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Daniel Pipes, Gregg Roman, and Michael Rubin – the Middle East Forum’s president, director, and director of policy analysis, respectively – participated in a Jewish Republic Alliance (JRA) panel discussion on March 5 titled “The New Axis of Evil: Iran, Qatar, and Turkey,” with each speaker focusing on one of the three adversarial Middle East governments in turn.
“In a world where deterrence remains a central goal, Middle East Forum scholars have provided unparalleled analysis and recommendations,” said JRA cofounder Bruce Karasik in his introduction to the discussion. “Their work underscores the critical need for clear, decisive action to counteract the aggression of these states, which defy the principles of peace and security that we hold dear.”
Iran
“Bottom line upfront: the status quo is not tenable when it comes to Iran,” said Rubin right off the bat. Iran is “on the offense” throughout the region and “appears just a few turns of a screw away from developing a nuclear weapon.”
Many in Washington dismiss the danger of Iran rushing to build, let alone use, a nuclear weapon with the common refrain that “Iran isn’t suicidal.” What concerns Rubin is not that the clerical regime, which “has lost legitimacy in the eyes of its people” by brutally suppressing mass demonstrations, is suicidal, but that it may be, or may become, “terminally ill.” Should its collapse become inevitable, “deterrence goes out the window,” he explained, making a rush by ideological purists in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to deploy a nuclear weapon a real danger.
Even if the regime manages to stave off revolt by its subjects, Rubin sees a period of uncertainty and instability ahead for Iran given the looming departure of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, an 85-year-old partially paralyzed two-time cancer survivor. When Osama bin Laden was killed and Ayman al-Zawahiri declared his successor as Al-Qaeda leader, “other claimants to power competed to try to show the most bloodshed, to sponsor the most spectacular terrorist attacks.” A similar dynamic in Iran could set the Middle East on fire.
Rubin emphasized that Washington must not stay on the sidelines as Iranians grapple with their future. “Is the next administration – Democrat or Republican – prepared to try to empower ordinary Iranians who may want to throw off the yoke of the dictatorship under which they’ve lived for the past 45 years? Are they prepared to try to marginalize the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps?”
Rubin threw cold water on the common assumption that U.S. air strikes can end the Iranian nuclear threat. Air strikes can only “effect a delay” in Iran’s advancement toward the bomb, and only “at significant cost.”
The question then becomes, “What are we going to do to take advantage of that delay to ultimately resolve the problem, which is the nature of the Iranian regime?” said Rubin. “Simply using American jets and pilots to kick the can down the road ... at tremendous cost in blood and treasure ... would be irresponsible.”
Qatar
Gregg Roman discussed what he called the “old Qatari two-step” – the emirate’s effort to simultaneously position itself as both an “indispensable ally” of America and a premier sponsor of terrorism.
Like other Gulf Arab states, Qatar provides the United States with military installations (Al Udeid Air Base, outside Doha), buys American military exports, and spends billions of dollars investing in American companies. Unlike its neighbors, Qatar has enthusiastically supported and financed Islamic extremists across the region. In addition to bankrolling Hamas and lavishly sheltering its top leaders, Qatar hosted the Muslim Brotherhood’s late spiritual leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi for many years, turned a blind eye to ISIS fundraising, and bolstered anti-democratic Islamist forces in the Syrian and Libyan civil wars.
Qatar overreached with the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, in which 32 American citizens were killed (and at least five taken hostage). Roman calls for Qatar to face a four-pronged backlash.
First, Qatar’s political lobbying efforts should be exposed, and their recipients called out. “If you’re an American politician, whether Republican or Democrat, and you have relations with the Qataris, you have to be held to account for that.”
Second, Qatar, which has become the largest foreign donor to U.S. universities, must be “ejected from the American college campus.”
Third, Qatar’s sprawling media assets in the United States must be scrutinized and reined in. Al Jazeera has press credentials for more journalists on Capitol Hill than any other media outlet, suggesting that their role has little to do with journalism. Most of these should be revoked, said Roman. “Hamas propaganda [outlets] should not be able to operate in the heart of American democracy.”
Fourth, Qatar is certain to face substantial “civil actions brought by American victims of Hamas and Qatari-funded terrorism.” The wide array of Qatari assets within reach of the U.S. financial system “should be on alert,” said Roman, “because I can guarantee you attorneys representing the victims of Hamas terrorism will be coming for them.”
Turkey
Daniel Pipes notes that “If Iran is obviously an enemy and Qatar is not so obviously an enemy, Turkey appears to be a friend. It is a formal ally – a NATO ally. If something happens to Turkey, then we have to go to its defense, and vice versa.”
During the half century between 1952 and 2002, when nationalist disciples of Kemal Atatürk ruled in Ankara, Turkey was indeed a friend and ally. “US policy towards turkey was simple ... the United States led, and the Turks followed.” But “corruption and incompetence” brought down the Kemalist political establishment, leading to the 2002 election of Islamist Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as prime minister (and later as president, after constitutional changes strengthened that office). Cautiously at first, more recently with breakneck speed, Erdoğan steered Turkish foreign policy steadily against American interests. Today, Turkey is an ally in name only and, like Qatar, actively sponsors anti-American Islamists the region over.
Successive American administrations have turned a blind eye to this, believing that “the good old days can come back, that we just have to wait out Erdoğan [and] things will turn out okay,” said Pipes. But U.S. policymakers have failed to appreciate that Turkey has become a “changed place” under Erdoğan’s 21-year reign:
It is a dictatorship. Yeah, there are elections, but there are also elections in a few days in Russia. Elections don’t mean a whole lot. It’s a dictatorship. Erdoğan has consolidated power within Turkey’s institutions – the military, the intelligence services, the police, the judiciary, the banks, the media, the election boards, the mosques, and the educational system. He has a private security service called Sadat, which is kind of an army of his own. Academics and others who attend protests are accused of terrorism and thrown into jail. As his popularity has waned ... in the last seven, eight years, .... election abuses, dominating media coverage, having goons attack rival parties’ offices, and so forth have increased.
Turks have become anti-American. When [Erdoğan] came to power, more than half the Turks were pro-American; now, maybe a sixth, and it keeps on going down. Anti-Americanism is rampant in politics, media, movies, school textbooks, and so forth. What’s even worse is that the nationalists and the leftists are yet more anti-American than the Islamists, so it’s become a highly unfriendly country.
