far. By 2007, a new NIE had pulled back even further, asserting ‘with high confidence that in fall 2003 Tehran halted its nuclear weapons programme … Tehran had not started its nuclear weapons programme as of mid-2007’. The NIE even admitted ‘we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons’. That made the dire threats against Iran sound pretty lame. So maybe it wasn’t surprising that Newsweek magazine described how, ‘in private conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week, the president all but disowned the document’.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA - the UN’s nuclear watchdog) issued report after report indicating it could find no evidence that Iran had diverted enriched uranium to a weapons programme. The UN inspection agency harshly rejected the House committee report, calling some of its claims about Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons activities incorrect, and others ‘outrageous and dishonest’. And outside of the Bush White House, which was spearheading much of the hysteria, members of Congress, the neo-con think tanks, hysterical talk show hosts, and much of the mainstream media went ballistic.

Then and now

All of that sounds very familiar right now. Military and intelligence leaders in Israel and the US once again admit that Iran does not have nukes. (Israel of course does, but no one talks about that.) Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta asked and answered his own Iran question: ‘Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No.’ Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper, Jr. admitted the US does not even know ‘if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons’. The latest 2011 NIE makes clear there is no new evidence to challenge the 2007 conclusions; Iran still does not have a nuclear weapons programme in operation.

According to the Independent, ‘almost the entire senior hierarchy of Israel’s military and security establishment is worried about a premature attack on Iran and apprehensive about the possible repercussions.’ Former head of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said ‘it is quite clear that much if not all of the IDF leadership do not support military action at this point.’

But despite all the military and intelligence experts, the threat of war still looms. Republican candidates pound the lecterns promising that ‘when I’m president…’ Iran will accept international inspectors - as if the IAEA had not maintained an inspection team inside Iran for many years now. We hear overheated rumours of Iranian clerics promising nuclear weapons to their people - as if Iran’s leaders had not actually issued fatwas against nuclear weapons, something that would be very difficult to reverse.

Some strategic issues are indeed at stake, but the current anti-Iran mobilisation is primarily political. It doesn’t reflect actual US or Israeli military or intelligence threat assessments, but rather political conditions pushing politicians, here and in Israel, to escalate the fear factor about Iranian weapons (however non-existent) and the urgency for attacking Iran (however illegal). And the danger, of course, is that this kind of rhetoric can box leaders in, making them believe they cannot back down from their belligerent words.

Israel at the centre

One of the main differences from the propaganda run-up to the Iraq war is the consistent centrality of Israel and its supporters, particularly AIPAC in the US, in this push for war against Iran. Israel certainly jumped aboard the attack-Iraq bandwagon when it was clear that war was indeed inevitable, but US strategic concerns regarding oil and the expansion of US military power were first and primary. Even back then, Israel recognised Iran as a far greater threat than Iraq. And now, Israelis using that alleged threat to pressure US policymakers and shape US policy - in dangerous ways. During this campaign cycle, Obama is under the greatest pressure he has ever faced, and likely ever will face, to defend the Israeli position unequivocally, and to pledge US military support for any Israeli action, however illegal, dangerous, and threatening to US interests.

Iran simply is not, as former CIA analyst and presidential adviser Bruce Reidel makes clear, ‘an existential threat’ to Israel. Even a theoretical future nuclear-armed Iran, if it ever chose that trajectory, would not be a threat to the existence of Israel, but would be a threat to Israel’s longstanding nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. That is the real threat motivating Israel’s attack-Iran-now campaign. Further, as long as top US political officials, from the White House to Congress, are competing to see who can be more supportive of Israel in its stand-off with Iran, no one in Washington will even consider pressure on Israel to end its violations of international law and human rights regarding its occupation and apartheid policies towards Palestinians. Israel gets a pass.

Israel is more isolated in the region than ever before. The US-backed neighbouring dictatorships Israel once counted on as allies are being challenged by the uprisings of the Arab Spring. Egypt’s Mubarak was overthrown, the king of Jordan faces growing pressure at home, and the threats to Syria’s regime mean that Israel could face massive instability on its northern border - something Bashar al-Assad and his father largely staved off since Israel occupied the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967.

Syria’s two struggles in one

The calamity underway in Syria is also directly linked to the Iran crisis. There are two struggles going on in Syria, and unfortunately one may destroy the potential of the other. First was Syria’s home-grown popular uprising against a brutal government, inspired by and organically tied to the other risings of the Arab Spring, and like them calling first for massive reform and soon for the overthrow of the regime. Syria is a relatively wealthy and diverse country, in which a large middle class, especially in Damascus and Aleppo, had prospered under the regime, despite its political repression. As a result, unlike some other regional uprisings, Syria’s opposition was challenging a regime which still held some public support and legitimacy.

The regime’s drastic military assault on largely non-violent protests led some sectors of the opposition to take up arms, in tandem with growing numbers of military defectors, which of course meant waging their democratic struggle in the terrain in which the regime remains strongest: military force. The government’s security forces killed thousands, injuring and arresting thousands more, and in recent weeks even the longstanding support for Assad in Damascus and Aleppo began to waver. Simultaneously, attacks against government forces increased, and the internal struggle has taken on more and more the character of a civil war.

The further complication in Syria, and its link to Iran, is that it has simultaneously become a regional and global struggle. Syria is Iran’s most significant partner in the Middle East, so key countries that support Israel’s anti-Iran mobilisation have turned against Syria, looking to weaken Iran by undermining its closest ally. Perhaps because the Assad regimes have kept the occupied Golan Heights and the Israeli-Syrian border relatively quiet, Israel itself has not been the major public face in the regionalisation of the Syrian crisis. But clearly Saudi Arabia is fighting with Iran in Syria for influence in the region. The Arab League, whose Syria decision-making remains dominated by the Saudis and their allied Gulf petro-states (such as Qatar and the UAE), is using the Syria crisis to challenge Iran’s rising influence in Arab countries from Iraq to Lebanon. And of course the US, France and other Western powers have jumped on the very real human rights crisis in Syria to try to further weaken the regime there - in the interest again of undermining Iran’s key ally far more than out of concern for the Syrian people.

Diminishing US power

Facing economic crisis, military failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the loss or weakening of key client states in the Arab world, the US is weaker and less influential in the Middle East. But maintaining control of oil markets and US strategic capacity are still key regional goals for the US, which means that military power remains central. The nature of that military engagement is changing - away from large-scale deployments of ground troops in favour of rapidly expanding fleets of armed drones, special forces, and growing reliance on naval forces, navy bases and sea-based weapons.

Thus the US backs Saudi intervention in Bahrain to insure the US Fifth Fleet maintains its Bahraini base; Washington’s escalating sanctions give the West greater leverage in control of oil markets; the Iranian rhetorical threat to close the Strait of Hormuz (only in desperation since it would prevent Iran from exporting its own oil) is used to justify expansion of the US naval presence in the region. Along with the possibility of losing Syria as a major military purchaser and regional ally, concerns about those US strategic moves played a large part of Russia’s veto of the UN resolution on Syria.

In Iran, the pressure is high and the sanctions are really starting to bite, with much greater impact felt by the Iranian population, rather than the regime in Tehran. The assassination of Iranian nuclear experts, particularly the most recent murder of a young scientist which was greeted by Israeli officials with undisguised glee and barely-disguised triumph, are more likely aimed at provoking an Iranian response than actually undermining Iran’s nuclear capacity. So far, Iran has resisted the bait. But if Israel makes good on its threat of a military strike - despite the virtually unanimous opposition of its own military and intelligence leadership - there is little reason to imagine that Iran would respond only with words. The US and Israel are not the only countries whose national leaders face looming contests; Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and its president face huge political challenges as well.

The consequences of a strike against Iran would be grave - from attacks on Israeli and/or US military targets, to going after US forces in Iran’s neighbours Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kuwait, to attacks on the Pentagon’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, to mining the Strait of Hormuz … and beyond. An attack by the US, a nuclear weapons state, on a non-nuclear weapons state such as Iran, would be a direct violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran might kick out the UN nuclear inspectors. The hardest of Iran’s hard-line leaders would almost certainly consolidate ever greater power – both at home and in the Arab countries, and the calls to move towards greater nuclearisation, perhaps even to build a nuclear weapon, would rise inside Iran. Indeed, the Arab Spring’s secular, citizenship-based mobilisations would likely lose further influence to Iran – threatening to turn that movement into something closer to an ‘Islamic Spring’.

Nuclear weapons-free zone

At the end of the day the crisis can only be solved through negotiations, not threats and force. Immediately, that means demanding that the White House engage in serious, not deliberately time-constrained negotiations to end the current crisis - perhaps based on the successful Turkish-Brazilian initiative that the US scuttled last year. That means that Congress must reverse its current position to allow the White House to use diplomacy - rather than continuing to pass laws that strip the executive branch of its ability to put the carrot of ending sanctions on the table in any negotiations. And it means an Iran policy based on the real conclusions of US intelligence and military officials, that Iran does not have and is not building a nuclear weapon, rather than relying on lies about non-existent nuclear weapons, like the WMD lies that drove the US to war in Iraq.

In the medium and longer term, we must put the urgent need for a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East back on the table and on top of our agenda. Such a multi-country move would insure Iran would never build a nuclear weapon, that Israel would give up its existing 200 to 300 high-density nuclear bombs and the submarine-based nuclear weapons in its arsenal, and that the US would keep its nuclear weapons out of its Middle East bases and off its ships in the region’s seas. Otherwise, we face the possibility of the current predicament repeating itself in an endless loop of Groundhog Day-style nuclear crises, each one more threatening than the last.

The facts
The label: #j14, in Twitter format, means 14 July, the day on which Israel’s uprising began. It is a way of showing that Israeli protesters are emulating the uprisings in Egypt (tagged #Jan25), Bahrain (#Feb14), Syria (#Mar15), Spain (#15M) and so on.
The media star: Daphni Leef, 25, is the woman who pitched the first tent on trendy Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv to protest that she could not afford to rent an apartment in the city. Her action – and her Facebook page – inspired thousands. Within days, hundreds of tents lined the boulevard and dozens of other encampments appeared up and down the country, as well as in less privileged parts of Tel Aviv. Leef came to symbolise the protest, although she has repeatedly denied being its leader. She has come under personal attack from journalists and politicians opposed to the protest movement. In one case an anchor on a TV financial programme challenged her live on air to explain why she had not completed her military service (she has epilepsy).
The gap: The average income of the richest 10 per cent of Israel’s population is about 14 times that of the poorest 10 per cent. Recent years have seen a widening gap between rich and poor, echoing that of the US.
The cost of housing: Between 2005 and 2011, the cost of apartment rents rose by 34 per cent countrywide, and by 49 per cent in the metropolitan region of Gush Dan, including Tel Aviv.
Public support: On 2 August, polls suggested that the protests had the backing of a staggering 98 per cent of Kadima (opposition) supporters and 85 per cent of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party, Likud, supporters.
The official demands of the protests (not final): A general shift back from neoliberal policies to a welfare state; an end to privatisation of state-owned enterprises; more resources for affordable public housing and transport; free schooling from an early age; a new taxation system lowering indirect taxes and increasing direct taxation. Demands for equality for Israel’s Arab citizens have been put forward but not officially adopted.
Participating movements (partial list): A movement for affordable and public housing; a movement of doctors and specialist registrars for better working conditions; movements of social workers, psychologists and teachers for better working conditions and for better public mental healthcare and education systems; single-parent families and young couples with children demanding free nursery age schooling; a movement for reduction of prices in dairy products; a movement of farmers opposing imports of dairy products; manpower company employees; trade unions; student unions; Arab rights groups; settlers’ groups (withdrawn in July); human rights groups; peace groups; socialist and radical-leftist groups…
Decision-making: By ‘popular assembly’ in the encampments, inspired by similar assembly committees in Madrid’s May protests.
Committees: In July, Netanyahu appointed Professor Manuel Trajtenberg to head a committee to recommend ways of meeting the demands of the protesters. He undermined his own decision a few days later when he said he could not guarantee he would follow the committee’s recommendations. The protesters established their own committee of 60 experts, chaired by radical leftist Professor Yossi Yonah and divided according to themes such as healthcare, labour and so on.