THE ARAB SPRING was a dramaticresult of a policy failure on the part ofArab countries. For many decades,they have used the Israeli-Palestinian

conflict to divert the attention of their own citi-zens, the so-called “Arab Street,” from theirown economic and domestic failure to delivera decent life to their people. Yet, in the end, theforces behind the Arab Spring had nothing todo with the Israelis and none of the participantsblamed Israel. Nonetheless, the Palestinian-Is-raeli conflict remains far too valuable a tool formanipulating public opinion for Arab nationsactually to allow a settlement to occur. This es-pecially is true for Iran, but for different rea-sons. They have little to worry about since thepolitical and ideological split of the Palestinianpeople between Hamas and the Palestinian Au-thority leaves no credible and trustworthy lead-ership with whom to negotiate. No comprehen-sive settlement is in the cards for years, if notdecades, to come.

A key to understanding the current situationin the Middle East is to recognize that the pri-mary identity of its people is not with the state,but rather with their religion, sect, tribe, andfamily. Following World War I, which endedsome four centuries of Islamic Ottoman rule,Arab nationalism was imposed on the Middle

East by the colonial powers of the West. Underthe Ottomans, the caliph ruled not only as ahead of state, but as a sovereign who was thehead of Sunni Islam.

Islamists believe that the modern failures ofthe Muslim world are a result of modernizationfollowing World War I and the imposition ofnationalism. They believe that the greatness ofthe past can be had only by a return to a purelyIslamic way of life—although they presumablyalso want to retain some of the benefits ofmodern technology, even if they reject theworld view that led to their creation.

With the advent of the Arab Spring, Is-lamists are in ascension and are likely to rulemuch of the Middle East in the not so distantfuture. They already have come to the fore inEgypt and Tunisia and, as of this writing, prob-ably soon will have a major influence in Syria.In Libya, the outcome remains unclear, al-though it does not bode well for the future thatQatar has been providing shipments of weap-ons to Abdel Hakim Belhai, who founded thenow-disbanded Libyan Islamic Fighting Group,which was listed by the U.S. State Departmentas a foreign terrorist organization.

Afghanistan and Pakistan also are likely tobe taken over by Islamists not too long after thewithdrawal of U.S. forces from the region.

While Mali and other parts of Africa are not inthe Middle East, and therefore not part of thediscussion here, there, too, the Islamists havebecome a major destructive and polarizingforce.

24 USA TODAY ★ JANUARY 2013

WORLDVIEW

Spring Has Sprung, but the Middle East Remains a Muddle

BY GERALD E. MARSH

“A key to understanding the current situation inthe Middle East is to recognize that the primaryidentity of its people is not with the state, but

rather with their religion, sect, tribe, and family.”

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If the nations coming under Islamic rule arepoor, we can expect a religious and social struc-ture not unlike that which is found in Pakistanor Afghanistan. If the nations are rich, usuallyfrom resource wealth, one has the model of the

Gulf states and especially Saudi Arabia where,as put by Michael Totten in The New YorkTimes, “Religious edicts are crushingly en-forced by state, mosque, and society [where]men have it rough, but women have it much

rougher. According to Wahhabi Islam, menmust obey Allah and women must obey men.”

This form of intolerant Islam results in theShia Muslims of the oil rich Eastern Provinceof Saudi Arabia being oppressed and rejected

Many Islamic extremiststrace Muslim troubles tothe fall of the OttomanEmpire during World War I.

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as heretics. One also should remember that, af-ter the withdrawal of the Soviet forces fromAfghanistan, it was Saudi-funded madrassasthat led to the Taliban.

One of the key players today is the MuslimBrotherhood. It was founded in 1928 by Hassanal-Banna and generally is considered to be themost influential of all Islamic organizations.Worldwide, the Muslim Brotherhood claims tohave a presence in some 80 countries. It especial-ly is strong in parts of Europe. With the ArabSpring, it now has, for the first time, emergedpublicly as a major political force in the MiddleEast. Hamas, established in 1987, has its originsin the Muslim Brotherhood and well could beconsidered its Palestinian chapter. Islamic Jihad,founded by Fathi Shaqaqi and other radical stu-dents in Egypt, also has roots in the MuslimBrotherhood and split from them in 1979. Shaq-aqi was influenced by the 1979 Islamic revolu-tion in Iran. He believed the liberation of Pales-tine would unite the Arab and Muslim world intoa single great Islamic state. While Islamic Jihadand Hamas advocate violence to form Islamicstates, as well as the destruction of the state of Is-rael, the Muslim Brotherhood presents a farmore moderate face to the world. The differencereally is about means rather than ends.

At the heart of the Muslim Brotherhood’sideology is the establishment of an Islamicstate based on the Sharia in Egypt, as well as inthe states where its many offshoots are based.Generally, it believes this is to be done first bybecoming popular with the people throughgood works and social welfare programs, andsecond by creating a political party—at leastwhere there are elections—since, once theyhave control of the state, society can be trans-formed by the implementation of Sharia law.This approach was advocated by Hassan al-Banna. The violent overthrow of governments,on the other hand, was advocated by SayyidQutb, the father of Islamic terrorism. He roseto prominence in the mid 1950s after he wasarrested with the leadership of the MuslimBrotherhood. Qutb became the principal ideo-logue for modern Islamists. As put by Jo-hannes Jansen in The Dual Nature of IslamicFundamentalism, “He created a coherent ideol-ogy which has shown itself able to inspiremany people to face their own death calmly forthe sake of Islam, and to kill in its name.” Rad-ical Islam dates from this time.

In the end, there is no real ideological splitbetween al-Banna and Qutb—except the meansof achieving their common goal. In particu-lar—and the West should not be confusedabout this—both reject democracy, which theyview as the rule of man over man rather thanthe rule of God through Sharia law. Democra-cy is an impiety. While in the Egyptian Broth-erhood there are ideological fissures and someinternal fragmentation in its organization, it hasnot, as a whole, renounced its core ideal ofmaking Egypt an Islamic state.

It is crucial that one also understand the roleof Iran and its proxy Hezbollah; the latter, in asense, owes its existence to the state of Israel in

that it arose as a response to Israel’s 1982 inva-sion of Lebanon. Explains Israeli Defense Min-ister Ehud Barak, “When we entered Lebanonthere was no Hezbollah. We were accepted withperfumed rice and roses by the Shia in the south.It was our presence there that created Hezbol-lah.”

Hezbollah was founded some time between1982-85, the uncertainty due to the fact that,during this period, there was an amalgam ofvarious Shi’ite extremists whose exact time ofcreation depends upon the sources consulted.Of course, this was the time, specifically Sept.16-18, 1982, when the massacres at the Sabraand Shatila refugee camps occurred. It oftenhas been claimed that Israel was complicit inthose massacres, but the reality is more nu-anced. The massacres had more to do with sec-tarian divisions than Israel.

Grand plan gone awry In 1996, Harry J. Lipkin, a physicist who

splits his time between Argonne National Lab-oratory in Illinois and the Weizmann Instituteof Science, located in Rehovot, Israel, ex-plained in an e-mail to colleagues and friendswhat he believed occurred: “The turning pointin the war was the assassination of LebanesePresident-elect Bashir Gemayel by Hafez al-Assad’s agents, which completely destroyed Is-rael’s Defense Minister Ariel Sharon’s ‘grandplan.’ Sharon was completely unprepared andlost all control of the situation in which themassacre of Palestinians in the refugee campsof Sabra and Shatila led to American interven-tion and American pressure forcing an Israeliwithdrawal. I always found it peculiar that Is-rael alone should be blamed for this massacre.It was not carried out by Israelis, but by Leb-anese forces. No one disputes that Israel was incontrol at the time, but there seemed to be aconspiracy of silence regarding the people whoactually carried out the massacre. Their leaderElie Hobeika was not censured at all and lateremerged in the Western press as a ‘moderateLebanese Christian leader,’ with no referenceto his past record of brutal massacres.”

Similar massacres described in other termsnow are taking place in Syria, but whatever themeans of killing, and whatever the political ex-pediency dictating terminology, the root rea-sons are the same. Hafez al-Assad ordered thekilling of some 20,000 people in Hama in Feb-ruary 1982 after he was told by the Syrian in-telligence agency Mukhabarat that the MuslimBrotherhood had fomented an air force plot tooverthrow his Alawite-led government.

Events in Syria today show that the son haslearned the lessons of his father. The 1982events in Hama were reported extensively byThomas Friedman in From Beirut to Jerusa-lem. Hezbollah is based in the south of Leb-anon with its primarily Shi’a population. In-spired by Ayatollah Khomeini, its forces wereorganized and trained by the Iranian Revolu-tionary Guard Corps, the premier force chargedwith, among other duties, responsibility for

Iran’s missile forces and control of the Strait ofHormuz. While Hezbollah has internationaloperations, our concern here will be with itsrole in the Middle East.

More recently, in the course of the Syrian2012 civil war, Iran has been providing assis-tance to the Syrian government in the form ofweapons and, according to The New YorkTimes, its “paramilitary Quds force is sendingtrainers and advisors, sometimes disguised asreligious pilgrims, tourists, and businessmen.”

These then are the principal parties: theMuslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran,and, of course, the U.S. Syria also has a role inthat Syria, under the minority ruling Alawites,an offshoot of Shi’ism, has served Iran as atrans-shipping point for weapons to Hezbollahin Lebanon, including thousands of rockets—some being the Fajr-5, which have a range ofclose to 50 miles. Iraq, having a majority Shi’itepopulation, is a player in the sense that Iranianweapons are flown over Iraqi air space to Syr-ia. Iraq has not complied with U.S. requests tohave these flights inspected. While the primaryinterests of the Muslim Brotherhood and Ha-mas are the establishment of Islamic states,what are the strategic interests of Iran, Hezbol-lah, and the U.S.?

The history of Iran, and its relations withAmerica since the overthrow of Prime MinisterMohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 by the intelli-gence agencies of the United Kingdom and theU.S., followed by the rule of Mohammad-RezaShah Pahlavi until his overthrow by the Islamicrevolution in 1979, is well known. It thereforeshould come as no surprise that the primary in-terest of Iran is to deter the U.S. from constrain-ing its influence in the area or attacking it di-rectly. While Iran’s interests primarily may ap-pear to be local, they actually are global. Deter-rence of the U.S. must rely on, at this time (andthis could change) two options: threateningU.S. allies in the region or using pressure onHezbollah to carry out terrorist strikes through-out the world. Iran also would like to protect itsco-religionists throughout the region—wherethey often are discriminated against and consid-ered heretics if not apostates—and perhaps itsmost important goal would be to be able to usethe closure of the Strait of Hormuz as a crediblethreat against U.S. and European intervention.

Iran would like to control the flow of oilfrom the Gulf. While unlikely in the near term,one should keep in mind that about one-third ofthe population of the oil-rich Eastern Provinceof Saudi Arabia bordering the Gulf is Shi’ite;this minority has become restive in the past.The majority population in Bahrain is Shi’iteand is ruled over by minority Sunnis. The ArabSpring led to their violent repression and the in-tervention of Saudi troops. The Sunni rule in theGulf is far more fragile than it appears.

Closure of the Strait of Hormuz is a threatthat has been implicit in Iran’s relations withSaudi Arabia and the U.S. for some time, butonly recently has become explicit. From theIranian point of view, however, long term clo-sure is not credible currently since it knows the

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U.S. would intervene. The threat, though, is notempty since it could lead to panic in the oilmarkets. The threat of conventional attackagainst American allies—Israel in particular—likely would ignite direct U.S. action. It is forthis reason, and to counter the Israeli nuclearcapability, that Iran is pursuing its nuclearweapons program. As once put by the Indiandefense minister when asked what lessonscould be drawn from the first Gulf War, “Don’tfight the United States unless you have nuclearweapons.”

In spite of Pres. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’soffensive rhetoric, Israel would be a target forfuture Iranian nuclear weapons only because itis an important ally of the U.S. Israeli nuclearweapons are not feared by any of the countriesin the region: they know full well that theywould be employed only if Israel were threat-ened. That is why the last attempt to destroy Is-rael by the Arab countries was the Yom Kippurwar of 1973 before Israel was fully nuclear ca-pable. On the other hand, the Arab countries donot trust Iran and, should Iran succeed in its nu-clear weapons program, it would engendermany more nuclear weapons programs in thesenations.

Iran not only has its proxy Hezbollah inLebanon, it has Hamas, and that is a bit of anenigma. Why would a Sunni offshoot of theMuslim Brotherhood apparently be willing torepresent Iranian Shi’ite interests? The answeris simple: wanting to preserve some semblanceof impartiality in the Israeli-Palestinian con-flict, neither Saudi Arabia, Qatar, nor Turkey(now headed by a “moderate” Islamic govern-ment) will ship arms to Gaza directly; Iran willand has done so for some time.

According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz,“Hours before Hamas strongman Ahmed Jabariwas assassinated, he received the draft of a per-manent truce agreement with Israel, which in-cluded mechanisms for maintaining the cease-fire in the case of a flare-up between Israel andthe factions in the Gaza Strip.” It has beenclaimed that senior officials in Israel knewabout this but nevertheless approved his assassi-nation. If so, one might wonder whether someIsraeli officials wanted the flare-up in Gaza tooccur, and there is good reason to believe thismight be the case.

In January 2009, Israeli jets “allegedly” at-tacked a weapons convoy in Sudanese territory.Apparently, the convoy of more than 20 trucksincluded Iranian Fajr-3 rockets with a range ofaround 50 kilometers. In October 2012, theYarmouk weapons facility in the Sudanese cap-ital of Khartoum was attacked because it wassuspected that Iran was using it to stockpile andassemble anti-aircraft missiles, anti-tankweapons, and the longer-range Fajr-5 rocketscapable of reaching Tel Aviv and Jerusalemfrom Gaza. Israel knew that many of the Fajr-5rockets, weapons that were capable of changingthe nature of the standoff with Hamas, hadmade it through to Gaza—nor could Egypt nothave known about these shipments. As put byEthan Bronner of The New York Times, “Israeli

officials said the movement of the Fajr-5 rock-ets through Egypt could not go unnoticed there,given their size. Each is 20 feet long and weighsmore than 2,000 pounds—the warhead aloneweighs 375 pounds—and the trucks carryingthem across Egyptian bridges and through road-blocks into Sinai would be hard to miss.” Theflare-up in Gaza gave Israel the justification todestroy many of these weapons.

The danger, of course, is the possibility thatHezbollah might open a second front in thenorth of the country and, unlike the Palestini-ans in Gaza, Hezbollah has, again according toBronner, “thousands of rockets capable ofstriking Tel Aviv.” Although Hezbollah is acreature of Iran’s, and Iran certainly would liketo see a northern front, it is quite reluctant toenter the Gaza conflict—as its re-supply routethrough Syria may be coming to an end withthe fall of Bashar al Assad’s minority Alawiteregime.

Given the funding and commitment of theSunni Arab countries of the Gulf to the fall ofAssad, and the movement of jihadists into Syr-ia to support the Sunni insurgents, Syria is like-ly to fracture along sectarian lines and fall intoa civil war even more bloody than the currentone. If this spills over into Lebanon, Hezbollahwell may need its weapons to guarantee itsown survival—by deterring Israeli interven-tion—as well as for supporting the Shi’ites inthe south of Lebanon.

U.S. policy questionsSo, then, just what are the U.S.’s interests

and policy in the region? If one is to believeJohn Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt writing inthe London Review of Books in 2006, “For thepast several decades, and especially since theSix-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of U.S.Middle Eastern policy has been its relationshipwith Israel. . . . The thrust of U.S. policy in theregion derives almost entirely from domesticpolitics, and especially the activities of the ‘Is-rael Lobby,’” primarily through the activitiesof the American-Israel Public Affairs Commit-tee.

Much has been written about this nonsense,but let me suggest here that, if domestic politicsplayed a primary role in forming U.S. policytoward Israel, it would be through the lobbyingof Evangelical Christians who, according to aGallup poll, make up 46% of the population.Many of them believe that, once the Jews reoc-cupy all of their biblical lands, the legions ofthe Antichrist will attack, thus leading to the fi-nal conflict in the valley of Armageddon.AIPAC only wishes it were as influential asclaimed by Mearsheimer and Walt.

The real fundamental U.S. interest in the re-gion involves oil. Of course, domestic politicsdoes play a role in U.S. interest in Israel, butmore important is the fact that they are an ad-vanced country that is the only democracy inthe region. They also have the best intelligenceabout the Islamic world, particularly in theMiddle East. While the Americans surely have

some assets on the ground, they cannot beginto compete with the Israelis. This, too, is a fac-tor in our alliance.

The U.S. is the sole country capable ofmaintaining the free flow of oil throughout theworld, and we—as well as much of the rest ofthe world—will continue to be dependent on oilfor decades to come. There is no real alternativeto oil in the transportation sector. We certainlycan reduce the amount used through hybrids,electrification of parts of the transportation net-work, etc., but, in the end, we will remain de-pendent on this commodity for generations.

Most alternative solutions either are imprac-tical or politically unacceptable. Solutions doexist, but present market structures cannot sup-port the transition to these sources, which, in theshort term, would require extensive capital in-vestment and be far more expensive than con-tinuing to rely on cheap oil, but we all shouldrealize that the true cost of oil involves the mili-tary commitment to maintaining its worldwidefree flow. That is one of the reasons the U.S. na-tional security budget is close to one trillion dol-lars a year. The cost not only is in dollars, but inlives and the necessity of abiding by often un-palatable political constraints and alliances.

So, what should one conclude from all ofthis? It should be obvious that the greatestshort-term threat to the stability of the MiddleEast and the free flow of oil is Iran succeedingin its nuclear weapons program. It already hasorbited a satellite, thereby demonstrating itsability as a threat to most of Europe.

Another conclusion that jumps out is thatenergy policy must stop being an oxymoron.Over the next few decades, the U.S. must putinto place an energy policy that transcends spe-cial interests and congressional gridlock. Thereare alternatives to oil in the transportation sec-tor, but many are not yet ready for prime time.We must commit to long-term funding of prom-ising technologies and have a program for capi-talizing and bringing them to fruition.

Here is one final observation: the U.S. aloneprobably could solve its energy-related nationalsecurity issues over the next few decades but,as the world population approaches the 9,000,-000,000 mark (projected for 2050), there is nohope for a decent standard of living being metin much of the the rest of the world—unless itresolves its problem of poor governance andmakes massive investments in food science andproduction, energy sources, and internationalregulatory structures. Our current social, eco-nomic, and political structures, domesticallyand globally, are incapable of meeting the chal-lenge. ★

Gerald E. Marsh is a physicist retired from Ar-gonne National Laboratory, Downers GroveTownship, Ill., and fellow of the AmericanPhysical Society, College Park, Md. He was aconsultant to the Department of Defense onstrategic nuclear technology and policy in theReagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations,and served with the U.S. START delegation inGeneva, Switzerland.

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