As the world holds its breath over whether the US and Iran are going to reach an agreement over Tehran’s nuclear programme by the end of this month, the Arab region seems to be most affected and most concerned. Analysts and pundits are weighing the impact of a deal/no-deal on Arab issues, particularly in countries where Iran retains immense influence, i.e. Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
Indeed, a nuclear agreement would mean two positive things: first, avoiding another military confrontation in a region that is already having a bloodbath in Syria and Iraq. The failure of nuclear talks between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany need not necessarily lead to war, but would increase the probability of confrontation between the US and Israel on the one hand and Iran on the other.
Second, a nuclear deal would mean that all assurances have been attained and all measures have been taken to make sure that Iran will not develop nuclear weapons. This is also good for a region that already has three nuclear powers —India, Pakistan and Israel — and does not need another one.
But what about the negative aspects that might result from a nuclear deal? There is a general agreement among observers and foreign policy commentators that Iran will not give up on its nuclear ambitions, which have become a matter of national pride for the nation, unless the right price is paid. The right price for the Iranian regime in this case would mean that the US should and must accept and recognise Iran’s regional influence in the arch of territories that stretches from western Afghanistan to the shores of the Mediterranean. That would mean that the Arab countries of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen would fall under Iranian domination.
The Arab Gulf states will always feel insecure and threatened by an emboldened Iran and will have to either seek more sophisticated military arsenals and further defence agreements with western allies, or some such as Oman, for example, may even choose to mitigate their security dilemma by climbing on the Iranian bandwagon.
It is no secret that US President Barack Obama’s main objective in seeking a deal that would guarantee dismantling Iran’s nuclear programme is to appease the Israelis and tackle their security concerns so that they would not attack Iran and hence drag the US into yet another Middle East confrontation. Arab concerns have no place whatsoever in Obama’s foreign policy agenda concerning Iran.
In addition, as the Obama Doctrine entails, the US will try to keep its regional adversaries in check by establishing a balance of power in every major region of the globe instead of getting directly involved. In the Middle East this requires establishing a balance of power between the Arabs and Iran. The US does not seem to be particularly upset by the sectarian conflict engulfing the Fertile Crescent and wreaking havoc across Syria and Iraq.
New regional order
On the contrary, the US seems to be using the sectarian conflict to establish a new regional order.
Last November Max Boot, a famous conservative writer, made an interesting comparison in the Washington Post between the US air campaign against the Taliban regime in 2001 and the ongoing campaign against Daesh (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) in Syria and Iraq. Boot found that between October 7, 2001, and December 23, 2001 — a period of 75 days — US aircraft flew 6,500 strike sorties and dropped 17,500 munitions. By contrast, between August 8, 2014, and October 23, 2014 — 76 days — the US conducted only 632 air strikes and dropped only 1,700 munitions.
The establishment of a stable balance of power in the opinion of some US commentators requires bringing Iran in from the cold by solving the nuclear issue and lifting the sanctions and getting Turkey to play a more active military role in the region.
US global geopolitical imperatives, one American commentator put it, “necessitate a balance of power in the Middle East in which regional actors shoulder more of the burden of managing their problems. Washington’s refusal to be dragged back into another ground war in the Middle East is slowly bearing fruit, as Turkey is cautiously re-entering its former sphere of influence along its southern flank, counterbalancing the Saudi-Iranian competition that has fuelled much of the violence destabilising the Middle East”.
Still, the worst case scenario would be to sign a deal with Iran that justifies lifting the sanctions and accepting its regional ambitions and leaving it to secretly develop a nuclear weapon.
— Marwan Kabalan is a Syrian academic and writer.
