America’s endgame in the Mideast after Iran deal
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.
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