Tag Archives: Iran

Is Ahrar a-Sham a “Moderate” Syrian Rebel Group?

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on July 12, 2015

Ahrar a-Sham

To answer my headline simply: no, Ahrar a-Sham’s leadership is not what anybody in the West means by “moderate” Syrian rebels that could be supported.

The question is provoked by an op-ed in The Washington Post last night signed by Labib al-Nahhas, Ahrar’s foreign political relations officer, the culmination of a public-relations campaign by Ahrar to rebrand itself as the mainstream alternative to the Islamic State (ISIS) and the Assad tyranny we’ve all been waiting for. Continue reading →

Nukes and Empire: The West is on the Brink of Giving Iran Everything it Wants

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on July 6, 2015

In this photo released by official website of the Iranian supreme leader's office, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivers a speech for the Iranian New Year, Nowruz, in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, March 20, 2013. Nowruz marks the first day of spring and the beginning of the year on the Iranian calendar. (AP Photo/Office of the Supreme Leader)

The United States and Iran are seemingly days from signing an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program that has been brought about by a series of American concessions. If the deal is signed on the present terms it will effectively dismantle the sanctions against Iran and the international legal regime that recognizes the Iranian regime as an outlaw, will leave Iran on the threshold of nuclear weapons, and will provide legitimacy for, and billions of dollars toward, Iranian hegemony in the Middle East.

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Islamic State: The Afterlife of Saddam Hussein’s Regime

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on July 4, 2015

Published at Baghdad Invest

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Izzat Ibrahim ad-Douri, Saddam Hussein’s long-time deputy, was reported dead (again) on April 17. An audio message on May 15 disproved this. Douri was the implementer of the Saddam regime’s Islamization program in its later years and a key architect of the insurgency after the regime was overthrown, which helped pave the way for the Islamic State (ISIS). ISIS has now turned on Douri and his associates, but ISIS could not have risen to its current stature without Douri’s help. Continue reading →

To Defeat The Islamic State, Get Rid Of Assad First

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on July 3, 2015

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The British government is considering beginning airstrikes into Syria against the Islamic State (ISIS). London is currently engaged in airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and has troops in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq training and advising the Peshmerga.

Since ISIS’ territory in Syria is its “most valuable and sustainable,” the case for ignoring a border that ISIS has erased would seem to be a good one.

But no less a figure than the Conservative chair of the defence select committee, Julian Lewis, thinks otherwise:

In 2010 the government wanted to remove Assad without helping al-Qaeda or similar groups that subsequently became Daesh. Now we apparently want to remove Daesh but without helping Assad. These two things are incompatible. It is a choice of evils.

The view that Syria is divided between the Assad dictatorship and ISIS has become commonplace. It is mistaken. Continue reading →

Islamic State Spokesman Calls For Immigration to the Caliphate, All Factions To Join

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on July 1, 2015

On June 23, 2015, the Islamic State (IS) spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani gave a speech, “O Our People, Respond to the Caller of Allah”. Al-Adnani, noting the coming of Ramadan, called on Muslims to journey to the caliphate, saying that hijra (emigration) in this month—and martyrdom—is the most blessed. Al-Adnani called on Muslims—specifically Iraqi Sunnis and Syrian rebel and Islamist insurgent groups—to unite around IS, which had no theological factions or ethnic distinctions among its membership, being the only pure expression of Islam, ruling by god’s law. Iraqi Sunni militias and Syrian rebels had betrayed the religion by seeking favour from, and even seeking alliance with, Western states. Al-Adnani threatened the town of Haditha, specifically the Jaghayfa clan, that if it surrendered now its repentance would be accepted, but if the town was overrun first then they would be slaughtered. Al-Adnani played heavily on the interlinked themes of anti-Shi’a sectarianism and the spreading influence of Iran and its proxies, repressing Sunnis. The old guard of the jihadi movement—clerics like Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and al-Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri (though neither are mentioned by name)—are attacked for not being on the battlefields. Al-Adnani also accepted the allegiance of the Russian-based faction that declared itself under the caliph’s authority, naming the group Wilayat al-Kavkaz. An English transcript of the speech was posted by IS and is reproduced below with some minor editions in transliteration and some interesting sections highlighted in bold. Continue reading →

A Postscript on the Relationship Between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on June 26, 2015

Osama bin Laden (L) and Ayman az-Zawahiri (R)

Osama bin Laden (L) and Ayman az-Zawahiri (R)

The myth that Saddam Hussein’s regime had nothing to do with al-Qaeda is persistent. Stephen Hayes’ book, The Connection, ably debunks this notion. There are some additional details that one can add to this. Continue reading →

A Myth Revisited: “Saddam Hussein Had No Connection To Al-Qaeda”

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Book Review: The Connection: How al-Qaeda’s Collaboration With Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America (2004) by Stephen Hayes

By Kyle Orton(@KyleWOrton) on June 21, 2015

 

More than twelve years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the conventional wisdom is that Saddam’s regime had no connection with al-Qaeda, and such “evidence” as was adduced was tortured out of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi in the Bush administration’s desperation to cobble together a casus belli. But if one puts ideology on hold, and considers the evidence of Stephen Hayes’ The Connection, a rather different picture emerges. Continue reading →

The Dangerous Idea That Iran is a Force for Stability in the Middle East

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on June 5, 2015 1 In the Guardian this morning, Jonathan Steele has written an article defending President Barack Obama’s Iran policy. Steele allows others to make his points for him, but he contributes to a narrative in which rapprochement with Iran is a worthy policy—even as the President formally denies that the Iran negotiations are about anything other than the nuclear-weapons program. Steele writes:

In Iraq, [Iranian officials] insist, Iran is a force for stability, helping [Iraqi prime minister] Haider al-Abadi’s government militarily while urging it to be more attentive to Sunni concerns—just as Washington is.

This is nonsense. In 2008, after the US ‘surge’, violence in Iraq was down 90 per cent, and the political process had begun to work. This was achieved by separating the Sunni Arab tribes of western Iraq from al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia (AQM), the forerunner to the Islamic State (ISIS).

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Does Iran Support The Islamic State?

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on May 26, 2015

Qassem Suleimani, Iran's spymaster, believed in some MidEast conspiracy theories to control ISIS

Qassem Suleimani, Iran’s spymaster, believed in some Mid-East conspiracy theories to control ISIS

In 2010, Farzad Farhangian, an Iranian diplomat based in Belgium, defected to Norway. Farhangian has now emerged with the extraordinary accusation that the Islamic Republic of Iran is controlling the Islamic State (ISIS) and using it as part of Tehran’s war against the Gulf States, especially Saudi Arabia. Farhangian’s accusations are lurid and (literally) incredible, but the question of Iran’s role in ISIS’ creation and growth, and Iran’s manipulation of ISIS to further its own ends, is one well worth asking. Continue reading →

The Islamic State’s Strategy Is Working, Its Enemies Are Failing

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on May 23, 2015

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To hear President Obama tell it, his announced program to defeat the Islamic State (ISIS), which began with airstrikes into Iraq last August that were extended into Syria in September, is working, albeit with some tactical setbacks. The implication is that the setbacks of the U.S.-led anti-ISIS campaign are not strategic.

As J.M. Berger phrased it:

In the Washington vernacular, the act of Being Strategic implies a near mystical quality of superior thinking possessed by some, and clearly lacking amongst the vulgarians of the world—heedless brutes such as ISIL. Tactics are short-term ploys, easy to dismiss. Strategy is for winners.

Unfortunately, this soothing view is almost exactly wrong: it is the United States that is relying on various short-term methods—commando raids into the Syrian desert, for example—while ISIS has a long-term goal fixed in mind and is working assiduously to achieve it. The U.S.-led Coalition is losing, in short, and ISIS is winning. Continue reading →