With the United States and Israel, two nuclear powers, striking Iran, killing its leader and calling for regime change, in the midst of diplomatic negotiations, the writing is on the wall, and many are starting to wonder if diplomacy as we knew it is now dead.
Might is being crudely dressed up as right. But for those of us who still know the difference between the two, the mask of civility has been removed, and we are now confronted with something more frightening.
What’s more is the Western states, who have decried the collapse of the ‘rules-based order,’ — including Canada, the United Kingdom, France and others — are either offering to lend the US a hand, or blaming Iran for inciting strikes that have killed hundreds, including children. Only last month Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney was applauded for his ‘moral’ clarity and courage for decrying the double standards in the application of international law in a speech delivered at Davos. Yet, the Canadian PM was one of the first to publicly support the strikes against Iran. These countries are now deploying an arsenal of weasel words, to justify a preemptive war that has shattered the already fragile faith in the global diplomatic order. Countries like Norway and Spain are among the few who have called the strikes what they are – a violation of international law.
And more than a month after US President Donald J. Trump announced the establishment of a Board of Peace, which was created as an alternative to the United Nations and supposed to end current conflicts and promote peace, the US and Israel, another member of the Board, have launched a war on another country with devastating consequences for the region.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres rightly said this was “a squandered chance for diplomacy,” that could “ignite a chain of events that no one could control.” However, he fell short of calling the US and Israel out for such actions, simply stating that states must “strictly uphold their obligations under international law, including the UN Charter, to respect and protect civilians in accordance with international humanitarian law, and to ensure nuclear safety.” Yet harsher language was used when Russia invaded Ukraine. And much like the plot twist in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, it is as though the rules don’t apply, or can be changed, when states that are enemies to the West, like Iran, are attacked.
UN insiders are gossiping and debating about how long it will take for Guterres to say that this war is illegal. It took Kofi Annan around a year and a half to acknowledge the illegality of the US invasion of and war that followed in Iraq — and it was only when he was pressed in a BBC interview he finally fessed up. And once again, the UN is a bystander that has not only been benched, but not even allowed onto the diplomatic playing field in another major deadly conflict.
While analysts have rightly drawn parallels with the US-led invasion of Iraq, the flouting of international law, in this instance, is much more flagrant. Before the invasion of Iraq, the US sought a Security Resolution to support its actions and only moved forward when diplomacy had allegedly “failed.”
There are similarities between the Bush Administration’s justification for the Iraq War and that of President Donald J. Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: namely, claims of the threat of nuclear weapons, followed by calls for regime change. However, the fact that the approval of the UN Security Council was not even sought, and the attacks occurred within the midst of negotiations with Oman’s foreign minister Badr Albusaidi saying “negotiations had advanced substantially,” and a comprehensive deal was already in hand, just hours before the strikes, make them all the more shocking.
As a former UN Special Envoy to Yemen, I know all too well how interested parties can spoil diplomatic negotiations. In 2015, at the end of almost successfully concluded negotiations involving all the Yemeni parties in the conflict, Saudi Arabia launched a military offensive, perpetuating a war that has killed well over 300,000 people.
With Iran attacking US allies in the region, striking military bases, hotels and airports, leaving thousands stranded, the war is expected to worsen. With no clear plan for regime change and President Trump declaring that the conflict will continue for at least another four weeks, many are forecasting something much longer and more devastating.
We are indeed entering a new world.
Meanwhile, Ukraine entered its fifth year of war, with no peace agreement in sight, and the carnage in Sudan continues. Gazans are still being killed and humanitarian aid blocked, as the United Nations, which has lost its credibility, remains on the sidelines of our world’s most devastating conflicts.
In Western Sahara, one of the world’s longest running conflicts, the US has now taken the lead in mediation, displacing the UN, while fully backing Morocco’s ‘proposal’ for autonomy – a proposal the US is attempting to force on the Polisario and Algeria. Western Sahara continues to be a tough lesson in diplomacy, illustrating that coercing parties into agreement is never sustainable, and that mediation efforts must be sincere, impartial and inclusive if they are to succeed.
In this edition of Diplomacy Now we feature articles from scholars, former diplomats and writers, on the attack on Iran, the transition in Syria, the possible diplomatic solutions to the crisis in Sudan and the recent negotiations on Western Sahara.
As with every edition the views expressed by contributors are not all necessarily our own. However, ICDI remains committed to the ethos and philosophy that open debate, dialogue, diplomacy, and mediation, rather than armed conflict and war, offer the way forward to resolving any conflict.
Thank you for reading Diplomacy Now and we welcome your feedback at diplomacynow@dialogueinitiatives.org.
Jamal Benomar
Chair of ICDI
Professor Shahram Akbarzadeh argues that prolonged war rather than regime change is the most likely scenario in the US-Israeli war against Iran. Attacks have brought to power a group of hardliners that are unlikely to negotiate with an aggressive US.
“President Trump’s expectations of regime collapse have proven misplaced. This is not a short, sharp war. It has the makings of a long, drawn-out conflict with devastating regional implications,” Akbarzadeh writes.
With Western support for the attacks, US military allies in neighboring countries, and the UN absent, there is no credible mediator in sight who might bring an end to the conflict
Syrian-Spanish scholar Jusaima Moaid-azm Peregrina looks at the struggles ahead in the aftermath of Assad’s Syria and the likely scenarios for the war fatigued country.
“The transition has destabilized the fragmented “two-state Syria” logic that prevailed for years, with the Assad-regime controlling Damascus, the west and key cities, and parallel authorities and militias controlling different regions,” Moaid-azm Peregrina writes.
“However, it is yet to produce a unified political settlement. …The interim presidency under Ahmed al-Sharaa must simultaneously integrate armed actors, reassure minorities, stabilize the economy, and manage regional pressures that are recalibrating rather than receding,” she argues
Diplomat Abdul Mohammed and scholar Dr. Solomon Ayele Dersso argue that there needs to be a new approach to mediation in Sudan, a country that has been at war for three years.
“Sudan stands at a dangerous but decisive moment. Millions are displaced. Famine advances. Civilians are targeted deliberately. The state has been hollowed out. What began as a power struggle within the security establishment has evolved into a regionalized conflict system, sustained by external actors, war economies, and geopolitical competition,” Mohammed and Ayele Dersso write.
“Yet, amid this devastation, something important is happening. Mediation efforts that once moved in parallel — African, trans-regional, and international — are slowly, painfully, and hesitantly moving toward convergence. This convergence, however incomplete, opens a window of opportunity,” they argue.
Veteran US diplomat and former UN envoy to Western Sahara, ambassador Christopher Ross delves into the recent diplomatic negotiations led by the US over one of the world’s longest running conflicts in Western Sahara. With the US backing Morocco he argues that the US “is no longer seen as an honest broker.”
“The contradiction between an agreement on self-government negotiated behind closed doors and the free exercise of a people’s right to self-determination is perhaps too great to overcome. When all is said and done, the success of any agreement hinges on the difficult task of finding a form or timetable of self-determination that will satisfy the Polisario and Algeria and that Morocco will accept,” Ross writes.
“The fact remains that, absent agreement between Morocco and the Polisario on both the content of self-government and the issue of self-determination, the stalemate will return,” he concludes.
Moroccan novelist, journalist and podcaster Abdelaziz El Abdi writes about the recent US-led negotiations on Western Sahara and the continuing monopoly of the Palace in handling this issue at the exclusion of parliament and civil society.
“There is a deeply entrenched tradition in handling this issue. Since the Green March in 1975, the Sahara issue has remained a monopoly of the Royal Court. Not by the text of a law, or by an explicit and clear constitutional provision, but by an unwritten rule understood by everyone: it is forbidden to approach the Sahara file,” El Abdi writes.
“There is no trace of the Moroccan citizen in this negotiating chamber. No elected institution represents him in this process. There is no mechanism for subsequent review. There is no guarantee that what is to be signed will ever be presented to an elected representative body in an actual, not protocolary way,” he argues.
Nelson Mandela
