Yemeni president showed Al Assad how to fight – and when to leave office

Yemen's Saleh showed how to fight uprisings, and know when to leave power. Other views: Tunisia must choose a PM to save the revolution and corporations are ready to benefit from Iran deal.

As the date slated for holding the second Geneva peace conference draws closer, barring any hitches, the UN has announced that it has cast-iron evidence implicating Syrian government officials, including President Bashar Al Assad, in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Will this complicate matters further? Is it not a precursor to an imminent Yemeni-modelled solution in Syria? These were questions posed by Hassan Haydar, a columnist in the pan-Arab daily Al Hayat.

The first stumbling block for holding the peace conference is the regime’s insistence that ceding power is not an option. Mr Al Assad plans to preside over the envisaged transition period and wants to retain the right to run for elections.

The Syrian opposition, for its part, insists that its participation in the conference is meant to agree about an interim government that enjoys full executive powers and that would have no place for Mr Al Assad and any of his cronies.

What would these new UN allegations mean to Mr Al Assad and his inner circle amid extremely divergent stances?

“This is a blatant response to the obstinacy of the ruler of Damascus and his obdurate clinging to power as he goes on ignoring the civil war raging on around him,” the writer said.

Mr Al Assad is behaving as if he were immune to mistakes. He nearly fools himself into believing his own tale about a “universal war” against his regime.

“In doing so, he proves to be far less intelligent than his former Yemeni counterpart Ali Abdullah Saleh who, despite his fierce resistance to popular demands to step down, came to accept that, after all the bloodshed, it would be difficult for him to remain in power,” Haydar said.

Mr Saleh never publicly rejected the idea of ceding power. He supported the transitional solution, which he ended up signing once he secured his own safety and the safety from those close to him from prosecution.

Yemen didn’t witness massacres at the scale seen in Syria. Mr Saleh didn’t wage an open war with all kinds of weapons against his opponents.

Hence, matters didn’t escalate to the point of him being accused internationally of war crimes.

“Violence in Yemen remained ‘proportional’ and Saleh proved that, eventually, he had the interests of the country as a whole at heart,” he added.

“His manoeuvre paved the way to future national reconciliation and to a new chapter in the history of Yemen.”

But Mr Al Assad isn’t Yemeni, even though he also is a “tribal” chief.

The accusations he faces from the UN mean that he can’t possibly be president in the transitional phase. Those who defend him will have to butt heads with the international organisation.

Tunisian PM needs to save the revolution

Tunisia’s ruling Islamists and their secular opponents were given 10 days to name a prime minister who will lead a government with the goal of ending the political crisis nearly three years after the revolution.

This may lead to a way out of the present political impasse, but it would be a mistake to wager on it as a final solution for Tunisia’s crisis that has quashed almost all the hopes that emerged from the popular revolution of 2011, said the Dubai-based daily Al Bayan in its editorial on Thursday.

As Ennahda tightened its grip on power, Tunisia was subjected to a stifling political and economic situation that eroded the state’s prominence and efficiency. Inflation and unemployment rates rose while the once tight social fabric sagged as a result of the Salafist groups’ actions.

“Just as they flopped in Egypt, Islamists flopped in Tunisia too,” the paper said.

Amid this heated power struggle, Tunisian political movements seemed as if they were insane. Since July, they have been unable to agree on a new prime minister. The public interest was forgotten and the language of dialogue was lost.

Naming a new premier would introduce a degree of certainty, but it will not be a solution so long as the political powers continue to look at the present failing situation through their ministerial positions as they continue their frenzied power race, the paper suggested.

Corporations ready to benefit from Iran’s nuclear deal

The “nuclear deal” that Iran struck with western powers recently must be regarded as a great achievement in the region, wrote the columnist Mazen Hammad in the Qatari newspaper Al Watan.

Reports reveal that numerous companies are gearing up to resume trade with Iran following the easing of sanctions that are expected to come with the Geneva agreement.

US, European and Arab companies are lining up to restart commercial and financial activities with Tehran.

Even Israelis, who staunchly opposed the deal, seem to be preparing to reserve their future share in the Iranian market, reports say.

Although governments in the West insist on excluding the automobile and aviation industries from any negotiations with Iran, observers speculate that these governments are leaning towards a gradual lifting of sanctions on petrochemicals, gold and precious metals.

“The anticipated easing of sanctions in coming months in Iran is invaluable. Iran’s commercial transactions with the world, mainly the West, are in the hundreds of billions of dollars,” the writer noted.

“No wonder western companies are drooling over the slightest developments in this issue.”

* Digest compiled by Racha Makarem