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America in the Middle East:

Writer: American RevertAmerican Revert
May 21, 202317 min read

US Foreign Relations With Syria, Iran, & Yemen

Published by Brandon Hickman on 5/21/2023.

 



Wars the US waged in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan following September 11, 2001 caused at least 4.5 million deaths and displaced 38 to 60 million people, with 7.6 million children starving today, according to studies by Brown University.





“We’ve shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force.”

U.S. General Stanley A. McCrystal



Nearly a million of the people who lost their lives died in fighting, whereas some 3.6 to 3.7 million were indirect deaths, due to health and

economic problems caused by the wars, such as diseases, malnutrition, and destruction of infrastructure. These were the conclusions of a study conducted by the Cost of Wars project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.

 

Syria


More than a decade of humanitarian crisis and hostilities has left children in Syria facing one of the most complex emergencies in the world. Two thirds of the population required assistance because of a worsening economic crisis, continued localized hostilities, mass displacement and devastated public infrastructure. Now, the country is also grappling with severe human and material damage from catastrophic earthquakes and aftershocks in February 2023 that have left families in urgent need of food, water, shelter, and emergency medical and psychosocial assistance.


Around 90 per cent of families in the country live in poverty, while more than 50 per cent are food insecure. The economic crisis is worsening negative coping mechanisms and particularly affecting female-headed households while contributing to the normalization of gender-based violence and child exploitation. Amid the conflict, many children and families have been forced to flee to safer areas, resulting in considerable internal displacement. Due to the level of poverty associated with migrating populations, the most vulnerable children and their families often end up in slums if they move to urban areas. For families living in urban slums fending off the cold, let alone providing for their children’s basic needs, can be an enormous challenge. An estimated more than 600,000 children under the age of five are stunted, the result of chronic undernutrition, leaving them at risk of irreversible physical and psychological damage.


In early August 2022, the Syrian Oil Ministry said that the US and its mercenaries are stealing an average of 66,000 barrels of oil per day in Syria, about 80 percent of Syria's oil production. The prolonged crisis has cost Syria's oil industry direct and indirect losses of 105 billion U.S. dollars, according to the statement.

Apart from oil, the U.S.-led military coalition has also smuggled and burned Syrian wheat many times in Al-Hasakah governorate, northeastern Syria. Once a food exporter, Syria now faces an acute food shortage. Two-thirds of the Syrian population relies on humanitarian assistance, and over half are food insecure, further exacerbating the humanitarian disaster in the country. Meanwhile, the U.S. has imposed strict sanctions on Syria, resulting in a sharp depreciation of the Syrian pound, soaring commodity prices, shortage of materials, and additional misery.


Steven A. Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote:

"One need not agree with what the administration is doing in Syria, but it is clear there is an underlying strategy. Biden’s ruthless pragmatism in Syria tracks with American interests in counterterrorism, counterproliferation, Israeli security, and, yes, human rights by looking for ways to increase the flow of aid. Does it treat the root cause of the problem? No. Are their reasons to be skeptical? Yes, of course. Any objective observer must acknowledge that Assad has never dealt with the aid issue in good faith and has often done just enough to keep his opponents at bay while retaining the capacity to continue malignant policies. Maybe Biden’s strategy is a bad one, but he does have one. It is based on the implicit acknowledgement that President Bashar Assad has won and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Team Biden apparently believes that by coming to terms with this reality, the United States will stand a better chance of getting more aid to the people in Syria who need it, help the poor Lebanese, alter relations with Russia (though that now has more to do with Ukraine than anything else), and peel the Syrians from the Iranians.

While I do agree with the assertion that Biden's motivations are in bold I disagree with the highlighted portion on the point that :

  • I don't believe Biden cares about proving aid to Syria or Lebanon.

  • I don't think Biden cares about preventing escalation of tension with Russia

  • I don't think he wants to win over the Syrian people, Syria's location is just geographically and economically convenient due to it's proximity to Iran/Irsael and the valuable oil there.


The US has approximately 900 troops in Syria as part of the ongoing mission to defeat ISIS. But those forces, spread across several bases in northeast Syria, have become a frequent target for Iran and its proxies in the region, who can launch drone or rocket attacks against US positions. “Iran threatens to push the Middle East into regional instability by supporting terrorist and proxy forces,” said Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley in his opening remarks at the House Armed Services committee hearing in March. But the attacks on US troops in Syria have not shifted the Pentagon’s resolve to continue the mission against ISIS, even with the threat posed by Iranian proxies.


The US has bolstered its military forces in the Middle East following a series of attacks on US troops in Syria attributed to Iranian-affiliated militias, the Pentagon said Friday, March 31.


Biden has rejected the belief that we should pull our military out of Syria instead insisting to continue his occupation of the Muslim world. Is this really because he feels threatened by the remnants of ISIS that exist there? Or perhaps does he have economic reasons for keeping American military present in the region? Based on the president’s statements during his run for the White House, one would have expected him to take a more active role in Syria. It was not that Biden-Harris 2020 offered a detailed plan to deal with Syria’s civil war, but when the candidate spoke about the issue, he signaled a muscular approach. Biden assailed President Donald Trump for not understanding the geopolitical environment, making the case that Trump’s intention to withdraw American forces from Syria would advantage the Assad regime and Iran, as well as leave the Israelis dependent on the Russians for their security. Of course, it is rarely the case that campaign rhetoric aligns with policy once a president takes the oath of office.



In March of this year twenty-three U.S. troops in Syria suffered traumatic brain injuries during attacks from Iran-backed militants. In response the US carried out a series of attacks on Syrian militants. One of these strikes they claimed had killed an unnamed Al-Qaeda leader on March 3, 2023. Shortly after theirdrone attack, the brother of the man killed denied that the victim had any links to al-Qaeda. On Friday, US Central Command (CENTCOM) said that it continues to investigate those allegations.


“CENTCOM continues to assess the outcome of the strike and has been made aware of allegations that the strike may have resulted in a civilian casualty,” spokesman Major John Moore said on Friday. The US has continued to lean heavily on air raids against armed groups across the region. The US has insisted that it carried out such attacks with a high degree of precision, but media investigations, human rights groups and watchdog organizations have found that US raids frequently kill civilians.


In the weeks since the attack, U.S. military officials have refused to identify publicly who their target was, how the apparent error occurred, whether a legitimate terrorist leader escaped and why some in the Pentagon maintain Lotfi Hassan Misto was a member of al-Qaeda despite his family’s denials. In a statement, Michael Lawhorn, a spokesman for Central Command, said officials are aware of reports of a civilian casualty and continue to assess the outcome.


Details about what transpired before and after the U.S. attack were gathered from interviews with Misto’s family and neighbors and images provided by the Syrian Civil Defense, a humanitarian response group often referred to as the “White Helmets” that responded to the strike location within minutes. Misto’s neighbors described his routines of drinking tea with family and friends, tending to his animals and leaving home mostly to pray at his mosque. He was “old-fashioned,” they said, and did not own a phone.


“Centcom takes all such allegations seriously and is investigating to determine whether or not the action may have unintentionally resulted in harm to civilians,” Lawhorn said Thursday. Typically the Pentagon will widen such investigations if enough credible evidence of civilian harm emerges, raising questions in this case about whether the information used to authorize the attack has held up to scrutiny.


May 3, 2023 was a seemingly ordinary day Misto's son Hassan told the Washington Post. Lotfi Misto would eat breakfast with his family at around 7 in the morning then head out to herd his sheep. He would take a break to drink tea with his brother around 11:30 AM. After tea, while he returned to tending his farm, an MQ-9 Predator drone soared overhead tracking Misto’s footsteps through the field. Such aircraft had been surveilling the area for nearly two weeks, neighbors said. The Hellfire missile hit him not far from where he had tea with his brother just 20 minutes earlier. The explosion sent a pillar of smoke into the bright blue sky, raising alarm in the town.


Within 10 minutes of his death the White Helmets would arrive on the scene, at least one of them wearing a camera that captured the scene they found. Some would break down crying immediately, others would simply stare in shock. Two men attempted to get Misto's other son Muhammad away from his disfigured father's corpse while another man covered in with a shirt. Misto's wife would positively identify his body to officials, concluding what had to be the worst day of her life. “Very quickly after this strike, the White Helmets came out and identified the individual with his name and his profession. Locals came forward to say, this guy’s always been a farmer. He’s never had any political activities; he’s never had any affiliation with armed groups,” said Charles Lister, the director of Syria and Countering Terrorism and Extremism at the Middle East Institute.


Sheep that were killed in the same strike that killed Misto

There would be no admission of wrongdoing or repercussions as is always the case when the US is responsible for such atrocities. This event is

reminiscent of the time the US killed 10 civilians using a drone in Syria, where the pentagon investigated themselves and cleared themselves of wrongdoing. Joe Biden would eventually apologize and admit that those killed were civilians, but for the deceased family a late apology did little to console them in their time of grieving. Misto's family probably can't expect much more than that, if they even get the apology, because the pentagon has still insisted they believe Misto was a member of Al-Qaeda until the 19 May 2023 where they admitted they were no longer confident about the deceased affiliation with the insurgency group.


A large number of US military veterans actually believe keeping U.S. troops in Syria is "All risk, no benefit". They would know better than anyone that they are serving rich economic interests and not the safety of the American people. In fact, the U.S. foreign interventionalist policies has made America far less safe in the world.



“I believe the perception caused by civilian casualties is one of the most dangerous enemies we face.”

U.S. General Stanley A. McCrystal


 

Iran


The crux of the animosity between the U.S. and Iran


For decades, Israel has considered the Islamic Republic to be its greatest adversary. Several governments, led by both the left-wing Labor Party and the right-wing Likud Party, have centered their foreign policies around the threats from Iran, ranging from its nuclear program to its creation of a network of influence across the Middle East. Israel has fought Iranian proxies on two borders—a thirty-four-day war with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006 and sporadic tensions with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad since the 1990s.

Four decades after Iran’s revolution, Israel’s concerns included:

  • Increasingly accurate ballistic missiles with ranges up to 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) or more


  • Drones—capable of airstrikes, suicide missions and reconnaissance—for domestic use as well as export to Middle East allies and Russia

  • Arming, training, and funding proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen

  • Military deployments in Syria

  • Cyberattacks on the Israeli government, infrastructure and private businesses

  • Plots to kill or kidnap Israeli citizens abroad and attack cargo ships linked to Israel


In 2021, Israel’s top military official announced that funding and preparations for an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites had “dramatically accelerated.” “It’s a very complicated job, with much more intelligence, much more operational capabilities, much more armaments,” Lt. Gen. Aviv Kohavi, then the Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, revealed in September. Israel also accelerated the pace and scope of military exercises:

  • May 2022: For the first time, the Israeli Air Force conducted large-scale maneuvers simulating an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites.

  • November 2022: Israeli and U.S. forces conducted a three-day air force exercise that simulated an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites.

  • January 2023: Israeli F-35 stealth fighters participated in drills with six U.S. F-15 fighters. The goal was to simulate attacks deep into enemy territory.

  • January 2023: Israeli and U.S. forces conducted a four-day exercise in the largest joint military exercise to date. The live-fire drill included 42 Israeli aircraft and 100 U.S. fighters, bombers and other warplanes as well as a U.S. carrier strike group. Some 6,400 U.S. personnel and more than 1,100 Israeli personnel were involved.

  • February 2023: Israeli and U.S. forces conducted a joint exercise called "Juniper Falcon" to strengthen coordination in several fields, including aerial defense and cyber warfare.

  • February 2023: Israeli and U.S. forces conducted a ten-day exercise in Israel called “Intrepid Maven 23.2” to enhance collaboration. The drill included 200 Marines and sailors.

  • March 2023: The Israeli and U.S. air forces conducted a two-week drill in Nevada called “Red Flag” to enhance collaboration in several areas, including attack operations and refueling. Nearly 100 aircraft would take off twice a day during the drill, the U.S. Air Force said.


“It’s basically since 1979, still to this day, Iran declares that Israel should be eliminated as a state. That is it should not exist the state,” Professor Meir Litvak of Tel Aviv University said.


The country’s new leaders adopted a strong anti-Israel stance, decrying the Jewish state as an imperialist power in the Middle East.


“The the new leaders in the Islamic Republic saw Israel as a garrison of the United States, an extension of the US hand in the heart of the Middle East. And Iran was a big supporter of the Palestinian cause,” said Ali Akbar Dareini, researcher and writer for the journal of the Center for Strategic Studies in Tehran. “Iran believed that Israel has been created on the basis of occupation and on the basis of Zionist ideology, which is a nationalist secular movement aimed at creating a Jewish state for Jews. And even in the Israeli Declaration of Independence, it did not define any borders.”


The ayatollahs consider Israel illegal occupiers of Jerusalem and responsible for the genocide of Palestinians. Iran has since strong-armed groups that regularly fight Israel. National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi (2022- ) In an interview on Jan. 16, 2023:

  • “If we are abandoned, Prime Minister Netanyahu will attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.”


  • “The previous government also said that it was preparing the defense forces…for a situation in which we are on our own.”


  • “The central mission of the prime minister and his primary obligation is to ensure that Iran does not obtain nuclear weapons. The alternative to an attack is accepting a reality in which a radical regime has nuclear weapons. No Israeli leader can accept that.”



Present Day Diplomatic Relations Between U.S. & Iran



The U.S. military is working with allies to send more ships and aircraft to the Middle East as Iran escalates its seizures of merchant tankers, the National Security Council announced on Friday May 12th. “Today, the Department of Defense will be making a series of moves to bolster our defensive posture in the Arabian Gulf,” NSC spokesperson John Kirby told reporters.


The government of Iran has “no justification for these actions,” said Kirby, adding that the U.S. “will not allow foreign or regional powers to jeopardize freedom of navigation in the Middle East waterways, including the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab.” Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, also said in a statement that “Iran’s unwarranted, irresponsible and unlawful seizure and harassment of merchant vessels must stop.”



A video released by the 5th Fleet appeared to show about a dozen fast-attack IRGC vessels approaching a tanker that was identified as the Panama-flagged Niovi.

The US said the tanker was forced to reverse course into Iranian territorial waters during the “unlawful seizure”. Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency confirmed that the vessel had been seized by the IRGC, but did not add further details. The Iranian judiciary’s Mizan news agency reported that the Tehran prosecutor has said the seizure was the result of a judicial order, following a complaint by a plaintiff.




The US has imposed its harshest-ever sanctions on Iran since 2018, when it unilaterally abandoned a 2015 nuclear deal with world powers that put curbs on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions. In a partial victory for Iran, judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on March 30 ruled Washington had illegally allowed courts to freeze assets of some Iranian companies and ordered the United States to pay compensation but left the amount to be determined later. However, in a blow for Tehran, the ICJ said it did not have jurisdiction over $1.75 billion in frozen assets from Iran's central bank. The rulings of the ICJ, the United Nations' top court, are binding, but it has no means of enforcing them. The United States and Iran are among a handful of countries to have disregarded its decisions in the past. Iran's seizure of an oil tanker on April 19 came as Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi arrived in Damascus for a two-day trip and met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in what

Tehran hailed as a “strategic victory” in the region amid US political failures.


Last year the U.S. tried to confiscate a cargo of Iranian oil near Greece, which prompted Tehran to seize two Greek tankers in the Gulf. Greece’s supreme court ordered the cargo returned to Iran. The two Greek tankers were later released. In a step likely to exacerbate tensions, U.S. senators on Thursday 27 April urged President Joe Biden to remove Treasury Department policy hurdles that have prevented the Department of Homeland Security from seizing Iranian oil shipments for more than a year. The ruling comes amid heightened tensions between the United States and Iran after tit-for-tat strikes between Iran-backed forces and U.S. personnel in Syria last week.


Not everyone in the US government is in agreement with Biden's continued occupation of Syria. “If Joe Biden wants to keep us in Syria’s war, then he must explain to the American people why, what the goal is, and what winning looks like,” Gaetz said in a statement ahead of the vote. “America First means actually putting the people of our country first — not the interests of the Military Industrial Complex.” In response Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., was among the lawmakers speaking on the floor against withdrawing the troops. He said that ISIS and other terrorist forces still have broader ambitions beyond the current Syrian civil war.


“Either we fight and defeat them in Syria, or we’ll fight them in the streets of our nation,” Zinke said.



Florida GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna criticized the arguments made by Zinke and colleagues sharing his perspective. “I just want to start out by saying ISIS has been destroyed. A few hundred troops will not stop the next terrorist.com, and that’s never going to end.” Luna also pointed to the difficulty controlling the U.S. border with Mexico and arguing “terrorists are literally walking in.”

A recent deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia, brokered by China, gives hope to the idea that Muslims could once again unite under a Khalifah or at the very least ally with one another against our common enemies that seek to destroy Islam and bring chaos to the Middle East. Gerald Feierstein, senior fellow on US diplomacy at the Middle East Institute think tank, said the Chinese involvement in the deal may have been overstated, citing the talks that already took place in Iraq and Oman. The deal “is consistent with what the US has seen as the right way forward, which is to reduce tension and to try to bring Iran back into the international community in some way”, Feierstein said. “The simple fact of the matter is that the US could not have played this role,” Feierstein, a former US diplomat who served as ambassador to Yemen, told Al Jazeera.

Yemen



Who are the parties involved?
The Houthi movement, named for a religious leader from the Houthi clan and officially known as Ansar Allah, emerged in the late 1980s as a vehicle for religious and cultural revivalism among Zaydi Shiites in northern Yemen. The Zaydis are a minority in the Sunni Muslim–majority country but predominant in the northern highlands along the Saudi border. The Houthis became politically active after 2003, opposing Saleh for backing the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq but later allying with him after his resignation as president. This alliance was a tactical one: Saleh’s loyalists opposed Hadi’s UN-backed government and, feeling marginalized in the transition process, sought to regain a leading role in Yemen. Saleh won the allegiance of some members of Yemen’s security forces, tribal networks, and political establishment. But in 2017, after Saleh shifted his support to the Saudi-led coalition, he was killed by Houthi forces.
At Hadi’s behest in 2015, Saudi Arabia cobbled together a coalition of Sunni-majority Arab states: Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Qatar, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). By 2018, the coalition had expanded to include forces from Eritrea and Pakistan. They launched an air campaign against the Houthis with the aim of reinstating Hadi’s government. For Riyadh, accepting Houthi control of Yemen would mean allowing a hostile neighbor to reside on its southern border, and it would mark a setback in its long-standing contest with Tehran. After Saudi Arabia, the UAE has played the most significant military role in the coalition, contributing some ten thousand ground troops, mostly in Yemen’s south. However, the UAE removed most of them after entering into conflict with its coalition allies in 2019, when it backed the separatist Southern Transitional Government (STC), which captured Aden. That November, Hadi and the STC president signed the Riyadh Agreement, which affirms that the factions will share power equally in a postwar Yemeni government,

So how does the U.S. play into this picture? Seven years into a bloody civil war and twelve years into an intensive counterterrorism campaign in Yemen, the United States finds itself entangled in a messy regional proxy fight. The United States has been deeply compromised by its support for a Saudi-led coalition that has contributed to a horrific war, political instability, and the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. As we approach the seventh anniversary of the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, it is no longer clear why the United States is fighting or how the use of force will promote U.S. and regional security interests. What is clear is that U.S. operations in Yemen have contributed to the current unstable situation, and that military force alone will not bring peace to the country or secure the United States from the threats it sought to counter in the first place.


President Biden’s announcement that the United States would no longer provide “offensive” support for Saudi military operations in Yemen likely brings this chapter to a close, for now. But continued servicing of Saudi jets and other “defensive” support could reignite such legal concerns. The United States has no sufficiently compelling interest in Yemen that would justify being implicated in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Nor has U.S. military aid tilted the balance of the conflict: the Saudi-led airwar has proven largely futile. The original objective of the Saudi–led coalition — to defeat the Houthis, expel them from Sana’a, and restore now–ousted President Hadi to power — appears increasingly unlikely, as the Houthis consolidate control in the former North Yemen while both Saudi Arabia and the UAE look to disengage from the conflict.


However, even if the Houthis were to be defeated militarily, the internationally recognized government of Yemen, now represented by the Presidential Leadership Council, a group of eight men put in place by Saudi Arabia, would continue to compete with one another for dominance, none of them strong enough to consolidate control. Given the complexity of the conflict, with a myriad of rival militias vying for power, Washington’s goal in trying to empower one warring party over another is unclear.


The United States has no business trying to sway the outcome of Yemeni affairs. The Houthis are doing tremendous violence to the lives of many Yemenis who do not share their exclusivist views on genealogy that prioritize the sayyids, or descendants of the Prophet Mohammed (saw). They are unlikely to moderate their ideology because they require a narrative of perpetual revolution in order to justify rule by the sayyids over the remaining 90 to 95 percent of the population. The Houthis increasingly violate women’s rights, as more radical elements of the movement gain influence, as often happens during violent conflict. However, U.S. involvement in the war against them has had the opposite of its intended effect: the Houthis have only grown stronger.


Meanwhile, the internationally recognized government, now represented by the Presidential Leadership Council, continues to squabble internally rather than unite against the Houthis. The eight member council largely consists of the heads of various militias, including the head of the Southern Transitional Council, whose primary objective remains independence for South Yemen. The members of the PLC oppose each other to a similar extent as they oppose the Houthis. The Saudi and Emirati decision to establish the PLC reflects their desire to wind down their direct involvement in Yemen. The longer the war drags on, the more fundamentalist and repressive the Houthis are likely to become. In the absence of Saudi, Emirati, and U.S. involvement, Houthi repression may increasingly incite the population under their rule. If the United States wishes to achieve a weakening of the Houthi position, paradoxically, the best way to do so may be to withdraw. If the Houthis are left to govern, they will face the consequences of the violence they have wreaked upon the population under their control.


It is likely that the people of Yemen are suffering the worst humanitarian crises in the world today. Children are literally starving to death, some eating their own hands out of hunger, and it is the fault of America. Below is a Vice video on their suffering:





Sources

 
 
 

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