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      Expect an Uneven Rebound in MENA and Central Asia

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      Projections, no matter how well-grounded in analytics, are a messy business. Three years ago, COVID-19 was unheard of and then-US President Donald Trump’s politics caused uncertainty in international relations, with democracy in retreat across the world. Despite the best-informed prognostications, predictions failed to capture cross-border variables such as immigration and civil conflict that have yet to play out in rearranging local and regional economic prospects.

      The COVID-19 Crisis Has Catalyzed Vision 2030

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      No region is more complex in terms of confusing signals than the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Central Asia. This is the subject of the latest report by the International Monetary Fund titled, “Regional Economic Outlook: Arising from the Pandemic: Building Forward Better.”

      What is clear from a review of the data is that 2020 was an outlier in terms of trend lines earlier in the decade, skewed by the COVID-19 pandemic, erosion of oil prices, diminished domestic economic activity, reduced remittances and other factors that have yet to be brought into an orderly predictive model. Even the IMF had to recalibrate its 2020 report upward for several countries based on rising oil exports, while decreasing marks were given countries slow to vaccinate against COVID-19 and that rely on service-oriented sectors.

      Mixed Outlook

      The numbers indicate a mixed picture, ranging from Oman growing at 7.2% and the West Bank at 6.9%, to Lebanon receiving no projection and Sudan at the bottom of the range with a 1.13% real GDP growth rate. Yet, so much can impact those numbers, from Oman’s heavy debt burden to continuing turmoil in intra-Palestinian and Palestinian-Israeli affairs.

      The good news is that real GDP is expected to grow by 4% in 2021, up from the projection last October of 3.2%. Much of the lift has come from two factors: a more optimistic trend line for the oil producers and the rate of vaccinations in countries that will promote business recovery.

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      As CNBC pointed out, Jihad Azour, director of the IMF’s Middle East and Central Asia department, noted that recovery will be “divergent between countries and uneven between different parts of the population.” Key variables include the extent of vaccine rollout, recovery of tourism and government policies to promote recovery and growth.

      In oil-producing countries, real GDP is projected to increase from 2.7% in 2021 to 3.8% in 2022, with a 5.8% rise in the region’s sector driven by Libya’s return to global markets. Conversely, non-oil producers saw their growth rate estimates reduced from 2.7% to 2.3%. In fact, Georgia, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia, which are highly dependent on tourism, have been downgraded in light of continuing COVID-19 issues such as vaccination rollout and coverage.

      As the IMF report summary notes, “The outlook will vary significantly across countries, depending on the pandemic’s path, vaccine rollouts, underlying fragilities, exposure to tourism and contact-intensive sectors, and policy space and actions.” From Mauritania to Afghanistan, one can select data that supports or undercuts the projected growth rates. For example, in general, Central Asia countries as a group seem to be poised for stronger results than others. Meanwhile, Arab countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council face greater uncertainty, from resolving debt issues to unforeseen consequences of negotiations with Iran.

      So, how will these projects fare given a pending civil war in Afghanistan and the possible deterioration of oil prices and debt financing by countries such as Bahrain and Oman? Highlighting this latter concern, the report goes on to say that public “gross financing needs in most emerging markets in the region are expected to remain elevated in 2021-22, with downside risks in the event of tighter global financial conditions and/or if fiscal consolidation is delayed due to weaker-than-expected recovery.”

      An Opportunity

      Calling for greater regional and international cooperation to complement “strong domestic policies” focused on the need “to build forward better and accelerate the creation of more inclusive, resilient, sustainable, and green economies,” the IMF is calling on the countries to see a post-pandemic phase as an opportunity. This would involve implementing policies that promote recovery, sustain public health practices that focus on sustainable solutions, and balance “the need for debt sustainability and financial resilience.”

      There is great uncertainty assigning these projections without more conclusive data on the impact of the pandemic, the stress on public finance and credit available to the private sector, and overall economic recovery across borders that relies on factors such as the weather, oil demand, external political shocks and international monetary flows. The IMF report is a very helpful bellwether for setting parameters for ongoing analyses and discussions.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in UK Politics

      ‘Devastating blow’: UK to cut aid to Syria by one-third

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      Dominic Raab has announced that the UK will cut aid to Syria by one-third, telling a United Nations donor conference that the government would pledge only £205m to help the country this year, down from the £300m promised in 2020.The UK ultimately gave £400m to Syria last year, meaning that, if no further funds are forthcoming from Whitehall, the decrease will actually be closer to 50 per cent.Mr Raab acknowledged that the Middle Eastern state and its neighbours were under even greater pressure because of the coronavirus pandemic but said Britain had paid out £3.5bn in support of Syrian refugees since 2012 and had had to revise its own priorities in light of Covid-19.The US, EU and Germany are customarily the biggest donors to the country and likewise beset by the impact of the virus on their economies, but none of the three announced cuts to their contributions, with Mr Raab’s Berlin counterpart, Heiko Maas, pledging £480m and the same again in 2022.Under Bashar al-Assad’s leadership, an estimated 90 per cent of the Syrian population are now living in poverty, according to the humanitarian organisation Syria Relief, with 12.4m people suffering from food insecurity and 12.2m lacking regular access to clean water.Read more:Mr Assad faces a presidential election this year that few of the speakers at the UN conference were optimistic would be conducted fairly.“For 10 years, Syrians have endured death, destruction, displacement and deprivation and things are getting worse, not better,” UN secretary general Antonio Guterres said at the video summit, making an appeal for generosity as the body sought to pull together £7.3bn to help the country and its refugees dispersed in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan.Mr Raab’s announcement provoked a negative response from international aid agencies at home and abroad.“Cutting funding by almost a third is a devastating blow to the millions of Syrians who fled their homes and had their lives torn apart by 10 years of conflict,” said Oxfam’s head of policy and advocacy, Sam Nadel.“While the violence may have subsided, millions of people are still struggling to survive within Syria and across the region. Aid is needed now more than ever as the pandemic, rising food prices and failing economies have made their lives even more difficult.” More

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      in UK Politics

      ‘Utter hypocrisy’: Iran’s foreign minister attacks Boris Johnson over nuclear weapons plan

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      It was an opportunity to pounce, and Iran’s outspoken foreign minister seized it. The United Kingdom has announced it is set to remove Cold War-era limits on its stockpiles of nuclear weapons, even as it is demanding that the Islamic Republic constrain its own atomic programme.Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif accused prime minister Boris Johnson of “utter hypocrisy” for announcing plans to increase Britain’s arsenal of weapons of mass destruction while chastising Tehran for its decades-long attempt to master nuclear technology.Mr Johnson told British MPs on Tuesday that the government is planning to reverse a planned reduction of its nuclear weapon stockpile. Under the new proposal, Britain will increase its number of warheads to 260. It had previously agreed to reduce the number to 180.In a note posted to his Twitter feed and tagging Mr Johnson, Mr Zarif mocked the British leader for saying he was “concerned about Iran developing a viable nuclear weapon” on the very same day as announcing that “his country will increase its stockpile of nukes”.He added: “Unlike the UK and allies, Iran believes nukes and all WMDs are barbaric and must be eradicated.”Iranian state television widely covered Mr Zarif’s remarks, which came before Russia also denounced London’s decision on Wednesday. Both China’s and Russia’s official media have focused on the UK’s plan to up its nuclear arsenal, describing it as hypocritical.“Citizens are demanding that Boris Johnson look under his feet, fight against the coronavirus and street crime,” state-guided NTV’s London correspondent Liza Gerson said in a broadcast, referring to the murder of Sarah Everard. “People are demanding safe streets and lamps in parks in London, not warheads in Scotland.”The UK decision comes at a particular tense moment in the arena of global arms control.Iran is currently locked in a diplomatic statemate with the United States and the so-called E3 – the UK, Germany and France – over an attempt to re-establish the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 2015 nuclear deal forged by Tehran and world powers but abandoned by the Trump administration in 2018.After abiding by the terms of the agreement for a year, even as the US upped crushing sanctions, Iran began to expand its nuclear programme beyond the strict limits set by the JCPOA. The new administration of president Joe Biden has said it would like to restore the terms of the nuclear deal, but insists that Iran first roll back its production and stockpile of enriched uranium that could be used as fissile material for a bomb.Iran insists that its nuclear programme is meant for peaceful civilian purposes only, though arms-control experts and intelligence professionals believe Iran is at least aiming to achieve nuclear weapons capability, if not the bomb.On Monday, Reuters reported that the United Nations nuclear watchdog had confirmed Iran had begun feeding uranium gas into a second advanced device that can more efficiently produce fissile material than the ones permitted under the JCPOA.Iran has insisted the US first remove sanctions, since it was Washington that first breached the deal. On Wednesday, a senior official in Iranian president Hassan Rouhani’s government confirmed that Tehran had received indirect communications from Washington regarding a possible return to the JCPOA. More

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      in UK Politics

      Syria civil war: UK imposes sanctions on key Assad allies after ‘decade of brutality’

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      The UK has imposed sanctions on six allies of Syria’s ruler Bashar Assad a decade after the country’s brutal civil war began.The asset freezes and travel bans are a response to the Assad regime’s “wholesale assault” on the Syrian people, foreign secretary Dominic Raab said, as the country marks 10 years of conflict.“The Assad regime has subjected the Syrian people to a decade of brutality for the temerity of demanding peaceful reform,” said Mr Raab. “Today, we are holding six more individuals from the regime to account for their wholesale assault on the very citizens they should be protecting.”Those sanctioned include foreign minister Faisal Miqdad, presidential adviser Luna al-Shibl, and financier Yassar Ibrahim – who the Foreign Office claimed acts as a front for Assad’s hold on the Syrian economy.Businessman Muhammad Bara’ al-Qatirji and military officers major general Malik Aliaa and major general Zaid Salah will also be hit by the asset freezes and travel bans.It marks the first measures taken in relation to Syria under the UK’s new, autonomous sanctions regime, which came into force following the end of the Brexit transition period. The British government has joined allies in the UN Security Council in pushing the regime to engage in peace talks in Geneva and release those held in arbitrary detention.Monday marks the 10th anniversary of the peaceful protests against Assad’s government, which erupted in March 2011 and touched off a popular uprising that quickly turned into a full-blown civil war.Despite a decade of fighting and a broken country, Assad remains firmly in power, having been propped up by Russia and Iran.Syria is economically devastated and divided. An al-Qaida-linked group dominates the northwestern Idlib province, with Turkey-backed rebels controlling small stretches along the Turkish border.US-backed Syrian Kurdish forces hold around a quarter of the country in the north-east, while the Assad regime controls the rest. More

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      in Elections

      The Israeli Feminist Trying to Save Liberal Zionism

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Israeli Feminist Trying to Save Liberal ZionismCan Merav Michaeli rescue Israel’s Labor Party?Opinion ColumnistMarch 5, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETCredit…Peter Rigaud/laif, via ReduxWhen Merav Michaeli, a pathbreaking feminist, was elected head of Israel’s Labor Party in January, some people offered her condolences. Labor was once Israel’s governing party, the home of many of the country’s iconic leaders: David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin. It ruled continuously from Israel’s founding in 1948 until 1977, and then a few more times after that.But since the second Palestinian intifada in 2000, which for many Israelis discredited the country’s peace camp, the Israeli left has collapsed. Because of its politicians’ inability to form a stable government, the country is about to hold its fourth elections in two years, and in January polls showed that, for the first time, Labor might fail to meet the threshold to win any seats at all in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. For a party that once seemed to define Israel itself — especially to liberal diaspora Jews — it’s been an almost inconceivable fall.There’s a phenomenon in business and politics called the glass cliff, in which organizations in crisis turn to female leaders. That seems to be how Michaeli, a former journalist who once gave a talk titled “Cancel Marriage” at an Israeli TEDx conference, became Labor’s leader.“Welcome to the Worst Job in Israeli Politics, Merav Michaeli,” said a headline in the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Her victory, wrote Anshel Pfeffer, doesn’t “so much reflect Michaeli’s popularity — she ran against six virtually unknown candidates — but the fact that no other politician wants to be remembered as the leader under whose watch Labor failed to get into the Knesset altogether.”But after Michaeli won, something unexpected happened. Labor’s poll numbers ticked up, and it’s now expected to capture six or seven seats when the country votes on March 23.“She’s the best thing that’s happened to Labor in recent years,” Dahlia Scheindlin, a pollster and political analyst in Israel, told me. She described Michaeli, a former journalist once known for her campaign to make Hebrew, a highly gendered language, more gender inclusive, as “avant-garde.” Scheindlin added, “She has a backbone, and she’s not just blowing in the wind.”Labor’s last leader, Amir Peretz, was the opposite. In 2019, he swore he would never join a government led by Benjamin Netanyahu, shaving his famous mustache so Israelis could better “read his lips” on the matter. The next year, he went back on his pledge, bringing Labor into Netanyahu’s unity government.Even as her party joined the ruling coalition, Michaeli insisted on remaining part of the opposition, making her, as The Times of Israel wrote, “a bizarre sort of one-woman opposition to the coalition from within.” Once in charge, she pulled Labor out of the government. The party’s improving fortunes suggest that taking a stand against Netanyahu has paid off.Now, six or seven seats still isn’t much, given Labor’s former dominance. (Netanyahu’s Likud currently holds 36 seats, followed by 33 seats for the centrist Blue and White party.) A party led by an avant-garde figure might seem, almost by definition, to have limited mainstream appeal. But after rescuing Labor from oblivion, Michaeli is convinced she can restore it. “I am here because this is my project — to turn it back into a ruling party,” Michaeli told me.Merav Michaeli, Labor’s new leader, says there is still a constituency for the two-state solution in Israel.Credit…Sebastian Scheiner/Associated PressI first met Michaeli in 2009, when she was still a journalist. As she remembers it, it was at a party in New York before the first convention of J Street, the liberal pro-Israel group. At the time, she said, Israelis knew only two kinds of American Jews — those with right-wing views on Israel, and those who were indifferent. She wrote a newspaper column about progressive American Jews who cared about Israel’s future. Her editor, she said, told her that she had no idea what she was talking about, and never ran it.J Street would eventually turn into a force in the Democratic Party. But as Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians has grown ever more entrenched, many progressive Jews, myself included, have become skeptical about the future of liberal Zionism. I’d love to believe that Michaeli could do what she’s promising, creating a socially democratic Israel committed to a just resolution of the Palestinian conflict. But I see plenty of reason for doubt.Right now, Israeli politics is mostly a contest between different right-wing factions. Seeking to cling to power, Netanyahu, on trial for corruption, has struck a vote-sharing deal with the Religious Zionist Party, which includes what The Times of Israel called “Israel’s most extremist and openly racist Jewish political movement,” Otzma Yehudit. (One of Otzma Yehudit’s leaders, the paper reports, holds an annual “commemoration party” at the grave of Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Palestinians in 1994.)Netanyahu’s main rival, Gideon Saar, was once his protégé, and is in some ways even more conservative. And unlike in America, young people in Israel are to the right of older generations; according to data from the Israel Democracy Institute, 69.9 percent of Jewish Israelis ages 18 to 24 describe themselves as right-wing. It’s hard to see where support for a liberal revival could come from.But Michaeli argues that, as in the United States — where liberal economic policies are often popular even with self-described conservatives — there is a gap between people’s issue preferences and their political identity.“There is actually a majority in Israel that wants what we are offering,” she said. “People want socially democratic positions on the economy and society. People want a welfare state. People want pluralism, they want equality.”She’s convinced that there remains a large constituency for a two-state solution, at least in principle. “Of course there is a huge majority that does not believe it is achievable,” she said.That’s true not only in Israel, and not only on the right. The inexorable growth of Israel’s occupation, and the increasing power of those in Israel calling for outright annexation of Palestinian lands, can make it hard to believe that a two-state solution is still viable. If it isn’t, neither is Israeli democracy, unless and until the country is prepared to give equal rights to the Palestinians it rules. For years, it’s been a truism to say that Israel is approaching the point where it can be Jewish or democratic, but not both. It’s possible that, as much as liberal Zionists don’t want to admit it, that point has been crossed.So I asked Michaeli why American Jews committed to liberal democracy should still feel connected to Israel. She grew vehement, saying that the experience of living under Donald Trump should redouble our empathy for Israel’s embattled progressives.Michaeli’s first four years in the Knesset coincided with Barack Obama’s second term. “I spent those four years being attacked by liberal American Jews for failing to replace Netanyahu, failing to be an effective opposition,” she said. She grew deeply frustrated trying to explain the near impossibility of constraining a demagogue.“And then when Donald Trump was elected, I was devastated, but at the same time, I said to my friends, ‘Welcome to our lives,’” she said. “Now you will understand us better, because you felt the same — it’s the way your life changes. All of the sudden your president becomes your life, and your jaw drops 10 times a day, and you experience how a scandal happens every 10 minutes and everybody becomes numb, and you run out of words to express how horrible things are.” With Trump, she said, “I thought that my American liberal friends will at last understand what we have been up against all this time.”Instead, Michaeli feels that some liberal American Jews are giving up on their Israeli peers. “Don’t you get that we need you and you need us?” she asked. “You need us, because as long as Israel, which used to be a true democracy, and is half of the Jewish people, is under such threat, you need us to get over this as much as we need you to be able to strengthen your democracy.”She insists, however hard it is to imagine now, that a two-state solution is still within reach. “It has to happen,” said Michaeli. “I’m convinced that it will, eventually.”“Really?” I asked.“Yeah, of course,” she said. “Listen, I brought Labor back almost from the dead.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      in UK Politics

      UK urged not to cut life-saving aid to Yemen

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      The UK government has been warned against cutting aid to Yemen, amid fears tens of millions of pounds will be slashed from Britain’s contribution to humanitarian relief efforts.Millions of people in the war-torn country will go hungry this year and hundreds of thousands are already facing famine, the UN says.Ahead of a UN donor conference on Monday, at which secretary-general Antonio Guterres will ask the world for $3.85bn (£2.76bn) in aid for Yemen, former Tory minister Andrew Mitchell said UK funding might fall by as much as half from 2020 levels, when £214m was sent.Mr Mitchell said reducing help for Yemen would have dire consequences and damage Britain’s global standing, given its backing for Saudi Arabia’s coalition, which is battling Houthi rebels there in a conflict that has caused widespread civilian casualties.
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      in Elections

      How Alan Dershowitz Became a Force in Clemency Grants

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentLatest UpdatesWhere Each Senator StandsTimelineHow the House VotedHow the Trial Will UnfoldAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyUsing Connections to Trump, Dershowitz Became Force in Clemency GrantsThe lawyer Alan M. Dershowitz, who represented the former president in his first impeachment trial, used his access for a wide array of clients as they sought pardons or commutations.Alan M. Dershowitz had substantial influence with the White House as President Donald J. Trump decided who should benefit from his pardon powers.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesKenneth P. Vogel and Feb. 8, 2021Updated 7:30 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — By the time George Nader pleaded guilty last year to possessing child pornography and sex trafficking a minor, his once strong alliances in President Donald J. Trump’s inner circle had been eroded by his cooperation with the special counsel’s investigation into Mr. Trump’s team and its connections to Russia.So as Mr. Nader sought to fight the charges and reduce his potential prison time, he turned to a lawyer with a deep reservoir of good will with the president and a penchant for taking unpopular, headline-grabbing cases: Alan M. Dershowitz.Mr. Dershowitz told Mr. Nader’s allies that he had reached out to an official in the Trump administration and one in the Israeli government to try to assess whether they would support a plan for Mr. Nader to be freed from United States custody in order to resume a behind-the-scenes role in Middle East peace talks, and whether Mr. Trump might consider commuting his 10-year sentence.Mr. Dershowitz helped craft a proposal — which Mr. Nader’s allies believed he was floating at the White House in the final days of the Trump presidency — for Mr. Nader to immediately “self-deport” after his release from a Virginia jail. Under the plan, Mr. Nader would board a private plane provided by the United Arab Emirates to return to the Gulf state, where he holds citizenship and has served as a close adviser to the powerful crown prince.Given the nature of Mr. Nader’s crimes and his cooperation with the Russia investigation, his bid for clemency was a long shot that did not work out. But Mr. Dershowitz’s willingness to pull a range of levers to try to free him shows why he emerged as a highly sought-after and often influential intermediary as Mr. Trump decided who would benefit from his pardon powers.Many of Mr. Dershowitz’s clients got what they wanted before Mr. Trump left office, an examination by The New York Times found. The lawyer played a role in at least 12 clemency grants, including two pardons, which wipe out convictions, and 10 commutations, which reduce prison sentences, while also helping to win a temporary reprieve from sanctions for an Israeli mining billionaire.His role highlighted how Mr. Trump’s transactional approach to governing created opportunities for allies like Mr. Dershowitz — an 82-year-old self-described “liberal Democrat” who defended the president on television and in his first impeachment trial — to use the perception that they were gatekeepers to cash in, raise their profiles, help their clients or pursue their own agendas.Mr. Dershowitz received dozens of phone calls from people seeking to enlist him in clemency efforts. The cases in which he did assist came through family members of convicts, defense lawyers enlisting him because they thought he could help their court cases as well as their clemency pushes and Orthodox Jewish prisoners’ groups with which he has long worked.In a series of interviews, Mr. Dershowitz — who in a career spanning more than half a century has represented a roster of tabloid-magnet clients accused of heinous acts, including O.J. Simpson and Jeffrey Epstein — cast his defense of Mr. Trump and his clemency efforts as a natural extension of his work defending individual rights against a justice system that could be harsh and unfair. “I’m just not a fixer or an influence peddler,” he said.Mr. Dershowitz said his efforts on behalf of Mr. Nader reflected “a multifaceted approach to these problems. So I don’t separate out diplomacy, legality, courts, executive, Justice Department — they’re all part of what I do.”He said that “the idea that I would ever, ever ingratiate myself to a president in order to be able to advertise myself as a person that could get commutations is just totally false and defamatory.”Among those Mr. Dershowitz sought to help was George Nader, a figure in the special counsel’s Russia investigation who pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography and sex trafficking a minor.Credit…C-SPAN, via Associated PressHe acknowledged, though, that his relationship with Mr. Trump increased interest in his services, and potentially his effectiveness.“Of course I’m not surprised that people would call me because they thought that the president thought well of me,” Mr. Dershowitz said. “If somebody is seeking a pardon from Clinton, you’re not going to go to somebody who is a friend of Jerry Falwell. You’re going to go to somebody who is a Democrat. That’s the way the system works.”He said he had agonized over cases in which he had failed to persuade Mr. Trump, including that of a federal death row inmate he had represented who was executed in December.Still, Mr. Dershowitz had an outsize influence over how Mr. Trump deployed one of the most profound unilateral powers of the presidency, including:Commutations to three people on whose behalf he personally lobbied Mr. Trump after working on their cases with Jewish prisoners’ rights groups. They included two New York real estate investors who had been convicted of defrauding more than 250 investors out of $23 million and a former executive at a kosher meatpacking plant who was convicted in 2009 of bank fraud.Commutations to several people who received long sentences at trial after turning down shorter sentences in plea deals offered by prosecutors, an outcome known as the trial penalty, against which Mr. Dershowitz has long crusaded. A commutation for a New Jersey man who was sentenced in 2013 to 24 years in prison for charges related to a Ponzi-style real estate scheme that caused $200 million in losses. Pardons to two conservative political figures, the author Dinesh D’Souza and the former vice-presidential aide I. Lewis Libby Jr., and a commutation to the former Illinois governor Rod R. Blagojevich. Mr. Dershowitz did not work on their cases, but he recommended clemency grants when Mr. Trump asked his opinion.It is difficult to determine how much money the work brought Mr. Dershowitz.Mr. Dershowitz, an emeritus professor at Harvard Law School who described himself as semiretired, said more than half of his clemency work was pro bono, and most of it was done on behalf of pre-existing clients. When he was paid, it was at an hourly rate in line with the fees charged by senior partners at law firms, Mr. Dershowitz said.In one case, he was paid by the family of Jonathan Braun, whose 10-year sentence for drug smuggling was commuted by Mr. Trump in his final hours in office. But after The Times reported that Mr. Braun had a history of violence and threatening people, Mr. Dershowitz said he donated the fees to charity.Mr. Dershowitz emerged as a favorite of Mr. Trump’s after he publicly criticized the Russia investigation.Credit…Pete Marovich for The New York TimesBut Mr. Dershowitz — who volunteered examples of Mr. Trump seeking his advice while in the next breath protesting that he was “not a Trump supporter” and had no more influence with Mr. Trump than with past presidents — obtained something that his defenders and detractors alike described as especially important to him: renewed political relevance and an increased reputation as a power player, particularly in the Jewish community.Mr. Dershowitz emerged as a favorite of Mr. Trump from his early days in office as a result of his criticism of the investigation being carried out by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.Mr. Dershowitz, an ardent supporter of Israel, was invited to the White House in 2017 for two days of private talks about a Middle East peace plan being assembled by Mr. Trump, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and other officials.Mr. Dershowitz was invited back to the White House last year, when Mr. Trump unveiled the peace plan, and for a Hanukkah party in 2019 where Mr. Trump signed an executive order Mr. Dershowitz had helped draft targeting anti-Semitism on college campuses.The week after the Hanukkah party in 2019, Mr. Dershowitz attended a Christmas Eve dinner at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort, where he said Mr. Trump lobbied him to join his impeachment legal defense team. Mr. Dershowitz said he decided to join as a matter of principle and noted that he had also consulted with President Bill Clinton’s legal team during his impeachment.Mr. Dershowitz acknowledged taking advantage of his access to push for clemency grants, starting with the invitation to the White House for talks about the Middle East peace plan. He used the opportunity to urge Mr. Trump to grant clemency to Sholom Rubashkin, the kosher meatpacking executive convicted in 2009.Sholom Rubashkin, a former kosher meatpacking executive, was convicted of bank fraud in 2009. Mr. Dershowitz pressed Mr. Trump to commute his 27-year prison sentence. Credit…Matthew Putney/The Waterloo Courier, via Associated PressMr. Rubashkin’s case had become a cause in Orthodox Jewish circles, and Mr. Dershowitz had worked on it on a pro bono basis. A few months after Mr. Dershowitz made the case to Mr. Trump in the White House, Mr. Rubashkin was free.That outcome emboldened a network of activists and groups supporting prisoners’ rights, social service and clemency, including some associated with Orthodox Jewish leaders.Mr. Dershowitz and a Jewish group with which he has worked closely, the Aleph Institute, were central players in the network. As word spread of their successes, they were inundated with requests from prisoners and their families, including many Orthodox Jews. Late last year, Mr. Trump called Mr. Dershowitz to ask about clemency grants he was advocating on a pro bono basis with the Aleph Institute for Mark A. Shapiro and Irving Stitsky, the New York real estate investors convicted in the $23 million fraud. Mr. Dershowitz cast the cases as emblematic of the trial penalty.Mr. Dershowitz had written op-eds in Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal denouncing the trial penalty and citing unnamed cases. One matched the details of Mr. Shapiro and Mr. Stitsky, who were each sentenced to 85 years in prison after they turned down plea agreements of less than 10 years. Mr. Dershowitz said one or both of the articles had circulated in the White House, and Mr. Trump had asked him about the trial penalty.“He was very interested” in the penalty, Mr. Dershowitz said, and also “the concept of the pardon power being more than just clemency, but being part of the system of checks and balances for excessive legislative or judicial actions.”Mr. Stitsky had no prior relationship with Mr. Trump. But last year, friends of Mr. Stitsky helped retain a Long Island law and lobbying firm, Gerstman Schwartz, that did. One of the firm’s partners had parlayed previous New York public relations work for Mr. Trump into a new Washington lobbying business after he became president.And Mr. Stitsky’s new lawyers also tapped into the pardon-seeking network by working with both Mr. Dershowitz and the Aleph Institute.Mr. Trump commuted the sentences of Mr. Shapiro and Mr. Stitsky.In another case championed by Mr. Dershowitz and the Aleph Institute, Mr. Trump commuted the 20-year sentence of Ronen Nahmani, an Israeli-born Florida man convicted in 2015 of selling synthetic marijuana. The appeal to the White House, which Mr. Dershowitz helped devise, included an assurance that Mr. Nahmani would leave the country and never return — a framework that Mr. Dershowitz said served as a model for Mr. Nader’s case.Mr. Dershowitz at the White House last year, before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel visited Mr. Trump.Credit…Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesMr. Dershowitz was enlisted to help Mr. Nader by Joey Allaham, a Syrian-born New York restaurateur and businessman, who paid Mr. Dershowitz to consult on Middle East issues, including working with Mr. Nader.After Mr. Nader was arrested in 2019, Mr. Allaham connected Mr. Dershowitz to Mr. Nader’s criminal defense lawyer, Jonathan S. Jeffress, who paid Mr. Dershowitz at an hourly rate.Mr. Nader’s team grew to include the lobbyist Robert Stryk, who filed a disclosure statement saying he was working to win a presidential commutation, and the lawyer Robin Rathmell, who filed a clemency petition at the Justice Department citing Mr. Nader’s help to the United States in Middle East relations. Mr. Nader’s allies had also used that argument in the early 1990s in an effort to win a reduced sentence when he pleaded guilty to a different child pornography charge.Mr. Dershowitz said he thought it would help Mr. Nader’s current case if the American, Israeli and Emirati governments would vouch for his assistance to the United States in the region, and if Mr. Nader would pledge to leave the country upon his release.Mr. Dershowitz told Mr. Nader’s allies that he made one call last year to a Trump administration official who handled Middle East policy and who was discouraging about the idea. He also called Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, who was noncommittal. After that, Mr. Dershowitz said, he shifted his efforts on behalf of Mr. Nader to focus almost exclusively on his fight to reduce his sentence in the courts.“That was 99 percent of the effort,” Mr. Dershowitz said, “because the clemency effort directed at commutation was always so uphill considering the nature of the crime that it was never realistic.”Mr. Nader’s allies had a different impression of Mr. Dershowitz’s efforts.“We understood that Mr. Dershowitz was seeking clemency on behalf of Mr. Nader,” Mr. Jeffress said, “and that he was rejected for the sole reason that Mr. Nader had cooperated in the Mueller investigation.”Nicholas Confessore More

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      in World Politics

      How hope is vanishing 10 years after the Arab Spring

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      Much of the Arab world erupted in jubilant revolt 10 years ago against the dictatorial regimes whose corruption, cruelty and mismanagement had mired the Middle East in poverty and backwardness for decades.Now, the hopes awakened by the protests have vanished but the underlying conditions that drove the unrest are as acute as ever.Autocrats rule with an even tighter grip. Wars unleashed by leaders whose control was threatened have killed hundreds of thousands of people. The rise of the Islamic State amid the resulting wreckage ravaged large parts of Syria and Iraq and drew the United States into another costly Middle East war.Millions of people were driven from their homes to become refugees, many converging on the shores of Europe and beyond. The influx fuelled a tide of nativism and anti-immigrant sentiment that brought populist leaders to power in Europe and the US as fears of terrorism eclipsed concerns for human rights as a Western priority.Even in those countries that did not descend into war, more Arabs are now living in poverty, more are unemployed and more are imprisoned for their political beliefs than a decade ago.Only in Tunisia, where the protests began, did anything resembling a democracy emerge from the upheaval. The fall of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the Tunisian President,  after a month of street protests in Tunis inspired demonstrations across the Middle East, including the mass protest on 25 January 2011 in Cairo’s Tahrir Square that fixated world attention on what was prematurely labelled the Arab Spring.On its face, the Arab Spring failed, and spectacularly so – not only by failing to deliver political freedom but by further entrenching the rule of corrupt leaders more intent on their own survival than delivering help.“It’s been a lost decade,” said Tarik Yousef, director of the Brookings Doha Centre in Qatar, recalling the euphoria he initially felt when the fall of Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi in August 2011 enabled him to return home for the first time in years. “Now we have the return of fear and intimidation. The region has experienced setbacks at every turn.”For many of those who participated in the uprisings, the costs have been immeasurable. Esraa Eltaweel, 28, was partially paralysed after a bullet fired by security forces sliced through her abdomen and chipped her spine during a protest in Cairo in 2014. Some of her friends were killed. Others were imprisoned, including her husband, who is still incarcerated. Ms Eltaweel, who spent seven months in detention, has struggled to find work because of the stigma attached to political prisoners.“We didn’t achieve anything we aimed for. Things got worse,” she said. “We believed we could change the system. But it is so rotten that it can’t be changed.”Yet as long as the conditions that provoked the original uprisings persist, the possibility of more unrest cannot be ruled out, analysts say. More