USMC DRAFT

AF/PAK REGION

FORECAST

The United States will bring an end to its military campaign in Afghanistan by 2014. Pakistan will be integral to U.S. negotiations with the Taliban within this time frame, and though this region will continue to face significant security challenges, Pakistan will be able to exploit the reduced US military footprint in Afghanistan to draw Afghanistan back into its sphere of influence. The U.S.-Pakistani alliance will remain uneasy given Pakistan’s need to maintain strong ties with Taliban and its militant affiliates, but will rest (however tentatively) on a common interest to prevent an intercontinental jihadist force from reemerging. The United States will manage relationships with both Pakistan and India in trying to maintain a balance of power on the subcontinent.

ANALYSIS

With the possible exception of residual special operations forces, the United States will drastically reduce its military presence in Afghanistan over the next three years. The strategic rationale for the war is already eroding, and will continue to erode as the U.S. 2011-2012 election campaign season intensifies.

The United States cannot impose a military defeat on the Taliban, an organization that may be limited in firepower relative to its foreign adversaries, but will retain the battlefield advantage when it comes to terrain, superior tactical intelligence and support networks. The Taliban has the luxury of declining combat on unfavorable terms and striking the United States during periods of vulnerability. The United States, however, must contend with the classic counterinsurgency dilemma of possessing superior firepower to defeat identifiable targets, yet sorely lacking the human intelligence needed to undercut an insurgent force. No matter how large the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan is, the United States cannot expect to form a democratic Afghan government friendly to U.S. interests and capable of suppressing radical Islamism within its own borders.

The United States will thus publicly reshape the narrative of the war to convince the American public that al Qaeda has been sufficiently disrupted and that a covert operations – as opposed to a conventional military framework – is the appropriate solution to the ongoing jihadist threat. This does not mean that new groups and affiliates won’t reemerge in other locations, but the ability of any such group to operate on the scale of the 9/11 attackers remains doubtful and most importantly, a large, conventional military presence in Afghanistan will not fundamentally impact the evolution of the broader jihadist threat.

The harsh realities of the war have already driven the United States toward a politically unsavory, albeit unavoidable, negotiation with the Taliban to end the U.S. military commitment to Afghanistan. This negotiation will occupy a great deal of U.S. attention over the course of the next 1-2 years. The conflict will boil down to a battle of perceptions. The Taliban is not going anywhere, and is operating on a long and flexible timeline. The U.S. timeline to negotiate, however, will be framed by domestic political constraints and an increasingly urgent need to regain U.S. military bandwidth to address more strategic issues elsewhere. The Taliban, which understands the U.S. political psyche well, intends to shape U.S. political opinion on the war through spectacular, high-yield attacks. The goal of such attacks will be to transform growing U.S. apathy into charged revulsion toward the war, with the aim of narrowing the U.S. room to maneuver in negotiations. The Taliban already knows that the United States will withdraw sooner or later; the core point of contention in these negotiations will rest on the level of Taliban influence in a transitional government in Afghanistan and the status of a residual U.S. military force in the country.

In this negotiation phase, the U.S. relationship with Pakistan will remain paramount. Whereas Afghanistan is a peripheral concern for the United States, Pakistan is the one left with a major national security problem on its hands once the United States leaves. Pakistan, through its intelligence relationships and its leverage over supply lines, is also the only country capable of creating the conditions for the U.S. withdrawal, for better or for worse.

Pakistan cannot escape its inherent vulnerabilities: it is outmatched by its larger and more powerful Indian neighbor and must therefore rely on an external patron for its survival. Pakistan enjoys a cooperative relationship with China, but even China does not come close to the type of support Pakistan needs and the United States is able to provide for Islamabad to fend against India. Pakistan therefore cannot afford a fundamental breach with the United States, just as the United States cannot afford a break with Pakistan at this stage of the war. At the same time, Pakistan cannot absorb the risk entailed in fully meeting U.S. demands on providing intelligence on al Qaeda and Taliban activities and in permitting U.S. operations in Pakistan to pursue these militants. Pakistan’s security and intelligence apparatus retains sizable pockets of radical Islamists and more importantly, retains informal relations with purged intelligence officers with deep relationships across the Islamist militant landscape. These are the relationships that Pakistan cannot afford to sacrifice, yet in maintaining them, can reach a post-war settlement in Afghanistan. The United States will thus rely on Pakistan to facilitate and insure its negotiation with the Taliban to shape the U.S. exit from the war and assume the responsibility of preventing the reemergence of a transcontinental jihadist force in the region. This is a tall order, but Pakistan does not want to become the target of such a militant agenda any more than the United States does, and will have an incentive to uphold its part of the bargain in order to maintain U.S. support against India. The United States will at the same time maintain a residual special operations capability to keep the jihadist threat in

the region in check while maintaining a close relationship with India to balance against its relationship with Pakistan.

IRAN AND THE PG REGION

FORECAST

Iran will emerge as the dominant military force in the Persian Gulf region at the beginning of 2012, but it will also be highly conscious of the limited time it has to exploit a historic opportunity to extend its influence in the wider region before the odds stack up against Tehran again. The next one to three years will thus be critical for Iran to force a regional realignment of interests on its terms while the United States tries to regain its strategic footing. Iran will utilize its covert assets to try and reshape the politics of the Persian Gulf region, while relying on its unconventional military capabilities to deter the United States from a major military intervention that would run the risk of closing the energy-vital Strait of Hormuz.

ANALYSIS

The U.S. drawdown of forces from Iraq by the end of 2011 will leave Iran as the largest conventional military force in the Persian Gulf. This poses a major strategic dilemma for the United States, not to mention the surrounding Arab states who have much to fear from the spread of Iranian power and the emboldening of Shiite communities across the Arab world.

For the United States to achieve its strategic goal of maintaining a balance of power in the Middle East, it must find a way to counterbalance Iran with Sunni power. The heart of this strategy has traditionally been found in the fertile plains of Mesopotamia lying between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern-day Iraq. If the Arab power in this land is weak and fractured, Iran has a historic opportunity to expand beyond its borders and enrich itself. If the power in this land is strong, and under Sunni control, however, Iran’s biggest threat emanates from its western flank. After centuries of geopolitical confinement to its mountain fortress, Iran now has a historic opportunity to consolidate Shiite influence in Iraq, avoid another nightmare scenario like the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, expand its economic resources and gain a strategic foothold in the Arab world with which to project influence. Iran’s imperative to control Iraq to the extent possible explains why Iran had the covert assets readied and positioned to facilitate the U.S. withdrawal and fill the power void in Iraq when Saddam Hussein fell from power.

Iran will not pass up this opportunity. To help ensure its goals are met in Iraq, Iran is relying on a three-pronged deterrence strategy:

a) The threat of blocking the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 45 percent of the world’s exported seaborne oil flows through a narrow channel

b) The threat of activating militant proxies, namely Hezbollah, to carry out transnational attacks

c) The threat of attacking residual US forces in Iraq

Altogether, these three threats have proven effective in deterring the United States from seriously contemplating military strikes against Iran. We find it unlikely that within the next three years, the United States will undergo a major military campaign in Iran. An isolated attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities runs the risk of failing due to unreliable and/or insufficient intelligence on a well-hardened and concealed program. If an attack on Iran were attempted, it would rely principally on air and sea power to attack Iran’s naval and conventional army capabilities. Such an endeavor would take months at least, and even then its success is not certain. Most importantly, such an attack scenario would embolden Iran and risk triggering the real “nuclear option” ie., the mining of the Strait of Hormuz that would send energy prices soaring and run a good risk of triggering a global recession.

By the end of 2011, when the Status of Forces Agreement on Iraq expires, we do not expect the United States to be able to reverse its fortunes and regain the upper hand against Iran in Iraq. The United States has a strategic need to maintain a conventional blocking force in Iraq to contain Iran and reassure the surrounding Sunni Arab states, but the United States simply lacks the bandwidth to deal effectively on this issue and Iran appears to have sufficient political capital in Baghdad to block US negotiations with those Iraqi factions (namely, the Kurds and most Sunni groups,) who favor an extension of the US military presence to keep Iran at bay. The United States will likely retain some forces in Iraq while building up its military presence in Kuwait to at minimum maintain a holding position against Iran, but the remaining forces in Iraq will not be configured or numerous enough to be considered an effective blocking force against Iran.

Iran will be in a powerful position at the beginning of 2012, but it will also be highly conscious of the limited time it has to exploit this opportunity. It has been centuries since Iran has been able to extend itself beyond its borders, and it won’t take long for the odds to stack up against it once again. The ending of the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan will allow the United States to refocus its priorities once again, and there is a good chance that Iran will remain Washington’s list of strategic priorities. Iran is also growing increasing wary of the rising clout of Turkey, a country with far deeper economic, political and military power in the region than Iran. Turkey, as a Sunni power of roughly 70 million (comparable to the population of Iran,) the 17th largest economy in the world and the region’s strongest army, is the natural counterweight to Iranian expansion. However, Turkey’s reemergence will take time to be felt. Already, Turkey is falling into a more natural, confrontational mode with Iran in places like Iraq and Syria where the two have increasingly colliding interests. In Syria, where the al Assad regime is gradually weakening, Iran must factor in the potential loss of a Syrian government friendly to Iran’s interests. Not only would this deny Iran a key foothold in the Levant, it would also greatly undermine one of Iran’s key levers in its deterrence strategy against a

U.S. attack: Hezbollah. Seeing the writing on the wall, Iran will need to act relatively quickly to consolidate its gains in Iraq and the wider region before Turkey and the United States are better positioned to constrain Iran’s actions. This makes the next 2-3 years critical for Iran.

The U.S. drawdown from Iraq will build on the perception that Iran is the dominant force of the Persian Gulf region and the United States is an increasingly unreliable patron for the Sunni Arab states left to deal with the rise of Iranian power. This is precisely the perception that Iran must exploit in a short amount of time if it is to seize its historic opportunity. The Iranian strategic intent is to reshape the politics of the Persian Gulf region in such a way that Saudi Arabia and its Arab neighbors come to the conclusion that they cannot absorb the cost of resisting Iranian demands, especially if the United States is unable or unwilling to provide sufficient backing to help them resist those demands. The next one to two years is therefore the time frame in which Iran will do what it can to coerce its Arab neighbors into reaching an accommodation with Iran on Tehran’s terms.

Shiite unrest in Bahrain is thus a critical issue to monitor in the coming years. We believe the unrest that broke out in North Africa in early 2011 served in many ways as a cover for Iran to pursue a covert destabilization campaign in the Persian Gulf region, using Bahrain as the flash point. If Bahrain, a Shiite majority country ruled by a Sunni monarchy, could flip in favor of the Shia with Iranian backing, Saudi Arabia would be dealt a nightmare scenario, fearing that it’s Shiite-concentrated, oil rich Eastern Province could be the next domino to fall. The Shiite unrest that has occurred so far in Bahrain has certainly unnerved Saudi Arabia and its GCC allies, but does not appear to have reached the point yet where these states feel overly compelled to negotiate on serious terms with Iran. We have seen preliminary indications of a dialogue taking place between Riyadh and Tehran, but this is likely more about Saudi Arabia searching out a truce with Iran to contain the situation in Bahrain while awaiting clarity on U.S. intentions. Though Iran has assets at its disposal among Shiite communities in the Persian Gulf region, its leverage in these countries is nowhere near as developed as Iraq and Lebanon, where Iran has expended the majority of its resources in developing proxies abroad.

Now that Iran feels confident in its position in Iraq, it will likely devote more resources toward building up its assets in the eastern littoral of the Arabian Peninsula. Unlike Iraq or Lebanon, these states are far more difficult for Iran to operate in, and the GCC states will be extremely focused on trying to deny Iran the ability to expand a covert presence within their borders. With time, we expect Iran to be able to build and sustain political pressure on the GCC states by exploiting Shiite unrest in these countries. This threat, combined with U.S. inability to deal with them decisively, is what Iran hopes will lead to a realignment of relationships in the Arab world that, at least in the short term, favors Iranian interests.

Though Iran will be relieved to have a significant U.S. military force removed from its western flank, Iran will not be free of constraints during this time period. Iran

has a superb covert operations capability, which it relies on heavily to compensate for its conventional military weaknesses. However, Shiite communities throughout the region are highly fractious and thus difficult for Iran to manage and ultimately shape according to its foreign policy interests. Iran must expend a great deal of time and resources toward supporting multiple groups that it must play off against each other in order to vary its options and maintain leverage in these areas. Building up a covert capability in the GCC states comparable to Iran’s arsenals in Iraq and Lebanon will be no small feat for Tehran and will require several years to develop.

Iran must also contend with internal political struggles in trying to drive forward a coherent foreign policy. We believe most observers in the West over-exaggerate Iran’s domestic ailments. Iran, a mountainous country of roughly 70 million, can never prosper like its sparsely populated Arab adversaries living in the oil-rich desert. Moreover, the clerical regime has been significantly undermined by the faction represented so far by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which charges the corrupted clerical elite of betraying the revolution and ignoring the demands of the poor. The most striking aspect of this power struggle is not the idea of a single firebrand leader getting ganged up on by the country’s senior-most clerics, but the fact that such a leader would not be attacking the clerical establishment unless it was already perceived as weakening and undergoing a crisis in legitimacy. Ahmadinejad, a mere politician, should therefore not be the main focus in monitoring the development of this power struggle. The far more important issue is the underlying faction that he represents and the delegitimization of the country’s enriched clerical elite. Iran’s internal pressures are unlikely to distract the country from meeting its imperatives in Iraq, but with time, the discrediting of the clerics is likely to create an opening in the country for the military – as opposed to pro-democracy youth groups – to assert itself in the political affairs of the state.

The IRGC’s growing political clout in Iran should be of significant concern to the USMC. Given that Iran is operating on a short timeline to realize its interests in Iraq and the surrounding region, the Iranian government, especially one heavily influenced by the IRGC, is prone to be pushed toward an aggressive posture from time to time. Iran, despite its rhetoric, tends to be quite reserved in most of its foreign policy moves, but an emboldened Iran on the regional rise must be evaluated more closely. Iran will use force selectively, and when it does, it is likely to take on an unconventional form. Iran will not be able to achieve the accommodation it seeks with Saudi Arabia and the rest of the GCC unless it is able to intimidate its neighbors sufficiently. As Iran engages in actions to stress these neighbors, relying mainly on covert assets to exploit Shiite unrest and shake up these regimes, it will be looking for ways to deter U.S. intervention to stabilize the situation. In such a scenario, we would expect IRGC to threaten conventional U.S. military assets in the region with assets such as Iranian missile boats that are stationed up and down the coast. These boats could swarm into the Persian Gulf and the strait in an attempt to sink commercial vessels and even U.S. warships further offshore, and continue to operate from islands and coves along the coast.

NATE- expand on the nature of the Iranian military threat

EGYPT-ISRAEL

FORECAST

Evolving political dynamics in Egypt will likely drive the country toward an increasingly confrontational stance with Israel over the next three years. A number of regional players with significant covert capabilities have an interest in creating an Israeli-Palestinian conflict that would seek to undermine the clout of the Egyptian military regime and thus produce a shift in Egypt’s orientation toward Israel. As Israel’s vulnerability increases, the more seriously it will have to contemplate a policy of preemption toward Egypt, which could result in an Israeli redeployment to the Sinai Peninsula. A serious breach of the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel remains within the realm of possibility within this time frame, thereby raising the potential for U.S. military intervention to contain a Suez crisis.

ANALYSIS

The political evolution in Egypt over the next three years will drive the Arab country toward a confrontation with Israel, thereby undermining the peace that has kept the Arab-Israeli balance of power in check for the past 33 years. Whether this developing confrontation turns into a hot conflict within a three-year time frame is less clear, but the potential for a crisis impacting the Suez Canal, through which about 8 percent of the world’s shipping passes, must be watched closely.

Egypt is reemerging as one of the most dynamic countries in the Arab world. This carries major implications, as Egypt is in many ways the pivot of the Arab world. With a population of about 80 million, Egypt is the largest Arab country (and is thus able to field the largest Arab army.) When Egypt is withdrawn, the region is left exposed to the influence of outside forces. But when Egypt is able to assume an assertive role beyond its borders, it reshapes the geopolitics of the region. This is one of those times.

Egypt’s last major inflection point occurred in 1978, when former President Anwar Sadat negotiated a peace treaty with Israel that demilitarized the Sinai Peninsula. The peace treaty has been vital to the national security of both parties: neither Egypt nor Israel could sustain an effective military campaign across the largely inhospitable Sinai Peninsula. The treaty effectively secured Israel’s south and relieved Egypt of a major military burden of having to defend against a state in which it had minimal interests to begin with.

The peace treaty has also had a profound impact on the Egyptian political landscape. The military generals who previously led wars against Israel have spent the past three decades using their privileged status to enrich themselves while the majority of the population was left to struggle in stagnant economic conditions. The military-

backed regime’s dedication to maintaining a widely unpopular peace treaty with Israel served as a useful rallying point for Egyptian dissenters. In spite of the regime’s heavy-handed repression of opposition groups, particularly those of Islamist origin, organizations with extensive social services, such as the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, were able to gradually expand their pool of support, waiting patiently for the day that a political vacuum would tear open in Cairo to assert themselves on the political scene.

The removal of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in February did not create the political vacuum that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and other groups had hoped for. The mainstream media has portrayed the Egyptian demonstrations of 2011 as a people’s revolution. In our view, what happened in Egypt was by no means regime change: the real kingmaker in Egypt is the military, and the military itself had come to the conclusion that Mubarak and his succession plans for his son had become an intolerable liability. It was therefore the military, not the Tahrir protestors, who made this political transition possible.

The Egyptian military, for now, is in control of Egypt’s policy decisions, and has made clear that it is just as interested as Israel in maintaining the peace treaty. The opposition remains extremely divided, and the military has decades of experience in exploiting those fissures. The problem that Israel faces is that there are a number of players in the region that have the strategic intent to exploit this rare moment of uncertainty in Egypt’s history to fundamentally reshape the direction of Egyptian foreign policy.

Principle among these groups is Hamas. As long as the military, which has a cooperative relationship with Israel and views Hamas and its Islamist affiliates as threats to its national security, remains the dominant political force in Egypt, Hamas will remain living under heavy constraints. Hamas’ strategic intent is to therefore weaken the Egyptian military to the point that the regime either disintegrates and gives rise to friendlier political forces to Hamas, or at least (in the nearer term) is forced to shift its policy toward Israel under pressure from a population that is broadly unified in its hatred against Israel.

Israeli military actions against Palestinians serve as a highly potent rallying cry in the Egyptian political scene. Through a number of carefully coordinated, high-yield attacks, Hamas (or more precisely, militant affiliates of Hamas that would grant Hamas some plausible deniability) could strategically lure Israel into carrying out another major military operation in the Palestinian Territories. While Palestinian groups would benefit from an expanded target set, political opposition groups like the MB in Egypt would be given a new platform with which to pressure the military regime.

Of most concern to Israel is the rise of militant activity emanating from the Sinai, where jihadist groups have a history of operating. Under Mubarak, Egypt was able

to maintain decent security in this region by striking deals with local Bedouins and keeping tabs on militant traffic. After all, Egypt had become a major target of jihadist groups like al Qaeda and had a strong interest in clamping down on any such activity. The more Egypt’s political problems grow, the more distracted the regime will become and the less capable it will be in securing the Sinai.

In the near term, Israel will absorb the short-term tactical cost of tolerating a build-up of Egyptian military forces in the Sinai in hopes of containing this threat, thereby stretching the bounds of a peace treaty that was built on the foundation of demilitarizing this buffer zone. But, there are a number of players in the region that are not about to pass up this opportunity of having Egypt in a state of political flux. In addition to Hamas and its local affiliates, the Syrian regime (which carries significant influence over the Hamas politburo and finances) will be looking to create a distraction from its own domestic crisis and focus external attention on a growing crisis between Egypt and Israel. Iran, which has a vital interest in maintaining a friendly regime in Damascus to ensure a strong Iranian foothold in the Levant, will also be looking for ways to ease the pressure on Syria, tie Israel down and create a new regional crisis that gives Iran room to maneuver in pursuing its aims in the Persian Gulf.

A debate will thus intensify in Israel over how to manage its increasingly complicated relationship with Egypt. With time, we expect the policy of preemption to gain traction in Israel, as Israeli policymakers are forced to contend with the worst case scenario of having to confront Egypt in the end, and therefore try to preempt an intolerable war by redeploying forces to the Sinai. The Israeli argument in this case would be that Egypt is incapable of securing the Sinai by itself. The problem in such a scenario is that an Israeli return to the Sinai would embolden anti-Israeli sentiment in Israel and in many ways guarantee a more serious shift in Egyptian foreign policy toward Israel that would fundamentally threaten the foundation of the 1979 peace agreement.

The probability of a hot conflict, going beyond minor border skirmishes, breaking out between Egypt and Israel by the end of 2014 is low, but remains a possibility depending on how well or badly the military manages Egypt’s shaky political transition. A conflict that threatens the flow of trade through the Suez and seriously jeopardizes the US strategic need to maintain an Arab –Israeli balance of power would be highly likely to result in a U.S. military intervention designed to stabilize the situation and maintain a buffer between Egypt and Israel.

NATE – Describe nature of military operation in such a scenario

SYRIA/LEBANON

FORECAST

The Syrian Alawite-Baathist regime led by Syrian President Bashar al Assad will weaken significantly over the next three years, but its break point is unlikely to be imminent. Fractured opposition forces in Syria are unlikely to overcome the logistical constraints preventing them from cohering into a meaningful threat against the regime within this time frame. In the long term, however, Syria’s geopolitical trajectory is pointing toward a weakening of Alawite power and the reemergence of Sunni power in the state with the backing of major regional Sunni powers – most notably Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. There are a number of factors that indicate any political transition in Syria away from the al Assad clan will likely entail a violent, protracted civil conflict, one that will enflame sectarian unrest in Lebanon, where civil war is a defining characteristic of the state.

ANALYSIS

The Alawite-Baathist regime of Syria led by the al Assad clan will significantly weaken over the next three years. The potential for the regime to collapse cannot be ruled out, but the road to regime change will be a long and bloody one.

The staying power of the al Assad regime rests on four key pillars :  Power in the hands of the Al Assad clan, Alawite unity, Alawite control over the military-intelligence apparatus and the Baath party’s monopoly on the political system. All fours of these pillars are still standing, as the al Assad clan and the wider Alawite population face an existential crisis and are realizing what’s at stake should their community fracture and provide an opening for the majority Sunni population to retake power. It is important to remember that the Alawites have only been in power for around five decades. Alawites are a fractious bunch, historically divided among rival tribes and clans and split geographically between mountain refuges and plains in rural Syria. Historically, for much of the territory that is modern-day Syria, the Alawites represented the impoverished lot in the countryside while the urban-dwelling Sunnis dominated the country’s businesses and political posts. For the past five decades, the opposite has been true. This explains why the most resilient protestors in Syria so far have been concentrated in the predominantly Sunni rural countryside in the southwest and more conservative Sunni urban areas, such as Hama and Homs.

The Syrian military, as it stands today, is a direct reflection of hard-fought Alawite hegemony over the state. Syrian Alawites are stacked in the military from both the top and the bottom, keeping the army’s mostly Sunni 2nd Division commanders in check. Of the 200,000 career soldiers in the Syrian army, roughly 70 percent are Alawites. Some 80 percent of officers in the army are also believed to be Alawites. The military’s most elite division, the Republican Guard, led by the president’s younger brother Maher al Assad, is an all-Alawite force. On the other hand, most of Syria’s 300,000 conscripts are Sunnis who complete their two- to three-year compulsory military service and leave the military. Even though most of Syria’s air force pilots are Sunnis, most ground support crews are Alawites who control logistics, telecommunications and maintenance, thereby preventing potential Sunni

air force dissenters from acting unilaterally. Syria’s air force intelligence, dominated by Alawites, is one of the strongest intelligence agencies within the security apparatus and has a core function of ensuring that Sunni pilots do not rebel against the regime. There have been a significant number of desertions by Sunni conscripts and some mid-level Sunni officers, but there has so far not been a fundamental break within the armed forces among the Alawites as the dominant force.

That said, the demographic disadvantage that the al Assad regime faces has placed an enormous burden on the military in cracking down on demonstrations so far. The regime will continue to be extremely wary of deploying more demographically mixed army divisions to deal with the unrest. This has created a dynamic in which the regime’s security apparatus does not have the numbers to overwhelm the demonstrators and effectively stamp out the unrest, as Iran has been able to do thus far in dealing with domestic opponents. Fortunately for the regime, the opposition in Syria does not yet have the numbers, organization or capabilities overall to overwhelm the regime forces. Syria’s opposition is extremely fractured and is operating under enormous constraints inside the country. The exiled opposition has been quite effecting in developing a narrative on the Syrian opposition to disseminate to major media agencies, but the reports of protests are overblown. So long as the regime holds together and the Alawites in general do not fracture, the opposition inside Syria is unlikely to overcome the major logistical constraints that are preventing them from cohering into a meaningful force. Syria’s Sunnis do not yet have the tools, backing and unity they need to fill a power vacuum in Damascus without first undergoing a protracted struggle with Syria’s minority factions (including Alawites, mainstream Shia, Ismailis, Christians and Druze who would much rather see Damascus in the hands of a minority government than under Sunni control).

We do not anticipate that Syria’s opposition will be able to gain traction in street protests and overwhelm the regime within the next three years. The more probable threat the regime will be facing will come from within. If the al Assad clan is viewed as weakening by a significant degree and a liability to the state overall, there could be an attempt by high-ranking military and business elite of the regime to mount a coup. Such an attempt would likely involve Alawite and Sunni participation in the upper echelons of the regime since a Sunni-led coup would need to rely on an Alawite-dominated army to succeed. It is extremely unlikely, however, that a power transition through a military coup would result in regime stability. A protracted conflict would ensue, likely consisting of coups and counter-coups akin to the dark decades Syria experienced that led to the advent of Hafiz al Assad in the 1960s.

The level of external support for a Syrian alternative to the al Assad regime will grow with time, albeit incrementally. In the near term, none of the major stakeholders in the region, including Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United States, appear interested in dealing with the destabilizing effects of regime change in Syria in the region, especially when a crisis between Egypt and Israel is brewing, Iraq is left in flux and Iranian power is being left unchecked. However, Turkey, the

United States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others have a common interest in trying to severely under Iran’s foothold in the Levant and dial back Hezbollah’s political and military influence in Lebanon. Turkey, in particular, is the country with the most leverage over Syria in the long term, and has an interest in seeing this territory return to Sunni rule. Turkey does not have good options nor the capability to effect change in Syria any time soon, but it will gradually attempt to build up linkages with groups inside Syria, focusing in particular on the Islamist remnants of the Muslim Brotherhood in trying to fashion a viable Islamist political force in Syria that would operate under Ankara’s umbrella. This will take time to develop, but the geopolitical dynamic of the region points to a gradually weakening of the Alawite hold on power in Syria.

Over the next three years, there is potential for civil conflict to break out in Lebanon as a result of the weakening of the al Assad regime in Syria. The inability of Syria’s al Assad regime to contain unrest across the country is naturally of great concern to Hezbollah and its patrons in Iran. The geopolitical reality of this region dictates that any consolidated regime in Syria will also be the pre-eminent power in Lebanon. Should Syria’s majority Sunni community succeed in splitting the Alawite-Baathist regime, it is highly unlikely that a re-emerging Sunni elite would be friendly to Iranian and Hezbollah interests. And the more vulnerable the al Assad government appears, the more likely Lebanon is to bear the brunt of the sectarian spillover from this conflict.

Lebanon’s Sunni population and minority factions (including the Christians and Druze) will view the weakening of the al Assad regime as a potential opportunity to cut Hezbollah down to size. On a broader level, Lebanon is a natural proxy battleground between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The more unnerved Saudi Arabia becomes over Iranian regional expansion, the more effort it is likely to devote to building up covert assets among Lebanon’s Sunni community to fend against Iran’s main mlitant proxy, Hezbollah. Hezbollah, with heavy Iranian and Syrian backing, has spent the past several years enhancing its already significant political, military and economic clout in Lebanon. Most Lebanese factions are extremely unnerved by the fact that Hezbollah has the capability to topple the government and severely destabilize Beirut when its demands are not met. Syria has a pervasive security and intelligence apparatus in Lebanon to maintain its assets, but a number of Lebanese factions are already preparing for worst case scenarios and are thinking in terms of preemption. The Lebanese Forces of Maronite Christian leader Samir Geagea, for example, have been aligning with Druze forces and stocking up their arsenals in preparation for clashes with Hezbollah. Lebanese Christians and Druze do not want to see Sunni authority prevail in either Syria or Lebanon in the long term, but their concerns over Hezbollah are driving them toward conflict in the near term. Hezbollah is meanwhile refocusing its attention from Israel toward rival Lebanese factions in trying to maintain their status in Lebanon. Further stressing Hezbollah is the potential for Iran to try to drive the group toward conflict with Israel in trying to exploit the growing Egypt-Israel crisis developing in the Palestinian Territories. In other words, Hezbollah is being stretched in multiple directions, and in times of

insecurity in Lebanon, every faction will turn to their arms stockpiles for their defense, thereby moving the country toward the very civil conflict that they are trying to avoid in the first place, yet is all too familiar to Lebanon’s history.

We do not anticipate the USMC militarily intervening in either Syria or Lebanon with a mission to stabilize the situation. The sectarian dynamics are far too complex for the United States to afford becoming embroiled in. Instead, this will be a regional crisis for Turkey to manage. Since Turkey is still early in its regional rise, it will need considerable backing and support from its allies, but even then, is unlikely to be able to effectively deal with such a crisis within the next three years. The high probability of a protracted conflict in the Levant could lead to evacuation missions for U.S. citizens in which the USMC would be expected to be involved. (NATE, pls expand on this as needed)

YEMEN

FORECAST

Yemen’s ongoing political crisis has the potential to rise to the level of civil war over the next three years, thereby exacerbating the jihadist threat in the Arabian Peninsula.

ANALYSIS

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has spent the past three decades insulating his regime by deliberately preventing the development of alternative bases of power, relying mostly on complex tribal alliances and militaries commanded by nepotism to rule. Such regimes take decades to build and an iron fist to maintain, making the removal of a single leader typically more trouble than it is worth. Though the system has worked for a long time for Saleh, the president’s carefully managed support network is now eroding under pressure from domestic opposition forces.

Yemen’s opposition landscape is extraordinarily complex, consisting of opportunistic tribal sheikhs, rival military generals, socialists, Arab nationalists, Salafists, pre-democracy youth, southern separatists and northern Houthi rebels, all of whom have conflicting agendas. These fissures have allowed Saleh’s clan to hold onto power, however tentatively. Yet even as these domestic troubles have mounted, his clan is maintaining tight control over the organs of the state that matter, namely, the security apparatus run and operated by Saleh’s closest family members. This has created a dynamic in which neither the regime nor the opposition has the ability to overwhelm and defeat the other. As a result, Yemen will remain in deep political stalemate for some time to come.

The United States has spent a great deal of time and investment in trying to develop a New Guard in Yemen that would be able to keep at least some distance from Islamist sympathizers that pervade Yemen’s security and intelligence agencies. The

system is by no means perfect, but the US has a strategic interest in trying to maintain the security relationships it has developed thus far with the Saleh-dominated New Guard in pursuing its counterterrorism mission in Yemen. The will maintain pressure on Saleh to work with the opposition, but the US is also just as concerned about creating the conditions for civil war in the country by creating a power vacuum and playing into the hands of AQAP and other jihadists that maintain operations in the country.

The main arbiter in this dispute, the Saudis, remain very much divided over how to manage the political crisis. Some Saudi factions have openly backed Saleh, whiule others are backing and financing tribes and opposition leaders against the president. Some of this has to do with personal differences between King Abdullah and Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef in their respective relationships with Saleh, but also goes to show that Saudi has yet to form a coherent policy in managing its southern neighbor. Saudi Arabia prefers Yemen to remain weak and thus deeply exposed to Saudi influence, but it does nto want Yemen to disintegrate to the point that AQAP, whose strategic target set remains focused on the Saudi kingdom, has the room to harness their skills and use Yemen as a more secure launchpad for transnational attacks.

The mixed signals from Saudi are prolonging the political stagnation in Saleh. What could tip the balance is if a succession shift in Saudi Arabia results in the rise of Prince Nayef as head of state, where he would carry more influence to shape the power struggle in Yemen and undercut Saleh’s clan. If the Saudis are able to develop a coherent policy toward Yemen within the net three years that aims to remove Saleh, the potential for civil conflict will rise substantially and likely play to the hand of groups like AQAP. Moreover, those in the opposition that are best positioned to try and fill a power vacuum in Yemen, such as Gen. Ali Mohsen, are leaders of the Old Guard in Yemen that has maintained close relationships across the jihadist landscape in Yemen and would present greater obstacles to the US in trying to elicit counterterrorism cooperation from the state apparatus.

NATE – Type of USMC intervention? I doubt we will send ground forces to ‘stabilize’ the situation, but the US already has a pretty decent mil-intel presence in Yemen. I can flesh this out in more detail, but thought a Yemen section would be worth including.