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Could Iran stop ships from using the straits of Hormuz? Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Jon Alterman, director and senior fellow of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

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Marco Werman: Iran’s threats may not carry a great deal of credibility, but that doesn’t mean they should be ignored. Jon Alterman is director and senior fellow of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He say Iran can’t close the strait of Hormuz, but they can cause troubles there.

Jon Alterman: They can create mischief in the straits of Hormuz. They can create uncertainty in the straits of Hormuz. I don’t think for a minute they could close the straits of Hormuz. What they could do is they could make people uncomfortable enough that the insurance rates for shipping would go up and make it uneconomical to use the straits.

Werman: Well, how would they do that? I mean the US has a fifth fleet there. What can Iran do to create this havoc?

Alterman: On the one hand, they could lay mines, and on the other hand, they could use this huge fleet of very small boats, many of which are armed, to harass ships and make it dangerous to go through the straights.

Werman: I mean the US has twenty battleships there with a massive support crew. Is there an advantage to having a fleet and fast footed strategy?

Alterman: Well, the Iranians fight asymmetrically. They don’t want to come up against the US navy warship to warship, and, in fact, the Iranian navy doesn’t really work inside the straits of Hormuz. They don’t work in the gulf. The work outside the gulf, so what you’re dealing with in the gulf are the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp Navy which fights in a very, very different way than the US Navy, and what you find on the US side is you’re dealing with lots of very small targets that are moving quickly, sometimes swarming ships, nobody’s really sure what’s a threatening ship, what’s a threatening gesture, rather than battleship to battleship, because the Iranian know if it were a battleship to battleship battle, they would lose in about four minutes.

Werman: Iran has said it will close the straights if the US and The West continue to impose sanctions on the country. Is that threat consequential enough that it might actually prevent further sanctions?

Alterman: I don’t think it will, partly because the US sanctions will be driven by Congress, partly because, I think, the Iranians are misjudging the world’s attitude toward Iran. What I hear when I talk to Russians and Chinese and other in the gulf is they feel that the Iranians are too bent on conflict and what they’d like is for the Iranians to lower the temperature of their confrontation with the rest of the world. I think the Iranian’s instinct is to focus on their weakness and their isolation and to remind people that they can inflict cost, that they can inflict pain.

Werman: Tell me this, John. Given all the moving parts and disparate alliances in the region, it would seem that no amount of war games or modelling would be able to forecast how this would all end up.

Alterman: There are two things to keep in mind. One is that this is fundamentally political. This isn’t about a military exercise. This is about trying to work global politics, trying to work the sanctions game, trying to work the diplomacy of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, preventing sanctions from being against Iran. This is really a political game and we’re seeing people use military instruments, but it’s fundamentally political. The other part of this is that the more you raise the temperature, the greater the possibility that you’ll have a miscalculation, you’ll have an accident, it will be interpreted the wrong way, and you’ll slide toward a conventional war even if each side doesn’t want a conventional war. A little more than a year ago, there was an incident where the US was within a minute of firing on an Iranian ship that was perceived to be hostile, and it turned out not to have been that level of threat, but we came very close. Once you start cascading down that way, there’s no predicting how it’s going to turn out.

Werman: Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Thanks very much.

Alterman: Thank you, Marco.

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Syrian Flag (Photo: bleu man/Flickr)

On one side is Iran, an old ally of the Assad regime. On the other is Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf Kingdoms.

Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who sees it as a new clash of civilizations.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: The Arab League led by Saudi Arabia has taken a tough line with Syria. It’s demanding an end to the Syrian government’s repression. That may seem a bit hypocritical given how willing many Arab League member governments have been to crack down on dissent in their own countries. But the pressure placed on Syria may be part of a bigger showdown in the region – the confrontation between Gulf-Arab states and Iran. Some say Syria, a longtime ally of Iran, is just the latest battleground in what’s being called ‘a hidden cold war’. Jon Alterman is Director and Senior Fellow of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Jon, when people talk of Iran’s enemies, most people think of Israel and the U.S. What is at the root of this hostility between Iran and Saudi Arabia?

Jon Alterman: For centuries there have been tensions across what the Iranians call the Persian Gulf, what the Gulf Arabs call the Arabian Gulf. They are different. The Iranians are not Arabs, they are Persians and the Arabs have been threatened. When I was talking with a Senior Gulf royal a few years ago about Sunni-Shia tensions in Iraq, he said, “You don’t understand. The Iranians have only been Shia for 500 years; they’d been Persians for millennia.”

Werman: How serious is the tension at this moment in time and how is it expressing itself?

Alterman: I think it is serious. It’s partly because of a sense that Iran is on the verge of having a nuclear weapon; that Iran with a nuclear weapon would behave more recklessly and Iran would be harder to deter. I think there’s also a sense that the United States isn’t the same kind of force in the Gulf and that makes the Gulf States feel more exposed. One of the battlegrounds for this battle for influence is Syria which is Iran’s principal Arab ally and a proxy of Iran in the Levant.

Werman: So the big picture is pretty complex. Connect one more dot for us. How does this all play into the other equation in the region – the Israeli threat to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities? Is there a tacit alliance emerging right now between the Saudis and the Israelis?

Alterman: I don’t think there is. I think the Israelis have their own set of calculuses. One of the Israeli concerns is, with the fall of Bashar al-Assad arguably excellent news for the Israelis, if the next government of Syria is pro-Turkish, the Israelis have an increasing number of problems with Turkey. They feel it’s hostile. They feel it’s a Muslim brotherhood-led government. The Israelis are likely to feel even more encircled by Islamic radicals as they see it.

Werman: Yeah. That’s kind of ironic, isn’t it?

Alterman: Yes.

Werman: Do you think the tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia could come to blows between the two countries?

Alterman: It’s unlikely the two sides would have a military confrontation in part because they’re set up to fight differently. The Iranians have really tried not to fight army on army but to fight asymmetrically, that is, using guerillas. They don’t want to go head to head…they precisely don’t want to go head to head with an army like Saudi Arabia’s. So, I think what you are likely to see is a war of attrition. You’re likely to see each side trying to undermine each other using proxies but I don’t think you’re about to see the Saudi and Iranian armies on the battlefield fighting each other.

Werman: Do you think this essentially comes down to a Sunni-Shia split then?

Alterman: I don’t think it does come down to a Sunni-Shia split. To a degree, it’s an Arab-Persian split but it is also about two countries that think that they are the rightful leaders of the Gulf. The U.S. was able to split this difference in the 1970s when they had the Twin Pillars Policy in the Gulf where its key allies were both Saudi Arabia and Iran. That’s harder to do. The Iranians have historically felt like they have been shortchanged by the world and they’re fighting for the respect they believe they deserve. The Saudis believe for any number of reasons, including but not limited to their wealth and the holy mosques in Mecca and Medina, that they are the leaders not just of the Middle East but of the entire Islamic world and who are the Iranians to push them around. Ultimately, you have two civilizations or two countries that feel they represent civilizations, each of which feels that it should be the predominantly power in the Gulf and they can’t even agree what that Gulf should be called.

Werman: Jon Alterman is the Director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Thank you.

Alterman: Thank you Marco.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a coproduction of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.  If the US road to Iraq began on 9/11 then the 10th anniversary falls on what could be the twilight of the American military presence there. Some 46,000 US troops remain in the country, but they’re all due to leave by the end of this year.  That’s according to an agreement the Bush administration negotiated with the Iraqi government a few years back.  Whether that will actually happen isn’t clear.  The Obama administration reportedly wants to keep between 3,000-5,000 US troops in Iraq beyond this year. Jon Alterman directs the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.  Jon, what are the facts on the ground in Iraq that support Obama’s call for keeping troops there?

Jon Alterman: There’s a wide-spread sense not only among Americans, but among many Iraqis that the complete withdrawal of American troops in Iraq would lead Iraq to fall into chaos, to more of the sectarian strife and the killings that we saw several years ago. I think there’s a sense that everybody has that there shouldn’t be a permanent US presence in Iraq, but a sense that Iraq is not quite ready to walk on its own and having a residual training force is in the interest not only of the United States, but more importantly, the interest of Iraqis.

Werman: Regardless of the number of troops that are desired by President Obama and military officials in this country, it’s ultimately that’s up to the Iraqi government, so what is the likelihood that Iraq will allow any US troops to remain at the end of this year?

Alterman: Iraqis have been telling Americans all along that they want to renegotiate that agreement.  At first there was an argument that well, we just have to go through the prime ministerial elections and then once we get through that political hurdle then we will arrange for the Americans to be here for longer. And then there’s the sense well, we’re working with our coalition politics and well, we have to [inaudible 1:50] in and you know, some of the people, the Shia nationalists who are tied in some ways to Iran and so on, and so on.  There’s always been another reason why the deal couldn’t be made, and when I’ve talked to the Americans who’ve been negotiating with the Iraqis, they say it’s not like the Iraqi government is holding out because they want to get something from us, they’re holding out because they can’t reach a deal on their side for what the Iraqi position should be.  And if they can’t agree on that then you can’t make an agreement from the American side.

Werman: And as far as some analysts’ prediction that Iraq will fall into chaos if there are no US troops there, how do you see it?  Is that likely?

Alterman: I think it’s a crapshoot and ultimately depends on how much of a risk are you willing to take.  The other part of that question though is how much could the United States really do with a small troop presence if things started to go south?  I don’t see any circumstances under which the US would reintroduce a large number of troops.  I don’t see any circumstances under which a small number of troops, a few thousand troops could make that much of a difference on the ground if things got worse. But you certainly could see if people said there’s nobody there, there’s no holds barred that things could slip out of control and the question is is that complete unacceptable?  Is it, are you willing to take a 5% chance, a 20% chance?  And what is the kind of American troop presence and the roles for American troops that would minimize the possibility that things in Iraq would start to unravel?

Werman: Will US politics affect any of this?  I mean Obama campaigned on the promise of end the Iraq war and with a presidential election coming up again next year will that dynamic change any of this?

Alterman: The people I know who work on Iraq in the US government are just dismayed that Americans seem to have forgotten a better Iraq; they seem to have lost any interest in Iraq.  I can’t see this becoming a large issue. It seems to me that where the political campaign is going is very much toward domestic issues, toward budget issues.  The interesting thing is that overseas people pay tremendous attention to the domestic aspects of American policy and their implications overseas.  Foreign audiences study the impact of those domestic decisions on the US role in the world.  I haven’t heard a lot of discussion in the presidential campaign about that issue of the American role in the world.  It is clearly at a potential inflection point with dramatic consequences not for the US position in the Gulf, but all through the world.

Werman: John Alterman, a senior fellow and director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.  Thank you, Jon.

Alterman: Thank you, Marco.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: As we heard in Katy Clark’s report, the United States is worried about Somalia becoming the next breeding ground for violent extremists. President Obama’s Assistant for Homeland Security and Counter-terrorism gave a talk in Washington today. John Brennan spoke about the administration’s strategy. Sarah Mendelson was at that talk. She is the director of the human rights and security initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. This talk by John Brennan was billed as a chance for the Obama team to really lay out its counter terrorism strategy. What was the takeaway message that you came away with?

SARAH MENDELSON: Well, I’d say that there were bits of it that were new, old and unknown. On the new part, essentially the Obama Administration is declaring that there’s not a global war on terror, that there’s a specific battle with terrorists in various places. Um, what is old or in some ways what we saw in the Bush Administration is a focus, at least at the rhetorical level, on the condition that can lead to someone to join a terrorist organization. The socio-economic deprivation. That is something that we heard a lot of from David Colcullen [PH], who was a state department official in the Bush Administration. And I think it’s interesting that it was a central part of John Brennan’s speech today.

LISA MULLINS: Well let’s get to that then first, how one prevents terrorism? How one specifically prevents individuals from gravitating toward extremist groups? Is there a new plan under the Obama Administration?

SARAH MENDELSON: I didn’t hear too much about details, what I heard was a focus on the fact that terrorist organizations often times can provide governments structures, deliver services to people in environments where the government itself is not doing that.

LISA MULLINS: Specifically places like Somalia?

SARAH MENDELSON: Well, like Somalia. I mean, he mentioned [INDISCERNIBLE]. I can think of parts of the north Caucuses in Russia where we know that this has occurred. So, what the specific policy is that the Obama Administration is gonna under take to address that is not clear to me. I mean, he talked about integrating every element of US power, including foreign assistance. At the moment we have no idea who the head of US Aid is gonna be.

LISA MULLINS: US Aid, which is what?

SARAH MENDELSON: Which is the instrument of the US government that delivers foreign assistance.

LISA MULLINS: Okay, so Brennan talks about the political economic social factors that put individuals on the path to violence, but he’s not saying how the Obama Administration would differ from the Bush Administration on cutting that path short.

SARAH MENDELSON: Well, I mean, I would say that he was making an argument that combined both, although I think the White House doesn’t like to speak this way, but combines both hard power and soft power, that there’s a military element to this. But there are also very specific political economic, and social dynamics that need to be addressed. Again, the details of how exactly they’re gonna do that, I didn’t really hear today.

LISA MULLINS: Okay, so how about on the other end then, as you say, the use of military force potentially. One of the things I know that Brennan said today, this counter terrorism advisor to the president, said that the US needs to replace the so-called war on terror with a new strategy, because, he said, terrorism is a tactic, a means to an end, and you cannot have a war against a tactic. It sounds in a way as if it’s just semantics. Do you hear more than that in it?

SARAH MENDELSON: I think it’s more, it is more than semantics. He’s quoting Dr. Braginski, who is former national security advisor to President Carter. What they’re really doing is they’re putting terrorism, or the struggle that we have with terrorists, in a larger context. It’s not the only challenge before obviously the Obama administration, and US foreign policy. In some ways, I think critics are gonna read this as a downgrading of terrorism. And I think people who’ve been long concerned that the Bush Administration focused on terrorism to the detriment of other issues, will be greatly relieved.

LISA MULLINS: So is the Obama Administration taking the US in a new direction, in terms of countering terrorism or not?

SARAH MENDELSON: I think that Mr. Brennan put some architecture around what has already been, a house that’s been built in some ways. I think we’ve been going down this path for quite a while, you don’t hear Obama Administration officials talk about a global war. They haven’t talked about it that way for a long time. But there’s still pieces that are left to be put in place. I mean, if foreign assistance, for example, is gonna play a role, if democracy assistance is gonna play a role, we need to know more about how it’s gonna play a role, who’s gonna be leading it, and what role precisely it plays in the arsenal that the Obama Administration is using to counter terrorist threats.

LISA MULLINS: Alright. Sarah Mendelson is with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, speaking to us about the Obama Administration’s strategies on countering terrorism. Nice to speak with you, thank you.

SARAH MENDELSON: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.