ANSD : America’s endgame in the Mideast after Iran deal

WED 24 - 4 - 2024

Date: May 18, 2018
Source: The Daily Star

America’s endgame in the Mideast after Iran deal

Riad Tabbarah

What is America’s policy regarding our region now that Trump has decided to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal? Russia has already established itself in Syria.It has built the largest military bases it has outside Russia and secured an agreement with the Syrian government that insures the sanctity of its bases and its long-term hegemony in the country. Iran has offered the foot soldiers to maintain Syrian President Bashar Assad in power. President Barack Obama let this happen without resistance.

“An attempt by Russia and Iran to prop up Assad and try to pacify the population,” he prophesized in October 2015 as Russia began its bombing of Syria. The Russian involvement “is just going to get them stuck in a quagmire and it won’t work.”

Obama’s grand vision for the Middle East was even more illusory. He concentrated his efforts on the Iran nuclear deal with the expectation that it would strengthen the hand of the moderates, and eventually change the attitude of the regime toward the West, leading to a new alliance between Iran and the United States reminiscent of the days of the Shah. Almost three years after the Iran deal was signed, the U.S. remains the “great Satan” to the Iranian regime and both the Trump administration and the U.S. Congress are more anti-Iran than ever before.

The Trump administration upended Obama’s Iran policy. The new doctrine claims Iran cannot be part of the solution to Middle East conflicts or charged with keeping the peace in the region after it is pacified. Such a solution, the doctrine maintains, will result in a new and more vicious regional conflict between the Sunni majority in the region and Shiite Iran.

The proposed alternative offered by the Trump administration is to forge an alliance with regional Sunni powers, led by Saudi Arabia, in cooperation with the Gulf states, with the support of Egypt and, eventually perhaps, the backing of Turkey. Such an alliance will not only be self-financing, a notable preoccupation of Trump, it will be more acceptable to most of the region’s population.

The first potential victim of this change in policy is indeed the Iran nuclear agreement (the JCPOA). The Trump administration has three basic problems with it. First, there is the sunset clause. When will the Iran deal terminate, permitting Iran to continue freely with its nuclear program, short of a new agreement? The answer is that sunset comes gradually.

On the operation of first-generation centrifuges and on research and development the deadline is 2025; on enrichment it is 2030. After that, Iran is free of all obligations under the deal.

The second complaint of the Trump administration is the deal is too restrictive.

It does solve the problem of Iran making a nuclear weapon, albeit temporarily, but leaves other questions unresolved.

One of these is Iran’s ballistic missile program. Iran claims this program is defensive, but this is a hazy concept when it comes to such weapons.

The Khorramshahr Iranian missile unveiled last year has a range of 2,000 kilometers and can carry multiple warheads, thus able to have devastating effect on military bases and oil fields in Saudi Arabia, as well as on Israeli cities and on American and Western military bases in the region. That, and Iran exporting these missiles to Yemen, are considered intolerable by the Trump administration.

Finally, The U.S. blames Iran for much of the instability in the Middle East, from Yemen to Lebanon, passing through Bahrain, Iraq and Syria. The JCPOA, as it stands, makes Iran more capable of financing its destabilizing activities in the region, according to the American administration.

But the Iran deal has proven to be resistant to change. Europe wants it badly; now more than ever before, having established valuable economic relations with Iran. President Macron has been pleading with Trump not to withdraw, followed more recently by Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom.

The windfall benefit will probably go mostly to Russia. The past lesson of America’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific partnership is worthy of remembering.

Trump flippantly withdrew from the TPP, which constitutes 40 percent of world’s economy, a couple of weeks after taking office but now, slightly more than a year later, he is trying to get back into it.

Withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal will prove as flippant, according to the Europeans. Iran will irretrievably be thrown into the lap of Russia.

But Trump believes in the North Korea model, at least as he sees it. Kim Jong Un came to the negotiating table because of extreme pressure from the U.S., Trump believes. Imposing extreme economic sanctions, together with the threat of war and annihilation – “fire and fury” – have done the trick, and now Kim and Trump are set to begin negotiations Trump believes will end up in the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. So why not use the same model with Iran?

Hence Trump decided to withdraw from the deal. He will presumably maximize sanctions while his sabre rattling continues, as with North Korea. American sanctions against Iran for its alleged support of terrorism have not been lifted but this will allow the president to easily increase them and impose new ones for Iran’s ballistic missile program. He kept the door open for starting negotiations for a new nuclear deal, but concluding such a new deal is, in the best of circumstances, for the distant future.

Iran’s economy will be shaken. The Europeans, the Russians and the Chinese will probably come to the rescue. But Iran does not have a war option, and Russia would not give it the necessary green light from fear of being drawn into a confrontation with the U.S. Nor would Israel enter into a regional war without a green light from the Americans, who also do not wish a confrontation with the Russians. Iran and Israel can continue their “tit for tat,” as they’ve been doing recently, but both have made it plain they do not wish to escalate this quid pro quo at this time. A war will be too costly to all concerned.

What then is the endgame for the United States in the region? The new advisers to the president, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton, want regime change in Iran. Pompeo wants it through intelligence action by the CIA inside Iran, as was done in 1953 regarding the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, while Bolton advocates a more direct approach: bombing Tehran.

On the other hand, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, the last of the three influential advisers on foreign policy, wants to try to pressure the present Iranian regime to negotiate about its missile program and to deal with its neighbors through traditional diplomatic relations, rather than through armed groups like the Shiite militias in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen or Hezbollah in Lebanon and the region.

No matter who ultimately gets the ear of the president, the coming period in the region is one of increasing pressures on Iran and of serious tensions. But an all-out regional war remains quite unlikely.

_{Riad Tabbarah is a former ambassador of Lebanon to the United States.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on May 10, 2018, on page 7.}

The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the Arab Network for the Study of Democracy

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