In keeping with the thrust of yesterday’s post, which asked whether America’s traditional Arab allies might “strike their own deal with Iran”, we are publishing two posts, back-to-back, which present different perspectives on the implications of the Islamic Republic’s “rise” for America’s regional allies and the most appropriate U.S. policy response. The first of these posts, by Dr. Christian Koch, Director of International Studies at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai, provides an excellent overview of important currents in the views of GCC elites regarding Iran. The second, appended below, is by Hillary Mann Leverett. Both Christian and Hillary appeared at the 18th annual Arab-U.S. Policymakers Conference of the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, held in Washington, DC on October 15-16, 2009. The texts of their posts are based on the remarks they offered at this conference.
Ms. Leverett: Three decades of U.S. policy toward Iran emphasizing diplomatic isolation, escalating economic pressure, and thinly veiled support for regime change have damaged the interests of the United States and its allies in the Middle East. As a result of a dysfunctional Iran policy, among other strategic mistakes, the American position in the region is currently under greater strain than at any point since the end of the Cold War.
This is bad for U.S. allies in the Middle East, who rely on credible and effective American leadership in the region to maintain a stable balance of power, address serious threats, and ensure their safety and survival. In this context, President Obama’s manifestations of interest in diplomatic engagement to manage Tehran’s problematic behavior have not yet been matched by a willingness to do what would be necessary to resolve the problems that the United States and its regional allies have with Iran. This has fueled anxiety that the Islamic Republic will continue to increase its regional influence at the expense of America’s allies.
How to resolve the problems that the United States and its regional allies have with Iran is at the core of the current debate over Iran and its regional role. For a certain category of U.S. allies—and, in fundamental ways, both Israel and Saudi Arabia fall into this category—the only way to deal with Iran is to “contain” it by reversing shifts in the regional balance of power that have given Tehran greater strategic influence. From this perspective, the Islamic Republic must be pressured over its nuclear activities. (I suspect that the Israelis are much more likely than the Saudis to be willing to take “pressure” to the extent of military confrontation with Iran, but both are deeply concerned about the nuclear issue.) Additionally, from this perspective, strategic initiatives need to be undertaken to reduce Iran’s growing role in Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestinian politics—all part of what Saudi Arabia and some other Arab states decry as Iranian influence in “Arab affairs”.
But the “containment” approach is fundamentally at odds with important geostrategic realities which the United States and our allies ignore at considerable risk to our own interests…
First, Iran’s geostrategic location at the crossroads of the Middle East and Central Asia and in the heart of the Persian Gulf, its demographic and geographic size, its enormous hydrocarbon resources, and its historic role make it a critical country in the region under any internal political order or any external balance of power. Iran is inevitably a key player in the region that cannot be kept “in a box” for very long.
Second, since the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988 and the death of Ayatollah Khomeini the following year, Iranian foreign policy has largely abandoned the notion of “exporting the revolution” and has focused instead on Iran’s material national interests and the Islamic Republic’s survival. This has several important dimensions. To this day, the Islamic Republic is deficient in conventional military power. Literally, Iran has no ability to project conventional military power beyond its borders. Moreover, Iran shares borders with 15 states. Not one of these states is a natural ally of Iran, and several have been overtly hostile to the Islamic Republic. Consequently, over the last 20 years, Iran has worked—across the Rafsanjani, Khatami, and Ahmadinejad administrations—to improve relations with states in its immediate neighborhood. At the same time, Iran has worked assiduously to cultivate ties to a wide range of political forces (sometimes with associated militias) in a number of regional states. These ties give Tehran levers to influence decision-making, so that these states are constrained from allowing themselves to be used as platforms for attacking important Iranian interests.
Third, this strategy has intersected with a number of American initiatives and policy failures over the last decade in ways that have boosted Iran’s regional influence. These American initiatives and policy failures include the invasion of Iraq, the effective abandonment of the Arab-Israeli peace process and push for Palestinian elections in 2006 (when HAMAS was widely credited by the Palestinian public with having forced Israel out of Gaza and acting as a less corrupt alternative to Fatah), and the decision to support Lebanon’s “democratization” when the Lebanese political order remains fundamentally skewed against Shi’a interests and representation. As a consequence of these developments, Iran’s allies in the region—Shi’a parties in Iraq, HAMAS, Hizballah—have become indispensable and much more powerful players in their respective arenas. This has inevitably—and, I would argue—irreversibly—boosted Iran’s regional influence.
It is not possible to compel Tehran to abandon this strategy, which it has been pursuing for 20 years. The key question is whether Iran will use its regional influence in ways that create problems for the United States and our Middle Eastern allies. If we want Iran to work cooperatively with the United States and our Middle Eastern allies in forging a more stable regional order, we need to be prepared to offer Tehran an alternative strategic paradigm—a paradigm in which Iranian decision-makers can see that they can meet the Islamic Republic’s most fundamental strategic needs more effectively by cooperating with the United States and our allies than by working at cross-purposes against us.
This alternative paradigm—which I have frequently described as a “grand bargain” or, as some have suggested, a “grand agenda”—would start from the premise that Iran is not just a problem to be managed. In much the same way that President Richard Nixon understood that strategic rapprochement with the People’s Republic of China was imperative for American interests in the early 1970s, strategic rapprochement with the Islamic Republic is now truly imperative for American interests in the Middle East. At this point, the United States cannot achieve any of its high-priority objectives in the greater Middle East—in the Arab-Israeli arena, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, with regard to energy security, etc.—without a more productive relationship with the Islamic Republic.
Of course, the opening to China had important implications for America’s established allies in Asia—most notably, Japan. But the U.S.-Japan alliance not only survived America’s opening to China—the consolidation of a largely cooperative Sino-American relationship was critical to fundamentally and strategically reducing the security “threat” to Japan emanating from China.
For some of America’s Middle Eastern allies who believe that a U.S.-Iranian “grand bargain” would inevitably be struck at the expense of their interests, I would say two things. First, the interest of established U.S. allies in the region—Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, other GCC states, Egypt—would be profoundly well served by a U.S.-Iranian rapprochement that helped to settle the unresolved tracks of the Arab-Israeli conflict, put Iraq and Afghanistan on more stable trajectories, and effectively eliminated the risk of U.S.-Iranian (or Israeli-Iranian) military confrontation. Second, without U.S.-Iranian rapprochement, as I said, the United States will not be able to achieve any of its high-priority goals in the Middle East. Our Arab allies and Israel should ponder what their own strategic situations would be like if the United States is seen, to a much greater extent than is already the case, as a failing hegemon.
–Hillary Mann Leverett
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