The Intelligent Conversationalist

by Imogen Lloyd Webber

  • Further fury came with the 1917 Balfour Declaration. In a letter to Baron Rothschild, the UK’s foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, expressed that the British government was in favor of establishing a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.

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  Some Middle Eastern states received their independence from Britain and France in the 1920s and 1930s. Others had to wait for post–World War II. I’m mentioning France here, because it wasn’t just the Brits, but safe to say my countrymen, as the dominant power in the region, really were the worst culprits. When Hitler put paid to the Brits’ true leading player status, the Middle East subsequently became a cold war battleground, with the Americans and Soviets up to their own shenanigans.

  The backdrop of all this was that some countries in the region had struck the trump card of oil. Whenever you look at a Middle East state’s international dealings, you must initially establish whether it is one of those that have copious quantities of black gold, such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and UAE, or one that doesn’t, such as Yemen and Jordan. The first Gulf War came about because by invading Kuwait in 1990, Saddam Hussein had control of a fifth of the world’s oil supplies and was on the doorstep of Saudi Arabia. That was a threat to the US at the time, as over the past fifty years America has needed the region because of the strategic commodity of oil. Over the next fifty years, with America becoming an exporter of oil and the economic factor off the table, it will be interesting to see how the focus of US foreign policy shifts—and how Asia’s does. Because moving forward, Asia will become increasingly concerned with Middle East stability, as it needs the area’s oil.

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  NOTEWORTHY NUGGETS: OIL AND OPEC

  • OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) is a cartel of oil producers. The majority of them are based in the Middle East. Original members include Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, and Kuwait.

  • Arab oil exporters, in protest at America’s support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War, put an embargo on shipments to the West on October 17, 1973.

  • Long term, you could argue the embargo was a loss for OPEC. Along with the overthrow of the shah in Iran in 1979, it led to the first auto mileage standards in America, and it meant that the US and co. had a serious incentive to exploit oil elsewhere. And they did (Alaska, etc.).

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  In terms of history, the Middle East’s peoples thus tend to have a longer link to their ethnicity and religion than to their nationality. Arabs constitute the major ethnic group in all of the Middle East states except Iran (Persian), Israel (Jewish), and Turkey (Turkic). The Kurds are a significant ethnic group, especially in Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Turkey. The Middle East is also the emotional and geographic center of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.

  The majority of those in the Middle East apart from those in Israel practice Islam. As we discussed under the subject of religion, there are a number of sects of Islam. Most people in the Middle East are Sunni. However, Shiite or Shia Islam is the majority religion in Iran, Iraq, and Bahrain. There is also significant Shiite presence in Lebanon, Kuwait, and Yemen. Historically, Sunni Muslim rulers have persecuted Shiites. In terms of language, Arabic is the most common, the second being Persian (aka Farsi), which is mostly in Iran. Red flag: Do not confuse Arabic and Persian/Farsi. They are completely different languages. Also note that neither of them are Urdu, which about 100 million people speak and is the official language of Pakistan. Urdu is also spoken in many areas of the Middle East, India, Nepal, and Bangladesh.

  What about terrorism? Because that’s what unfortunately tends to crop up when the region of the Middle East is discussed. Modern Islamic terrorism can be traced to the Wahhabi movement, an Arabian fundamentalist movement that started to find a wide following in the nineteenth century and inspired various fundamentalist movements during the twentieth century. It should be observed that they took note of and learned from what European terrorist organizations such as the Armenian Revolutionary Federation and the Irish Republican Army were doing. And also this: The United States saw and backed fundamentalist groups in the Middle East as a way to stop Soviet expansion. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan has been described as the global trigger of Islamic terrorism.

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  KEY TERM: MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD

  • The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928. Strictly conservative and based in Egypt, it is devoted to establishing a nation based on Islamic principles. It became a radical underground force in Egypt and other Sunni countries and has performed terrorist acts.

  • After the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood initially had much success and its candidate, Mohamed Morsi, won the presidential election in the summer of 2012. However, he was overthrown within a year.

  • Note that fundamentalists willing to employ terrorism and violence in pursuit of political power tend to fail. You can cite the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Al-Qaeda core being dismantled and forced to go underground, and that Hamas is confined mostly to Gaza.

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  America has discovered in the post-9/11 world with forays into Iraq and Afghanistan that it can harm with the best intentions. It is very tricky to shape positive outcomes inside other countries. Remaking societies is just too hard. After the Arab Spring, taking out Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, America is now faced with the fact that in regards to the stability of the Middle East, the US has more to fear from weak governments than from strong ones. The rise of militias and terrorist groups is threatening American national security. The word on everyone’s lips is ISIS, the origins of which we looked at in Cheat Sheet 11 here.

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  KEY TERM: THE ARAB SPRING

  A wave of antigovernment protests that kicked off in December 2010 in Tunisia and spread across the Middle East in early 2011. The term has its roots in the 1989 unrest in Eastern Europe, which led to the downfall of most of the communist regimes in the bloc. It’s not been as clear-cut in the Middle East. The rich monarchies in the Persian Gulf held on, Syria and Libya ended up in civil war—and Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen got an ambiguous period of transition.

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  Although we are going to take a look now at specific nations within the Middle East, with all this, I once again stress that it is necessary to keep in mind it’s not as simple as a matter of borders. And I couldn’t resist including the strangest strategy I’ve ever seen by a government website covering international relations. The CIA, when describing other nations, compares their land size to areas in America. Sensitivity chip? Not so much.

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  PHRASES TO DEPLOY WHEN TALKING ABOUT THE MIDDLE EAST

  I’ve commentated live on air on the Middle East. The revolutionary wave of the Arab Spring, which began in late 2010, when talking heads had even less idea than usual about what was going on in the region, coincided with my political punditry taking hold. I’ve used every single one of the below lines. And when in doubt? Let me hear you say it: Just blame the British.

  • “The Middle East is a graveyard for ethical foreign policies.”

  • “Technology means we can no longer have a hypocritical foreign policy.”

  • “The region was defined by European colonial powers a hundred years ago and defended by Arab autocrats ever since.”

  • “What about the law of diminishing returns?”

  • “America should be the global police chief rather than the sole policeman.”

  • “All politics are local.” (It can be easy to fall into the trap of viewing the Middle East from our perspective. To understand it, it has to be considered from theirs.)

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  IRAN

  The land of Iran has played host to some of the world’s oldest civilizations. Previously known as Persia, in 1935 the Iranian government requested that the international community instead use the moniker of Iran, which is the country’s name in Persian and has been in use since the Sassanian period (AD 224–651). Geographically, th
e country is of immense geopolitical importance. It sits at the crossroads of Central Asia, Western Asia, and South Asia and is the only country to border both the Caspian Sea and the Indian Ocean. Iran also borders the north coast of the Strait of Hormuz, through which around a fifth of the world’s petroleum passes. Just in case you were wondering why we don’t invade and instead in 2015 spent a lengthy amount of time around a negotiating table, it has about three times the population of Iraq and a far more potent military.

  Historically, Iran is one of the most fascinating countries in the world, so go study it. But vital information you must get into your brain immediately is what occurred during the cold war era. By the Americans (and the Brits), Iran was perceived as a safeguard against Soviet expansion and a place of stability in the oil-rich Persian Gulf. During World War II, the “constitutional” and pro-British monarch Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi came to power. However in 1951, under the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, Iran’s oil holdings were nationalized, which certainly didn’t work for the British, who had made more money out of Iran’s oil than Iran ever had, or for America. What if Mossadegh properly palled up with the Soviets? Cue a CIA-backed coup that removed Mossadegh in 1953. The “friendly” (to the Brits and Americans) shah, who had briefly fled into exile, was reinstalled to lead.

  That’s right. America took Iran’s new democracy. And smothered it. With a monarchy. There’s a reason that some Iranians have labeled Uncle Sam the “Great Satan.” The US backed the shah with cash and in 1957 even aided in the setting up of Iran’s intelligence agency, which was subsequently brutally repressive. The monarchy ended up being autocratic, corrupt, and cruel. In 1979 the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile and seized power, while the overthrown shah escaped and died in 1980. Homework at this point: See Argo. We have the Iran hostage crisis. Referred to in Persian as the “Conquest of the American Spy Den,” it lasted for 444 days, from November 1979 through January 1981 (just after Reagan delivered his inaugural address—it probably cost Jimmy Carter a second term). After the deposed shah had been allowed into the US for medical treatment, Iranian students stormed the US embassy in Iran and took more than sixty hostages, supposedly believing that the CIA would put him back on the throne. The invasion outraged America as it violated every law going, both moral and religious. It was a turning point in the history of both the Middle East and America, and to this day has resulted in some Americans still believing that Iranians are irrational, hateful terrorists.

  America’s dubious dealings in the matter of Iran went on. In 1980, with American help—yes, American help—Saddam Hussein invaded Iran and we ended up with the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, which cost up to 1.5 million people their lives. In addition to this, there were various skirmishes going on by proxy. Iran wasn’t taking this lying down and became embroiled in Lebanon’s civil war, supporting the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which was responsible for the 1983 bombings of the Beirut US embassy and barracks in which 241American service personnel lost their lives. In July 1988, America mistakenly shot down an Iranian passenger jet, killing 290 people. And who could forget the Iran-Contra affair—where Reagan’s White House was selling arms to Iran to bankroll a covert Central America war.

  In more recent times, in an attempt to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, the international community has levied incredibly tough sanctions on the country (seriously upsetting the mega wealthy—where are they supposed to get their caviar now?). One can argue that they worked. The “moderate” Hassan Rouhani was elected president in August 2013 and negotiations commenced. Please note that there’s nothing in international law that outlaws uranium enrichment. Many countries have nuclear power. Various countries are on the threshold: They have the ability to produce nuclear weapons but choose not to do so, which is a perfectly legal ambition. Something some senators and other Fox News pundits seem to forget. The Iranians have also been helping the Iraqis fight ISIS. Yes, Iran, Iraq, and America now share a common enemy.

  There’s another important factor to remember when discussing Iran in the here and now. It is not just comprised of the older religious leaders and hard-liners that we sometimes see on TV spouting anti-American and anti-Israeli rhetoric. More than 70 percent or Iranians are under thirty-five years old. They do have the Internet (state censors may have blocked Facebook, but it’s still pretty easy to access), and many of them would like a country with a future. These are the Iranians President Obama was hoping to empower in the ten years following his 2015 deal.

  Main language: Persian, aka Farsi.

  Main religion: Shia Islam. It is home to the world’s largest Shia population.

  CIA compares it in terms of size to: Slightly smaller than Alaska.

  Capital: Tehran.

  Political system: Complex; combines democracy with modern Islamic theocracy. Universal suffrage over the age of eighteen. A president and parliament are elected by the people, but the unelected supreme leader controls a network of institutions.

  IRAQ

  Formerly known as Mesopotamia, which means “land between the rivers.” Beginning around 4000 BC, Mesopotamia is also known as the cradle of civilization, from where such trifles as writing pretty much originated. The area ended up as part of the Ottoman empire, and in its post–World War I division, Iraq was put under British authority as the British Mandate of Mesopotamia, at which a point a monarchy was established. The kingdom gained its independence in 1932; the monarchy was overthrown and a republic created in 1958. The country subsequently saw a succession of dictators, ending with Saddam Hussein, who took office in 1979. Hussein was thus the dictator in charge for the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) and the 1990 invasion of Kuwait … and the man removed by the US-led invasion in 2003. American presence eventually ended in 2011. Economically, the oil-rich country is ripe for exploitation—cue jostling by many a foreigner at that point. As outlined in Cheat Sheet 11, the government and military is now predominantly Shia; previously the minority Sunni had essentially ruled Iraq for centuries. (Saddam Hussein was a Sunni Muslim.) ISIS is mostly Sunni, its rise a symptom of a larger issue between Sunnis and Shiites.

  Main language: Arabic and Kurdish.

  Main religion: Shia Islam (c. 40 percent Sunni)—note the Shia predominance is something it shares with Iran and that the numbers are fluctuating owing to the number of refugees in the region.

  CIA compares it in terms of size to: slightly more than twice the size of Idaho.

  Capital: Baghdad.

  Political system: Pre-2003, basically a dictatorship. Transitional period to a democracy followed after occupation by US-led forces (which were supposedly asked to leave, so they did, in 2011, although that is becoming increasingly controversial after ISIS’s emergence). Universal suffrage over the age of eighteen. Still unstable as proven by the rise of ISIS. It will be tricky to get rid of ISIS when old Middle Eastern nation-states are collapsing and power vacuums are occurring; containment is the likely best-case scenario. This is not something the US can solve, but only support; ISIS is a regional problem and regional ownership of the issue is key in limiting its expansion. The good news, as noted here, is that fundamentalists willing to employ terrorism and violence in pursuit of political power usually fail.

  LEBANON

  Positioned at the crossroads of the Arabian hinterland and the Mediterranean Basin, Lebanon and its maritime culture is perfectly placed to be a regional center for finance and trade. And also for instability—it does border Syria and Israel, after all.

  There was civilization in Lebanon before historical records began. The Phoenicians were based there c. 1550–539 BC. Later it became part of the Roman empire and subsequently one of the foremost homes for Christianity. Eventually the area ended up as part of the Ottoman empire. Post–World War I, France (finally, not just those terrible Brits) got the mandate over the northern part of the former Ottoman empire province of Syria. In 1920 the French demarcated the region of Lebanon; the area received independenc
e in 1943. Now, for good financial and cultural reasons, Lebanon was known as the Switzerland of the (Middle) East and Beirut as the Paris of the Middle East. But it has been notoriously politically unstable: There was a civil war from 1975 to 1990; its next-door neighbor Syria’s military occupied Lebanon from 1976 to 2005. Also Israel and the Lebanon-based Shiite Hezbollah militia continued attacking each other, which even resulted in a short war in 2006. Red flag: Please don’t confuse Hezbollah with Hamas, which we talk about in the Palestinian section.

  Main language: Arabic.

  Main religion: Muslims—including Shia, Sunni, Druze, Ismailite, Alawite, and Nusayri—make up around 60 percent of the population. Christians—including Maronite Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Melkite Catholic, Armenian Orthodox, Syrian Catholic, Armenian Catholic, Syrian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Chaldean, Assyrian, Coptic, and most of the remainder Protestant.

  Capital: Beirut.

  CIA compares it in terms of size to: c. 0.7 times the size of Connecticut.

  Political system: Parliamentary democratic republic that operates under the backdrop of confessionalism, which proportionally allocates power among a number of religious communities. Suffrage is compulsory for males over twenty-one. Women with elementary education are allowed to vote.

  QATAR

  Before: used to be an impoverished backwater of a British protectorate. Now: major world player punching above its weight thanks to its oil and natural gas revenues. Qatar has been ruled by the absolute monarchy of the Al Thani family since the mid-1800s; independence was gained from the UK in 1971. Qatar’s citizens don’t pay taxes. It is the world’s wealthiest country per capita and has been using its riches to buy global clout. The news station Al Jazeera is based in Doha (and before you go off on the TV station’s being evil—it’s terribly colonialist to demand everyone get Western-centric news, no?). The Qataris are diversifying and investing in everything they can—from London real estate to art, for when the oil and gas is no more. They will be front and center of the news over the next decade. Notable for trying to bridge the gap between Muslim and non-Muslim countries, Qatar was supposed, pre-FIFA scandal, to be the first Arab country to host the FIFA World Cup, which they won the bid for in 2022. Qatar has not seen the unrest of its neighbors during the Arab Spring—indeed, it spent billions supporting revolts. Over 90 percent of its citizens are in government-funded jobs and it is a relatively moderate Islamic state. Women can drive, while non-Muslims can purchase alcohol. You know someone who knows someone who has moved to Qatar or is at least trying to get on its gravy train.