Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good Seeing this newsletter as a forward? Sign up here. April 2, 2024 | |
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Shadow War in the Spotlight |
An ongoing shadow war between Israel and Iran may have just emerged into the light. Observers wonder if it will it send the Middle East into a spiral of escalating conflict. Iran and Syria blamed Israel for a strike on an Iranian consular building in Damascus, which killed seven officials with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on Monday. (Israel's military declined to say whether it was responsible, adding nonetheless that it believed the building to be a military site housing the IRGC's Quds Force.) Among those killed was Iranian Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi, "said to be in charge of Iran's military relationship with Syria and Lebanon," The New York Times' Steven Erlanger notes. His killing "is widely considered the most important assassination of an Iranian leader in years," dating back to the 2020 US assassination of Quds Force commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani. The Times' Erlanger sees Zahedi's death as a "political coup" for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faced notable domestic protests over the weekend. A so-called Israel–Iran "shadow war" has simmered for years, as Dalia Dassa Kaye detailed in a Foreign Affairs essay in February, featuring Iranian proxy attacks and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets in the region. As Gadi Eisenkot and Gabi Siboni wrote for The Washington Institute for Near East Policy in 2019, in recent years Israel has grown more active in countering Iran, waging a "campaign between wars"—lower-level strikes on Iran-linked targets, carried out between Israel's larger conflicts with its regional adversaries—to chip away at Iran's strength, notably in Syria. The Damascus strike marks an escalation in that shadow war for two reasons, Foreign Policy's Robbie Gramer writes: the strategic importance of Zahedi and the possibility that Iran could consider this a strike on its own territory (a connotation diplomatic facilities often carry). Importantly, as Iran vows revenge, CNN's Tamara Qiblawi writes that the region has been thrust back to the brink of a wider war, the specter of which has worried analysts since soon after Oct. 7. The Damascus strike "is the latest in a recent string of apparent Israeli strikes in Syria that targeted the IRGC and Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah," Qiblawi writes. "Monday's incident … may be the last straw" that triggers a more aggressive response. "The front to watch," The Wall Street Journal's editorial board writes, "is now to Israel's north, where Iran could order Hezbollah to respond with some of its 200,000 rockets and other munitions, including ballistic missiles. Other proxies could also step up the fight against Israel and the U.S." Israel has traded fire with Hezbollah across the Israeli–Lebanese border since shortly after Hamas's Oct. 7 attack; in early November, a New Yorker dispatch by Rania Abouzeid already detailed the combustibility of that front, noting for example pressure on Hezbollah to respond after an Israeli drone strike that month. |
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Turkey held local elections on Sunday, and as CNN's Scott McLean, Yusuf Gezer, and Nadeen Ebrahim report, the results delivered a blow to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. His "party lost the popular vote for the first time since it started running for elections in 2002, and it lost regions that had previously been considered … strongholds." Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu, seen as Erdoğan's chief political rival nationally, appears to have won reelection handily. "Turkey woke up transformed on April 1st," The Economist writes, calling the vote results "a spectacular upset." A flagging economy under Erdoğan has lifted his opponents politically, the magazine writes. In a Financial Times op-ed, Middle East Institute Turkey expert Gönül Tol writes that Turkish voters "sent a message" to Erdoğan, "who had turned the vote into a referendum on his rule. He campaigned hard using the vast state resources at his disposal." To Tol, the results show Erdoğan "is more vulnerable than he thinks. To stay in power, he has to fix the economy and address Turkey's growing problems. His dream of remaining president for life by changing the constitution to run again in 2028 is now more distant." |
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The controversy over NBC's hiring and firing of former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel as a political analyst "might seem like a small media tempest," Fareed said on Sunday's GPS, but it points to a much larger problem in 2024: The media, and the political mainstream writ large, will have to figure out how to deal with former President Donald Trump and his supporters. It may be tempting to "cancel" pro-Trump voices like McDaniel's, Fareed says, but in a liberal democracy, the best way to oppose Trump and his allies is to engage them in open debate—and win. |
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An Inflationomics Election? |
As Fareed argued recently on GPS—and as he details in his new book, "Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present"—economics weigh less heavily on our politics these days. Social issues like abortion and gay rights seem to be driving voter behavior; class and culture, as opposed to the effect of policies on one's bank account, have risen in importance. But to whatever extent it's still "the economy, stupid"—in the words of Bill Clinton adviser James Carville—that shapes elections, 2024 could see interesting dynamics. After inflation receded last year, it is now "proving sticker than expected in the U.S. and Europe," The Wall Street Journal's Tom Fairless writes. "The 'last mile' is proving tougher. Underlying inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, slowed to 3% in the second half of last year across advanced economies but has since moved up to 3.5%, according to JP Morgan estimates." Where Fareed notes the rise of social and cultural politics, Brookings' William A. Galston offers another "hypothesis" to explain the discrepancy between a strong US economy and the unpopularity of President Joe Biden. That discrepancy "disappears when voters' perceptions of what is most important about the economy are taken into account," Galston writes. "Numerous surveys have shown that voters regard inflation as the single most important indicator of how the economy is doing—and that they are more likely to define inflation as the level of prices (high or low) rather than the pace of price increases (fast or slow). Prices have risen by 18% during Biden's first three years in office, compared to 6.2% during Trump's first three years. Voters notice the difference, and it matters to them." There are good reasons, Galston writes: Inflation offsets rises in nominal wages, "directly affects everyone," and might contribute to "a broader sense of loss of control." |
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