Hassan Rouhani's first-round success in the Iranian elections has sent an strong message to the regime.

On the face of it, the process went well. Having ensured that the list of candidates was not going to offer any existential threat to the system, Ayatollah Khamenei needed to ensure that this election went smoothly and with a good turnout. With a voter turnout of over 72% and a general feeling that the voting process was free and fair, that aim was achieved.

But the strong win by Hassan Rouhani (pictured) in the first round of voting was not part of the script. Rouhani ended up serving as a lightning rod for the four years of discontent the Iranian public has felt since the widely condemned 2009 elections. The backing of former presidents Rafsanjani and Khatami three days before polling and the tactical withdrawal of Muhammad Reza Aref, the only other 'moderate' candidate, also energised Iranian voters to believe that their discontent with the system could be registered by voting.

The fact that Rouhani garnered over 50% of the vote has also sent a strong message to the regime that the social and political status quo is not welcome. For their part, the conservative candidates did not help their cause by remaining divided throughout the first round.

The election of Rouhani offers the possibility of a much-needed circuit breaker, both domestically and internationally. During the presidential debates Rouhani spoke about social liberalisation, but not to an extent that confronted the regime. He is also a Western-educated polyglot and former chief nuclear negotiator under then-president Khatami who will present a worldlier visage to the West.

However, his electoral stance as a moderate should not disguise the fact that he is a believer in the political system of the Islamic Republic.

It sounded so perfect. The hawkish Republican war hero John McCain visiting rebel-held Syrian territory to show the locals that not all US politicians are lily-livered liberals who have doubts about arming the Syrian freedom fighters. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of which McCain is a member, even voted to give the rebels weapons and to train vetted rebel groups.

The problem with McCain's view is that you lose control over the weapons once you sign them over, and a vetting procedure that cannot use the full resources of a state will be somewhat sub-optimal. And when you're talking about equipping and training people to use deadly force in a situation where self-discipline has been lacking on both sides, then sub-optimal ain't going to cut it.

McCain's visit has ended up being a wonderful metaphor for exactly the problems that his hawkish policy stance would face. Essentially it showed why we shouldn't trust people's guarantees when it comes to sectarian civil wars. His photo op with members of the rebel forces may have unwittingly included two people who were involved with the kidnapping of 11 Lebanese Shi'a a year ago. One of the two Lebanese released so far claimed that he recognised them from the photos released after McCain's visit.

Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah's speech on Sunday (which the Iranians would have you believe was watched by Obama live) merely formalised what everyone has known for a while now: Hizbullah and its chief sponsor Iran no longer believe Assad is a lost cause.

During my recent trip to Lebanon I was told that initially there was disquiet among Hizbullah's support base that the party was becoming too involved in the Syrian issue. They felt that the loss of Syrian support would have made life difficult logistically for Hizbullah but not impossible, and greater involvement was therefore not worth the investment in blood and treasure. 

But the more sectarian the nature of the conflict has become, the more Hizbullah's support base has solidified behind its leadership. Claims that Sunni Islamist fighters had begun desecrating Shi'a holy sites and that the political opposition is a bunch of unreconstructed Muslim Brotherhood Islamists who have no truck with their Shi'a brethren certainly plays to the popular narrative among Hizbullah's support base that the loss of Syria now poses an existential threat to Hizbullah.

The reality is somewhat more prosaic. After equivocating early in the conflict when it appeared Assad might fall relatively quickly, Iran began to sense it could influence the outcome in a manner favourable to its interests. Saving Assad may be possible rather than probable, but saving Tehran's interests is certainly an achievable goal. 

Iran's Guardian Council has stayed true to form, rejecting the vast majority of the 600 candidates who nominated to run in next month's presidential elections and approving just eight. The most contentious refusal was that of the former two-term president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who held the promise, however faint, of some social liberalisation and an improvement in ties with the West. In other words, a reformist candidate.

His absence robs the election of most of its interest, as the remaining candidates are largely a collection of conservatives. The only two who could be labeled centrists/reformists, Muhammad Reza Aref and Hassan Rohani, are neither charismatic nor connected enough to energise reformist voters to come out in large numbers. The winner is likely to come from one of the leading conservative candidates.

The refusal of Rafsanjani's candidature signals that the stability of the election process and reinforcement of the Supreme Leader Khamenei's authority are the two main objectives of the 2013 presidential election. The reason for Rafsanjani's refusal has not been publicly announced, nor is there a requirement to do so. Rafsanjani has obvious political enemies among his more conservative peers, who see his candidature as a threat. They had tried to use his age (he is 78) as reason to exclude him, but the real question remains what the Supreme Leader himself thought. Rafsanjani had previously stated that he would not run without the agreement of the Supreme Leader, but during his 11th hour nomination he stated that he had 'informed' the Supreme Leader, which is somewhat short of gaining his agreement.

In order to make any sense of a conflict it is necessary to take the long view; snapshots at any particular time can skew one's perspective. But having said that, this week has been of particular interest for Syria watchers because of the range of issues raised, all of which further illustrate why it remains such a difficult problem to resolve.

Waning global diplomatic support for the opposition

Qatar inserted itself into the Syrian diplomatic morass again this week when it drafted a UN resolution condemning the Assad regime for its violation of human rights and killing of civilians (without mentioning opposition actions) and calling for political transition. Of the 193 General Assembly members, 107 voted for it. 

On the face of it, a resounding, if non-binding, success. The problem is, a vote last August saw 133 members vote for a similar resolution, meaning that this time around, 26 additional states have publicly expressed their doubts over the Syrian opposition. 

Given that the vote forced Russia, one of the co-sponsors of the putative peace talks, to vote no and highlighted growing international disquiet over the opposition, the timing of the vote was questionable to say the least. Interestingly, the voting pattern also revealed the gap between the West and the BRICS states over the question of Syria – the BRICS states either voted against or abstained from the resolution.

A growing rift between the US and the UK

In marked contrast to the unity of purpose that Tony Blair and George Bush exhibited over Iraq and Afghanistan, the gulf between London and Washington on the issue of Syria has been wide and is getting wider. 

Given Australia's unofficial nine-month long election campaign, it is worth noting that, six weeks out from the Iranian presidential election, the names of the candidates are not even known yet.

Registration of presidential candidates was conducted between 9-11 May, at which point the Guardians Council began vetting candidates. The announcement of those who have been approved will be made on 23 May, and the election begins on 14 June.

The Iranian Government is exceptionally keen to ensure that there should be no repeat of the controversy and violence that followed the running of the 2009 election, and until yesterday there appeared little to stimulate voter interest. As this article illustrates, there was little among the nominees that gave cause to people looking for changes of direction in political, economic or social policy.

As befits a notoriously opaque system, that all changed at the last minute as two high profile candidates, former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie (a close confidante of the President Ahmadinejad), registered their candidacies.

The fact that these candidates have registered in such dramatic fashion makes for increased interest in the race, but there is no guarantee they will appear on the final ballot. The Supreme Leader wields significant influence over the candidacies, and the the ability of these two men to survive the vetting of the Council of Guardians is anything but assured. Only ten out of 800 hopefuls survived the Council's deliberations in 2001; in 2005 it was six out of more than 1000.

The economy is the highest priority for most Iranians, and the public's belief as to whether any of the final candidates can offer some relief in this area will ultimately determine the turnout. The backroom manoeuvrings and positioning of putative candidates is likely to dominate the period until the confirmation of candidates and the three-week election campaign. And although I've already pointed out how ruthless the vetting process is, I would love to see this candidate get onto the ballot paper. His Saturday Night Fever-like dress sense would certainly do wonders for Iran's rather dour international image.

Photo by Flickr user BBC World Service.

I wrote previously about the philosophical reluctance of President Obama to use US power unless key US interests were at stake. Martin Indyk's excellent talk at the Lowy Institute last Thursday gave us more insight into the way Obama views the Middle East in general, and Syria in particular. It reaffirms the view that, in Indyk's words, the US is not as interested in playing the 'great game' over Syria as it was in the past, when more vital national interests were at stake.

If anyone needs a reminder about how Obama viewed the Iraq invasion and the motivations of those advocating it, they should re-read the speech he gave in 2002 before he was even in Congress. It must be cold comfort for him to have been proven so right but it reinforces the notion that he is extremely judicious about the use of military power and suspicious of those who seek to use uncertain intelligence to pressure him into war.

But as Martin Indyk also pointed out, Obama is a big advocate of non-proliferation. And it is largely through this prism, rather than a fight for geopolitical influence, that he views problems such as Iran and Syria. 

Obama has been right to be prudent in his approach to Syria so far. The Assad regime is a brutal one, but it has held on and has more internal support than many credit it with. The opposition is not in a fit state to be considered a viable alternative, and Obama's regional allies are largely clueless; they look to the US to politically solve a problem they have made more complicated by eschewing regional unity.

Obama's greatest mistake to date has been one of language, in particular the term 'red line'. In August 2012 he stated that:

Sam Roggeveen's post raises an interesting question as to whether George W Bush would have been more inquisitive (and hence made better decisions) if he had taken up painting before his presidency. The argument being that the painter's need to determine perspective is a good grounding for looking at complex geopolitical issues.

There have been other instances of ex-amateur painters turned politicians, and I'm afraid the results are somewhat mixed. Mindful of Sam's warning to me about Godwin's Law, it would be remiss of anyone venturing into this territory not to mention the fact that the strongest argument of all against the idea of 'painting as catharsis' is that Adolf Hitler was an extremely keen painter, something that appeared to do little to knock the ideological rough edges off him.
 
On the other hand, we may have painting to thank for the abilities of one of the West's most effective wartime leaders, Sir Winston Churchill, who credited it with rescuing him from depression following the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, during which he was First Lord of the Admiralty. Another Republican, and one of America's best regarded presidents, Dwight Eisenhower, also had a crack at painting, although he did so while he was already in the White House.

Apart from these examples, my (admittedly less than exhaustive) search has revealed few politicians who took a shine to fine art as opposed to the black art of politics.

Photo by Flickr user 3rd foundation.

In response to Robert Lewis' Reader Riposte about my criticism of the Department of Veterans' Affairs' website: I did go to the website before I wrote the post, and the words written there are as I noted. The site refers to those who 'went ashore at the Gallipoli Peninsula', of which Cape Helles (and ANZAC Cove) are parts, as this map illustrates. 

The reader may think the DVA site was referring to ANZAC Cove but the text indicates otherwise. The site should be amended to either deal exclusively with the ANZAC landings or it should recognise that we were the smaller of the land contributors on the Gallipoli Peninsula and thus acknowledge those 35,000 'other servicemen' with a little more grace.

Photo by Flickr user David Jackmanson.

I enjoy ANZAC Day as much as the next person. Dawn service is great, a few beers and tall tales even better. And I am the first to acknowledge how bloody good Australian soldiers are, having been one. 

But at least I also acknowledge that perhaps other countries have played pretty big roles in all the wars, and many of the actions, that we have been involved in. Which is more than the Department of Veteran’s Affairs is willing to do. A friend of mine passed on this passage from the account of the Gallipoli landing on the DVA website:

Australians commemorate 25 April 1915 as 'Anzac Day'. It was the day of the 'Landing at Gallipoli' when more than 20,000 Australians and New Zealanders and some servicemen from other countries went ashore at the Gallipoli Peninsula.

Call me un-Australian, but when we start calling the 35,000 British and French soldiers who landed at Cape Helles 'some servicemen', I know that DVA has started to engage in Aussie triumphalism.

Photo depicts a boat carrying Lancashire Fussiliers bound for Gallipoli. Courtesy of Wikipedia. 

My colleague Anthony Bubalo has taken President Obama to task for failing to put his political-diplomatic shoulder to the wheel in seeking a resolution to the Syria crisis. It is fair criticism.

There is an overwhelming focus in the Middle East on the need for some type of US-led military response to the Syrian conflict. Regional states claim they have tried negotiation and that, because Assad is completely unresponsive, they have thus backed the disunified opposition. In turn, Damascus asserts that the Arab League has taken an anti-Syria position and therefore Damascus can no longer negotiate with the body or its members. Further muddying the waters, the growth of Salafist groups among the armed opposition and their links with al Qaeda has allowed Assad to portray himself as the last hope for stability in the region.

During my recent trip to the region, nearly all of my interlocutors were united in saying that the US needed to resolve the Syria crisis through militarily assistance and/or action. But when asked how the US could guarantee who might use its advanced weapons, nobody could provide an answer. And when asked why President Obama should risk US lives in a country where many regional states were pursuing their own conflicting agendas, at a time when the US had just finished a traumatic war of choice in Iraq and was disengaging from Afghanistan, there was again silence. 

Five years ago I wrote a post outlining how Qatar was using its wealth to act as a regional mediator, raising its profile and as a consequence ruffling the feathers of some of its neighbours.

During my current trip to the region, a recurring theme has been the widespread view that Qatar is no longer content with being a mediator. It wants to be a player, and is trying to use its enormous financial resources and the influence of its al Jazeera television station to influence outcomes in the Arab world.

Much of this largesse has been directed at the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates, organisations seen as an existential threat by states such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan. Egypt has received at least $9 billion in Qatari loans. Such actions have been noticed: the Egyptian satirist Bassem Youssef recently took a swipe at President Morsi's love affair with the Gulf state.

On Syria, Qatar is (partly unfairly) blamed for all of the diplomatic errors made by the Arab world to date.

This is, on the face of it, a silly question. Popular wisdom, fueled by an aggressive media campaign by Gulf-owned media outlets, journalist embeds with rebel forces and opposition social media outlets have dominated the discourse on Syria. 

Regime paranoia and intransigence has limited any objective media coverage of government-controlled areas, so our views are conditioned by the limited information we receive. Assad has no popular legitimacy, we are told, and the Syrian opposition is the future.

But as I travel around the region, I ask how it is that a regime that oppresses its people and is hated by all Syrians except for the Alawites is still fighting over two years after the uprising became militarised. Air supremacy and superior weapons surely wouldn't be sufficient to prop up an illegitimate government for this long. 

Several interlocutors acknowledged that one of the opposition's main errors was in overestimating the degree of popular support it enjoyed. Others have said that many middle class Sunnis support the government, passively if not actively, and the regime is not simply the champion of religious minorities. Others again say the uprising has much greater support in rural areas than in the urban.

The general sense I get (if there is indeed a 'general' sense on the issue of Syria) is that nobody really knows the degree to which the regime, the opposition, Jabhat al-Nusra or anybody has popular support. 

I'm in the Middle East doing research for a forthcoming paper on Syria that I'm writing with my colleague Anthony Bubalo. My early impression is that there appears to be a complete absence of rational (let alone unified) policy views about what anybody wants or believes will be the case 'the day after' Assad. 

Such is the degree of policy paralysis and fear of chaos that, in a recent Turkish television interview, Assad put himself forward as the only hope for stability, while in yesterday's Washington Post, Iraqi President Nuri al-Maliki observed that 'We have been mystified by what appears to be the widespread belief in the United States that any outcome in Syria that removes President Bashar al-Assad from power will be better than the status quo.'

I will blog more on the Syria issue but, with Western states so cautious to become embroiled in the complexity of Syria, I read John Howard's speech on Iraq with interest. I was struck by the absence of attention in both the speech and the Q&A on how Mr Howard thought Iraq would turn out politically following the invasion.

Australia claims to be a close and strong US ally, and John Howard rightly laid blame at the feet of the US for poor (read virtually non-existent) post-invasion planning and execution. But Australia had lots of planning staff assisting the coalition and would obviously have been privy to the complete lack of Phase 4 (post-invasion) planning.

As one of the few countries contributing forces to the invasion, Australia should have been vitally interested in how the US was going to run the country we had helped invade. If we thought US planning was bizarrely optimistic and took no account of the complexity of Iraqi society and the regional sectarian and political dynamics, why didn't we say so? Or did we not concern ourselves with these things because we were just there to fly the flag, didn't know the region and didn't really care about the future of the country we were invading?

The consequences of the Syrian civil war are going to be felt for years to come, even outside the immediate region.

The longer the Syrian civil war has continued, the less appealing the armed opposition has become. A large part of the problem has been that, despite claims of a unified military command, the reality is that Syria's Alawite-dominated secular regime and its close ties to Iran has served as a lightning rod for Sunni Islamists of many colours to take up arms in the hope of toppling the regime and Islamising (or re-Islamising, for those Umayyad caliphate revivalists) Syria. 

This David Ignatius piece in the Washington Post provides an overview of the orders of battle of the main armed opposition groups, though it needs to be read in conjunction with the work of another Syria watcher, Joshua Landis, to provide some context.

To further confuse the issue, there are reports that neighbouring countries are seeking US help in stopping the spillover effects of the Syrian civil war. Jordan has allegedly hosted US military elements to train rebel groups in an effort to create a 'buffer zone' with Syria. And Iraq fears an expansion of cooperation between AQ Iraq elements and Syrian-based Islamist groups; there are reports that Baghdad is considering asking for US drones to attack the Islamist groups.

As Matt Cavanaugh points out in his response to my post, the difficulty in determining civilian casualties in any conflict (including Iraq) is enormous. My point was that Jim Molan had made an assertion that violence was worse under Saddam without a reference point, no feel for what the average monthly body count is a decade after the invasion, and no indication why we should consider the current situation better than what preceded it. To put Jim Molan's comment into some context and to garner an explanation as to how he arrived at his assertion, I provided a total from Iraq Body Count which, while not perfect, is at least transparent. 

Matt's figures cited in response lack objectivity, let alone transparency. I note that Matt cited a source describing Saddam as having caused deaths at a 'conservative estimate' of 16,000 a year. Matt must have chosen the word 'conservative' advisedly as his source for these figures was a 2004 article entitled The Lifesaving War in the ultra-conservative The Weekly Standard, a magazine founded by William Kristol, one of the most ardent neoconservative advocates of invading Iraq. Not exactly an objective or even transparent source. 

The article presupposes that victory has been achieved simply as a result of the invasion and, if you can read this tripe through to the end, you'll realise that the author believes that 'Liberation made it possible...(to save) approximately 60,000 lives a year'. Unfortunately, writing just over a year after the invasion, the author wasn't so prescient in understanding that many didn't agree with the word 'liberation'. The war had many more years to run and tens of thousands more deaths to inflict. 

I admire Jim Molan for his dynamism and command experience, however I was left scratching my head over his pronouncements regarding the legacy of violence that Iraq suffers from ten years after the invasion. 

When he claimed that 'the violence in Iraq today is far less than during Saddam's time, unless of course you were a member of the 20% Sunni elite oppressing the 60% Shia and 20% Kurds', it was done without reference to any figures on the monthly casualties that Iraq still suffers from as a result of insurgent or political violence. 

For those who would like some perspective, a quick glance at The Iraq Body Count website provides an insight into the sheer scale of regular violence that doesn't fit into Jim's relativist view. No one can deny the war crimes perpetrated against the Kurds in Halabja or against the Shia in the south during the 1991 uprising by the Ba'thist regime. But to claim that, despite hundreds of deaths a month, each and every month for a decade the invasion was justified because it was worse in Saddam's time is both wrong and wrong-headed.         

There was however, one statement in particular where I feel Jim displayed a selective view of the nature of violence. 

Violence happens around the world each and every day. Sometimes it gets reported in the media, and on special occasions it is deemed worthy of official condemnation. No government has time to condemn each and every action, so the incidents they do condemn should have some resonance with the nation which expresses such condemnation, or perhaps it is a particularly violent incident which leads to significant loss of life.

Looking at Foreign Minister Bob Carr's ministerial website, though, you could be forgiven for wondering exactly what criteria the Foreign Minister uses to condemn incidents. There appears to be no rhyme or reason as to the threshold for such public utterances.

Why for instance, does the Foreign Minister expressly condemn the firing of three rockets from Gaza into Israel on 26 February that caused no injuries, as well as a bomb attack in Hyderabad that left 15 people dead, and yet say nothing on the record regarding a targeted series of attacks against a religious minority in Pakistan that has left more than 250 people dead in a little more than a month?

And why is there a studied silence when more than 250 people are either killed or wounded in a car bombing in Damascus on 21 February? To be fair, when you have already sided with the opposition, it makes it hard to turn around and criticise them and their fellow travelers for carrying out such atrocities.

Lastly, why does the Government say nothing about the ongoing violence in Iraq, a country which Australia, along with three other countries, invaded in 2003, and where more than 200 people (mainly civilians) have been killed in each of the past two months?  

Photo by Flickr user Asia Society.

One thing every thinking person should have learnt from the Iraq intelligence debacle was to treat claims of state support for external armed groups with caution (see Wikipedia for a run-down of debunked allegations that Saddam's regime supported al Qaeda). Some simple questions about the sourcing of information, the motivations of people who make such claims and the level of analysis such information is subject to before it is reported are all good starting points.

Recent reports of Iranian activity in the region provide a good case in point where the analytical hairs on the back of one's neck start to stand up.

The first instance was the seizure by Yemeni and US forces of weapons on board a dhow bound for the Red Sea port of Makhla. The reports indicate that a range of Iranian weapons were seized, including shoulder-fire anti-aircraft missiles and suicide vests. The insinuation was that Iran was supplying Shi'a Houthi rebels who have been fighting an ongoing campaign against the Yemeni Government, and on occasion the Saudis. The UN has been asked to investigate.

A few queries arise from these accounts. First, the source of the weapons is not entirely clear, as this NY Times report outlines. Second, a combination of advanced anti-aircraft missiles and suicide belts that can be manufactured anywhere seems like a strange mixed lot for a state to export to rebels who could very well make their own suicide vests. Also, the Houthis have tended to be on the receiving end of suicide attacks, not the perpetrator.

Finally, while Iran may seek to act as spoiler on Saudi Arabia's borders, there is no ideological fraternity between Yemeni Zaydi Shi'a and Twelver Shi'a of the Iranian type. They share a common ancestry a millenium ago, but they share no clerical, juristic or educational links that would justify them being referred to as being co-religionists.

With Pope Benedict announcing his retirement, all eyes turn towards his successor.

The position of pope carries with it enormous power, for he is in effect an autocrat ruling over a global spiritual empire that is as heavily bureaucratised as any temporal empire ever was. Some articles talk of the declining power of the papacy, but by doing so fall into the trap of modern writers who look at legacies in terms of years or even decades. 

Unlike secular governments or world powers, the Catholic church looks at the long game. The very long game. In his resignation speech (delivered, appropriately for a bookish theological type, in Latin) he referred to himself as the 'Successor to Saint Peter', in case anybody had missed the fact that the institution is nearly into its third millennium. 

The new pope can wield significant political influence if he chooses, from the message that his election sends to the billion followers of the papacy to his willingness to make moral pronouncements on the actions of others. 

Will Benedict's successor be chosen to send a message to the Church's followers in Africa or Latin America that their time has come? Will a North American be elected to bolster a traditionally strong but increasingly alienated centre of Western Catholicism? Or will the bureaucratic Euro-centrism of the church be reinforced to reassure its followers that the force remains with them? Will the new incumbent be politically active in the manner of John Paul II or quiescent like Benedict? Will the rigours of the job now mean that a younger man will need to be chosen?

For all of its other-worldliness, the College of Cardinals has shown a willingness to pick a person to send particular messages at particular times. A charismatic, outdoor-loving Polish pope to signal to the atheist communist bloc that while political systems are ephemeral, the authority of the church is everlasting. A conservative and uncharismatic German theologian to reinforce the authority of the church in a time when that authority and primacy is an increasingly distant memory in most Western countries.

Certainly the current pope was intellectually thoughtful; he opposed the aggressive secularism in the West that he believed represented a 'culture of death'. But how much more effective his intellectualism was compared to his predecessor's relative populism in making the church relevant in influencing societal or even political behaviour is questionable.

As a Catholic, I am the first to admit that the repugnant clerical abuse and the inadequate response to it has deeply stained the moral authority of the church. But on a personal level I had nothing but good experiences with the nuns and brothers who taught me, and I have met admirable people from religious orders toiling away in remote areas doing charitable work for naught. I am always amazed at the sacrifices that such people of good character make for their faith. 

Therein lies the challenge for the church in the West and its followers at the start of the third millenium: can trust be rebuilt in an institution that can attract individuals of high calibre and selflessness of purpose while also being responsible for failing to properly address the criminal behaviour of others?

Photo by Flickr user MarcelGermain. 

Part 1 of this series, which focuses on the political aspect of the conflict, is here. Part 2 looks at the military dimension.

Civil wars are never clean wars (if there is such a thing), and the Syria conflict has proven no exception.

It is reminiscent in some ways of the Lebanese civil war in the way it has upset the sectarian system, opening the country to becoming a battleground for broader regional rivalries: the Gulf states and Turkey trying to reassert Sunni primacy as Iran struggles to maintain Persian influence in the Arab world, and the West hoping to topple a stridently anti-Western autocrat as Russia seeks to prop up its last remaining Arab ally (and a valuable arms client). 

The opposition, despite external moral, logistic and financial support, has been unable to secure the advanced weaponry it claims it needs to negate the Syrian Army's firepower. The unwillingness of major Western backers to provide such weapons reveals the rebels' twin Achilles heels: the participation by Islamic jihadist groups in the armed opposition and the absence of effective, centralised military control despite efforts to appoint such a body.

The performance of the Syrian military has suffered from the fact that it is largely a conscript force with a legacy of years of reliance on Russian/Soviet approaches to warfare.

The first issue means that the training standard of a large part of Assad's army is poor, and its ability to re-skill for the type of urban fighting that has been a feature of this conflict is severely retarded. It also means that large parts of the army are there because they have to be, not because they want to be. This can be problematic when fighting external enemies, but can be debilitating in a civil war. Poor training standards and questionable loyalty means static defence of ground takes a higher priority than manoeuvre, which in turn cedes the initiative to the enemy.

The Syrian Army's performance also shows the folly of structuring for the war you think you're going to fight. The Syrian military saw itself fighting a land battle a la Golan Heights 1967, and spent decades lolling around in Lebanon while its senior officers enjoyed the financial benefits of such duties. 

The second anniversary of the Syrian civil war is looming and the political and military situation remains deadlocked. The Assad regime's superiority in conventional weapons has meant that, while government forces have ceded ground, they have denied the rebel groups control over any of the main population centres.

The political situation remains equally difficult to resolve. The support of Russia, China and Iran has been crucial to the Syrian regime's survival. But the lack of an alternative Syrian political grouping has made its survival that much easier.

Having elbowed aside the old Syrian National Council because of its infighting, lack of influence over the armed groups inside Syria and (perceived or real) dominance by Sunni Islamists, the West is facing many of the same problems with the now not-so-quite-newly-minted Syrian National Coalition. 

The political opposition has already missed its first opportunity to form an alternative government, and has given itself until late next week to establish something credible. With its president, Mouaz al-Khatib, due to visit Washington in February, the warmth of that visit (or even whether there is one) will likely be contingent on some structure emerging.

Concerns over Iran's nuclear program, proven support for Shi'a groups in Lebanon and Iraq, support for the Assad regime in Syria and alleged support for just about every other opposition group in the region will ensure that, just as in 2012, Iran will continue to feature as the main security focus in the Middle East in 2013. 

The Iranian Government prides itself and in some respects depends on being seen as the one institution dedicated to resistance against what some have called 'westoxification'. The consequent fear among some analysts is that any military strike against Iran will feed that narrative and build support for the Government. Which is why Iran's opponents have chosen a largely 'non-kinetic' form of attack to dislocate its nuclear program. 

If the region and the West is engaged in a modern day Cold War with Iran, it is one in which cyberspace is becoming the battlespace of choice. The Iranian nuclear program has been the target of a successful cyber attack by the Stuxnet computer virus, widely believed to have been developed by the US and Israel. An attack by a data mining program called Flame also targeted Iranian government computers, while other attacks indicate the intensity of the cyber fighting underway.
 
But like all adaptive adversaries, Iran has learnt from these attacks and, if reports are to be believed, Tehran may have decided to fight terabytes with terabytes.

I like the independence of Canadian policy in the Middle East on some big issues. Exhibit A has to be the decision to refuse to join the US-led invasion of Iraq.

Canadian independence of action is once again on display over the question of Syria. When President Obama gave the Syrian opposition the ringing endorsement that it was now 'representative enough' of the Syrian people to be considered their legitimate representative, Australia followed suit quicker than you can say 'road to Damascus'.

Canada, on the other hand, took the shockingly unorthodox position that a largely Sunni rebellion which holds ground in the north and east of the country but none of the main population centres and whose leader doesn't agree with Washington's decision to blackban militant Islamist fighters could not be considered the sole, legitimate voice and government-in-waiting of the Syrian people. Bizarre, I know.

Ottawa also announced additional humanitarian assistance and a willingness to work with the opposition even though Canada wouldn't yet officially recognise it. The Canadians, unlike Australia, don't consider such recognition to be 'purely symbolic'. That's because it isn't.

Photo by Flickr user Paul Keller.

Australia (and in particular Labor icon Herbert Vere Evatt) was instrumental in drafting key elements of the source documents for the UN, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. So it would be interesting to know what Doc Evatt would make of contemporary Australian attitudes to human rights. 

Of course the world is a more complex place than it was in Doc Evatt's day, but I still like to think that human rights should be considered...well, universal. And that Australia would be willing to stand up publicly to countries that failed to uphold those rights. We have of course done that on numerous occasions, but with our recent election to the UN Security Council we will be forced to consider human rights issues in areas we have been able to ignore previously.

A good starting point would be in the Arab world, and in particular Bahrain, where decades of religious discrimination has led to regular uprisings, including a particularly bloody episode 18 months ago. While the minority Sunni monarchy called for an independent commission of inquiry into events, it has faced criticism that the inquiry was all for show and that religious discrimination and an unwillingness to reform remain. Human Rights Watch has been particularly scathing in its criticism. 

Which brings me to the Australian pledge. In his recent address to the 21st regular Session of the UN's Human Rights Council, Foreign Minister Bob Carr notes that Australia (1:57 mark) argued for the inclusion of what became known as the 'Australian pledge' that eventually formed Article 56 of the UN Charter. It called for joint and individual action to ensure, among other things, 'universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion' (my emphasis). 

While I agree that a nuclear-capable Iran may not be the world-ending scenario that some postulate (it depends on which side of the sword vs shield argument you take), I would add to the doubts expressed by Stephen Walt about Sam Roggeveen's case for Middle Eastern nuclear disarmament.

Sam sees the argument being about Israel vs Iran but he ignores the Arab Gulf states, which have a more visceral fear of Iranian influence than of Tel Aviv. Sam should contemplate a scenario where Iran and Israel have the bomb and one or more Gulf states seek to achieve their own capability.  See how much more complex the equation becomes then.

A more convincing argument to stop Iran getting a nuclear capability is the possible response of regional states. Israel (and the US for that matter) want to stop Tehran from getting the bomb in part to avoid a proliferation domino effect that would be more destabilising than any of the scenarios Sam puts forward.

And just a few comments on Tzvi Fleischer's piece to add some balance that is sadly lacking:

The focus on Gaza over the last two weeks shifted the spotlight away from Syria, but for those still watching, the momentum appears to be shifting towards the rebels. 

The opposition appears to have redoubled its military and political efforts over the past few weeks. It is no coincidence that the end of the hiatus coincided with the US elections, as opposition forces and regional states waited to see who would be in power in Washington. President Obama's victory speech was delivered on 6 November; the Syrian opposition agreed in-principle to form a more inclusive body just five days later.

The rebel forces have recently made some gains in the north and northeast of the country, looking to isolate Aleppo and force Assad to abandon it if Damascus is unable to resupply its forces or if Assad considers it more important to protect the capital and its lifeline to the west coast. 

Disturbingly for Assad, it appears his ground forces are unable or unwilling to conduct much in the way of ground manoeuvre. There have been few if any reports of counterattacks or of positions re-taken, and the Syrian military continues to rely on air power to harass rebel forces and to try to prevent them from massing, a defensive measure, for sure.

Yesterday's announcement from Qatar that the disparate Syrian opposition has united to a degree previously unseen is replete with possibilities. But it's easy to get carried away with the deal at such an early stage, and I think it is too early to describe it, as one diplomat did, as having crossed the Rubicon. Some early observations follow.

Firstly, who came up with the name? The National Coalition Of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces has to go. The abbreviation 'NCSROF' isn't media friendly. Expect this to change.

The West thinks the NCSROF will provide a single point through which it can channel funds and possibly weapons, while Russia and China hope it is a single body with which Assad can achieve a 'negotiated solution'. Unless Russia and China back the NCSROF (which appears unlikely), the opposition will still have to fight for every square inch of Syria.

NCSROF's leadership looks very politically correct and has credibility, with the three top positions held by long term opposition figures rather than Johnny-come-latelies: Moaz al-Khatib, a Sunni cleric, heads the body, while Riad Seif, a dissident well known in the US and the Muslim world, is one of the vice-presidents. The other vice-president is a woman, Suheir al-Atassi (pictured), providing a veneer of inclusiveness. It gives the US comfort to have someone they trust in the leadership, and having a cleric as president provides an alternate religious voice to the Islamists and unreconstructed Muslim Brotherhood activists among the opposition.

The main questions are about the degree to which Sheikh Moaz al-Khatib will be able to exert political control over the previously fractious groupings, the willingness of the Syrian National Council (SNC) to play second fiddle and whether the fighters on the ground in Syria will listen to what the leadership wants. As the SNC found out to its cost, saying you're in charge and being in charge are two very different things. 

Australia's successful ascent to the UN Security Council will require it to address issues it had previously been happy to simply let pass by. One of these is the increasingly hypocritical attitude Western states have adopted towards democratisation in the Middle East. 

While I was taught many years ago that hypocrisy is the language of international relations, I have always held that a middle power such as Australia could swim against the diplomatic tide and take a principled stand. One of those principles should be an unequivocal, rather than selective, support for Arab democratic reforms.

A few years ago it was possible to divide the Middle East into good and bad autocracies; the good ones were pro-Western and the bad ones anti. There was no serious thought to lending support to political opposition movements at this time. Those that did exist were either Islamist or communist or Arab nationalist or Arab socialist, which were neither friends of the West nor advocates of true democracy. There was no real incentive for Western political leaders to push individual rights and the like when there was no chance of making progress.

Then came the Arab Spring, and with the halting democratic gains made in the region as a result of the collapse of autocracies in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya, the incongruity between which countries the West criticises and which it accepts is becoming increasingly apparent.

If any more evidence was needed about the difficulty of finding a solution to the ongoing fighting in Syria, then the last few weeks have provided some excellent examples.  For Assad's backers such as Iran, the situation is pretty straightforward.  Provide the core government forces with weapons, expertise and training.

But for the US, things are much more difficult. The Assad regime is repressive and bad so the opposition must be freedom loving and good. But the opposition is so divided, venal, sectarian and brutal that it has made it difficult for anyone to like it, let alone trust it. It truly is a Levantine mess. When opponents of a brutally repressive regime such as the Syrian Ba'thists are unable to capture the public imagination, let alone much international sympathy then things are pretty bad.