The Middle East in Upheaval: Interpreting and Predicting

Daniel Pipes is founder and head of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum (MEF). He is also an American writer and political commentator, and widely regarded as one of the most articulate conservatives in the US. Daniel Pipes has written or co-written more than a dozen books and writes for many newspapers and magazines. He lectures prolifically at home and abroad and appears on television interview and discussion programs. On Wednesday 28 August 2013, while on a visit to Australia sponsored by the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), Daniel Pipes addressed The Sydney Institute on current upheaval in the Middle East. The paper which follows is an edited transcript of Daniel Pipes’ address.

THE MIDDLE EAST IN UPHEAVAL: INTERPRETING AND PREDICTING

DANIEL PIPES

Thank you Gerard, and good evening ladies and gentlemen. I’m delighted to be here and make a return visit to The Sydney Institute – and grateful that you’ve taken off a few minutes from your riveting elections.

I have the pleasure of being a specialist on the Middle East, and I can’t mention how many times hosts have said, “Well you’ve just picked the wrong moment.” But, it’s particularly the right moment, right now, because there’s so much going on. What I thought I would do would be to discuss four topics: Iran, the current upheavals, US policy and Israel.

Iran must take primary place, because it is the most important country in the region. I say that for two reasons. First, the Irani revolution of 1979 inaugurated the current era of Islamism, or the attempt to make Muslims strong, which began after many tribulations through severe and complete applications of Islamic law. The ideas had been around. But revolutionary Islamism only came to power 34 years ago in Iran. And I suspect that when this Islamic republic of Iran is overthrown, that era will be finished. There is great hostility towards the regime in Iran. It could happen at any time. Secondly, Iran is crucial because the uranium keeps on being enriched. At a point, not too long from now, the Iranians will have sufficient uranium for nuclear weapons.

So, how advanced they are they? When they will reach that breakout point, we don’t know. We also don’t know what the exact policies of the US and Israeli governments are. Will they attack or will they not attack? I can’t tell you, but I can speculate. I tend to think that at least some of the information we have on this topic is disinformation, intended for an audience in Tehran, and not for you and me. Finally, we don’t know what the response to a strike might be. Would the Iranian body politic wrap itself in the flag of Iran to become patriotic towards the regime, or would it be alienated even more from attacks on it because of what it claims is development for nuclear energy? We do know, however, that the Iranian leadership is absolutely devoted to building nuclear weapons, as in the case of North Korea. They see themselves as members of a club that is now impervious to outside influence such as they now suffer. They believe they are now a great power.

What differentiates the Iranians from any other holder of nuclear weapons is that they have an apocalyptic mindset. The Twelfth Imam, the Mahdi, the End of Days, the Day of Resurrection, The Day of Judgement, these are ideas which are not present with other governments. They are distinctly part of the Iranian mindset. And the connection is a clear one – the End of Days is going to start when there’s chaos. What better way to bring about chaos than nuclear weapons. So, for all these reasons, I believe it’s important to stop the Iranians.

Economic measures alone will not suffice unless those economic measures should prompt the population to get rid of the government. Unless that happens, and that’s a hope rather than a plan, I don’t think the Iranians will be stopped. And, they must be stopped. Not just because of nuclear weapons being in the hands of a rogue regime, but because of their apocalyptic mindset. It’s important for someone to stop the weapons being built. The only way to do that is through force. I do not believe that there should be regime change or occupation but, as in case of Israel knocking out the Iraqi reactor in 1981 and the Syrian reactor in 2007, there should be action against the nuclear installation. In the cases of Iraq and Syria, the governments aborted their nuclear ambitions. One has to assume that in the case of the Iranis, they will continue with nuclear development. That means it might be necessary, for whoever undertakes this, to go back again and again.

The second topic is the Muslim upheavals. They began on 17 December 2010, when a fruit and vegetable vendor in a small Tunisian town got slapped by a policewoman. They continued with other small developments of that sort and touched a nerve. It’s my belief that this process of some three years, which has been disappointing, ugly and, in the case of Syria, absolutely hideous, is a necessary one. In the preceding 40 years, from 1970 to 2010, the Iran leadership has been similarly despotic, sponsoring retrograde police states.

In Libya, Gaddafi came to power in 1969 and was still there in 2010. Assad, the father of the current ruler of Syria. came to power in 1970 and his son is still there today. Other rulers came to power soon after, in Yemen it was Saleh in 1978, in Egypt it was Mubarak in 1981. More importantly than the personal continuity was the fact that every case was a police state, existing for the pleasure of the ruler – Saddam Hussein, the kings, the emirs – no leader paid attention to the population. People were subservient to a cruel state, a greedy state. By late 2010, there was a revolt.

Now, it could lead to something worse, it could lead to something better, but it is necessary to a certain point. I wish it had happened earlier, in 2000 not 2010. On the other hand, I was glad it was 2010 and not 2020. Things would have been far worse if the rebels had held out longer. Take two of the most prominent states, Egypt and Syria. In Egypt, there are two key facts. One is that the military has been in charge since the revolution in 1952. This has not been obvious because Egyptian rulers have not worn military uniforms. But they’ve all been from the military, with the exception of Morsi in the past year. Over the 61 years, the Egyptian military has grown in its economic role, its political role and in its administrative role. The military is basically a despotic institution and not very well adapted for fighting. But it is very good at controlling Egypt. For reasons of its own, the military permitted Morsi from the Islamic Brotherhood and Islamists to rule for one year. And then it decided to get rid of him. That’s one fact.

The other major fact is that the military is very engaged in the Egyptian economy. Some estimates suggest 25 per cent of the economy is run by the military. My favourite fact is that nine macaroni factories are run by the military. This grip on the economy is something the military is very loathe to lose because of its many privileges, economic and otherwise. What Egypt desperately needs is an economic loosening. It needs a free market. But the military will not let go. As a result, the famed bread basket of the Nile is incapable of feeding its own population. Indeed, Egypt imports, as an absolute per cent, more food than any other country in the world. Some 70 per cent of its choleric intake is imported. And this is from what is, basically, an agricultural country.

Military rule and present day hunger are the two things that confront Egypt. Its new military ruler will presumably be just as sluggish and dictatorial and rearguard as the ones who preceded him. Egypt’s economy is in constant decline. The Egyptians are not part of the globalisation. When did you last buy a product made in Egypt? When did last hear of an invention from Egypt? Unless there’s a real loosening up, a real opening up, I don’t see that things getting any better.

Syria of course, is even worse. There’s a full scale civil war. At this point, the Syrian map divides into three, the rebel controlled areas, the government controlled areas and the Kurdish controlled areas. The rebels are even worse than the government, which is saying a lot as the government is atrocious. The Syrian government is interested only in its own survival. It doesn’t have some grand plan for Syria or the world. The rebels are predominantly Islamist, and have a vision for Syria and the Middle East, for the Muslim world and for the rest. This vision is more dangerous in my view than the government. The third party is Kurdish. The new autonomous region in the north east of Syria is continuous with the autonomous region of Iraq that’s Kurdish. There is potential for the emergence of a Kurdish state which would be quite a change in the map of the Middle East. This could also include portions of Turkey and Iran. Even if this does not happen, this is a major change. The Kurds have shown they can handle self rule without being extremists, or exchanging in violence.

The key fact is that Syria has been dominated for 47 years, since 1966, by a small Islamic sect called the Alawite. They live in the North West of the country and are only one tenth or so of the population. Historically despised, their coming to power in 1966 was a shock. Most Sunni-Arabic speakers hated this and now we’re seeing the result of that hatred in the venomous civil war that’s underway. The most likely prospect is a fracturing of Syria roughly along the lines of where it is now. Any imminent strike by American or British or other forces on Syria is a long scale possibility. It would be a symbolic gesture which I would oppose. We should only use force when one has a specific reason – when one is ready to win something and not for symbolic reasons or teach a lesson.

This brings me to my third topic, US policy. The news is that Barack Obama has been on the phone with 88 foreign leaders to discuss the Syrian situation. You start wondering who he’s calling. I’ve read that he called Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the new strong man of Egypt, about two weeks ago to implore him not to use force against the Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Sisi didn’t take the call. Chuck Hagel, the American Defense Secretary called El-Sisi 50 to 70 times and each conversation was an hour long or more, to implore him not to use force. He did use force. This is an illustration of the fecklessness of US foreign policy. Secretary of State John Kerry, in his first four months, from February to June this year, went six times to Jerusalem and Ramallah. He achieved negotiations but it staggers the imagination that, with all the problems in the world, the Middle East alone can envelope the US Secretary of State.

The price of American irrelevancy in the Middle East has not yet been terribly high. But the Iranian centrifuges are spinning and the Egyptian body politic is very fluid. There could be a break with the peace treaty with Israel. Yet, in my more sardonic moments, I like to point out that Qatar, with a population of 250,000 nationals, has more impact on the Middle East than the United States population of 314 million. When you look at the Syrian, Egyptian and Israeli theatres, in every case you see a US policy that’s inconsistent, self-contradictory and meandering. For all that, the United States is a good influence in the world and I do hope that this is a temporary aberration.

Finally, a few words about Israel which is a small country of eight million people situated in the middle of all this. In contrast to tyranny and civil war, Israel is doing extraordinarily well. You’re all aware of the military prowess of Israel, and you are probably also aware of the technological achievements. But there’s more. Israel, alone of Western countries, has a total fertility rate well above replacement at 2.65. France is number two in the West with 2.08, the US has 2.04 and Australia is 1.77. Far below are countries such as Germany and Greece, with Singapore on 0.79. Israel’s replacement rate is extraordinary. In part, this has to do with the Arabs and the Haredim or ultra orthodox, but it’s not entirely that. The regular people in Israel are having lots of children and the numbers are going up, unlike the rest of the world.

The second fact is economic. Australia comes in number two in economic growth since the great recession began in 2008, with a growth rate of 9 per cent. The United States has 2.5 per cent and the Eurozone has minus .5 per cent. Against this, Israel has 14.5 per cent growth in the same period. Also, Israel’s R&D, at 4.5 per cent, is the highest in the world. With recent energy discoveries in the Mediterranean, Israel now has, per square kilometre, more energy than any other country in the world. For many years, there was a joke about how Moses went the wrong way after taking took a wrong turn – well, maybe he didn’t.

There are two threats against Israel. One is the threat of weapons of mass destruction – chemical and nuclear – which loom not only over Israel but Saudi Arabia and other nations of the region. But Israel has a second, and unique, concern. This is delegitimisation – or the notion that Israel should not exist, has no right to exist. The boycott divestment sanction (BDS) campaign is one expression of this belief, but there are plenty of others. The notion that Israel is the combination of a nineteenth century ideology, or Zionism, that is out of date in the twenty-first century has a certain appeal in departments of English and international relations – what we might call the new churches.

While this is a serious matter, it’s also faintly ridiculous. I suspect every one of you carries a phone with Israeli technology; many of you depend on medicines and medical procedures that have been invented in Israel. Of the 193 members of the UN, Israel has diplomatic relations with 156 of them. As a nation, it is not exactly isolated. And, while the United States is in poor shape in terms of foreign policy, it is still an important country. Israel has a four to one favourability ratio, compared to the Palestinians, in the US. So there’s bedrock support for Israel that one doesn’t find for its opponents. In the long term, the delegitimisation campaign is not likely to succeed.