Tag: Saudi Arabia

Articles, Publications

Why Bridging the Iran-Saudi Divide Is Vital for Peace in Syria and the Region

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Archrivals Saudi Arabia and Iran are experiencing their first regional talks in Vienna on the Syrian conflict. Since assuming office in August 2013, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has initiated several overtures to Saudi Arabia, attempting to mend what has steadily devolved into a dangerously adversarial relationship in the years since the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Rouhani, who called for better ties with Saudi Arabia shortly after his inauguration, made his first diplomatic outreach to Saudi Arabia at a critical juncture. He dispatched his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, to visit several of the Arab Persian Gulf states shortly after the November 2013 interim nuclear deal was reached between Iran and the P5+1 group of nations.

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“Why Bridging the Iran-Saudi Divide Is Vital for Peace in Syria and the Region,” Hossein Mousavian, The Huffington Post, October 30, 2015.

Interviews

Why Iran doesn’t want to stay in Yemen

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Why Iran doesn’t want to stay in Yemen

he Ansar Allah movement in Yemen, commonly known as the Houthis, has always extended a very special respect for the Islamic Republic of Iran. While not as deep as portrayed in Western media, ties between Iran and Ansar Allah go back in time. Indeed, the founder of the Yemeni movement — Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, the brother of current leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi — traveled to Tehran as far back as 1986, in the heyday of the Iran-Iraq War.

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“Why Iran doesn’t want to stay in Yemen,” Al Monitor, October 27, 2015.

Articles, Publications

What Obama should say to King Salman during his visit

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The relationship between Iran and its southern Arab neighbors — namely, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states — has been turbulent for the past few decades. The GCC states were under the shadow of Iraq and Iran, the two prevailing powers in the Persian Gulf, for much of the 20th century, with the latter historically being the more dominant power. Stricken with internal disputes, weak central governments and rivalries among themselves, the Arab states along the Persian Gulf’s southern coast were never in a position to challenge the powers to their north.

The situation changed after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, which brought political Islam to the geopolitical scene. The autocratic Persian Gulf monarchies immediately felt threatened by this new political force, which had the potential to undermine their legitimacy and jeopardize their rule. Within this context, in 1981 they established the GCC, comprised of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980 had provided a convenient excuse to exclude Iraq and Yemen, notable omissions even though the latter does not border on the Persian Gulf, and Iraq has close to 40 miles of coastline.

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“What Obama should say to King Salman during his visit,” Hossein Mousavian, Al Monitor, September 4, 2015.

Articles, Publications

Will Camp David spur regional cooperation?

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President Barack Obama’s meeting with the Gulf Cooperation Council leaders at Camp David on May 14 looks by all accounts like a face-saving attempt by Washington. A well-publicized, high-wire meeting, verbal reassurances, perhaps promises of more political support and some advanced military hardware, that’s all. Nothing more can and should be expected; they simply cannot prevent the nuclear deal between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany (P5+1) from going through.

The invitation to Washington, in the statement right before the nuclear framework agreement with Iran was announced in Lausanne April 2, was apparently meant to reassure the Arab states in the Persian Gulf that the deal with Tehran did not mean their abandonment. The psychological-emotional aspect of the suggestion was more than obvious. Initial expressions of Arab dissatisfaction with the expected deal — and more importantly, its longer term implications of a possible Iran-US rapprochement — signaled knee-jerk reactions to the development, bound to have quite serious repercussions for everybody: the United States, Iran and its Arab neighbors on the southern shore of the strategic Persian Gulf and on a larger scale, the greater Middle East. That much is certain, even if the exact nature of future developments have yet to unfold and the emerging regional power calculus is inevitably different from what it has been since the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the onset of tension and animosity between Tehran and Washington.

 

“Will Camp David spur regional cooperation?” Hossein Mousavian, Al Monitor, May 14, 2015.

Articles, Publications

Is Iran really to blame for Yemen conflict?

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The deaths of at least 1,000 Yemenis, including 115 children, and over 3,500 injuries has seemingly been the main result of the Saudi-led military strikes against the country. The conventional wisdom of these attacks on Yemen has been that it is the latest battlefield in a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Such portrayals of the conflict often frame Iran as the aggressor, parroting claims that Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen was somehow forced due to Iranian meddling in its backyard. However, such assertions ignore not just the realities of Yemen’s internal politics, but also more than a little bit of history.

As the Yemen attack shows, Saudi Arabia’s regional strategy is bent on using Iran as a scapegoat to justify its ownaggressive policies. These policies appear geared at maintaining and expanding uncompromising Saudi hegemony across the Arabian Peninsula and the Middle East. However, by aiming to preserve authoritarian governance in Yemen and further marginalizing vast segments of Yemeni society, Saudi Arabia is only damaging its own interests and opening the door for violence to spill over into its own territory. The Saudis should be cognizant that, just as it is with other crises in the Middle East, the only solution to the Yemeni conflict is a political solution based on addressing the concerns of all parties involved.

 

“Is Iran really to blame for Yemen conflict?” Hossein Mousavian, Al Monitor, May 8, 2015.

Essays, Publications

America’s Middle East Challenge

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The Middle East is in dire need of cooperation on issues of long-term interest to the stability and well-being of the whole region. The Arab Spring has resulted in political instability in many countries, while extremist and terrorist groups have wreaked havoc across the region. It is imperative for Middle Eastern countries to work collaboratively in order to tackle these region-wide challenges.

The United States faces lack of trust from Iran and suspicion from its Arab allies. America’s oil-centered involvement in the Middle East is becoming less strategically important as the United States moves toward becoming the leading exporter of oil and gas. As a result, the Arabs are losing their oil leverage with Washington and are resorting to suicidal strategies to destabilize the region, by funding various extremist groups, in hopes that it would compel America to stay involved.

America’s increased involvement in the Middle East is inevitable as a result of the expansion of ISIS and other terrorist groups. This heightened involvement could result in positive outcomes if it is calculated carefully. The United States should come to the realization that its military might is not capable of bringing about peace in the Middle East. As Chas W. Freeman Jr. argued in his bookAmerica’s Misadventures in the Middle East, “How do we propose to manage the contradiction between our desire to assure the stability of the Persian Gulf and the fact that our presence in it is inherently destabilizing?” However, U.S. military superiority could be applied positively and used to support regional governments to fight terrorism in the region. Washington’s efforts toward a regional cooperation system in the Persian Gulf (akin to that of the European Union) would fill the vacuum caused by an eventual U.S. departure and assuage Arab fears of a resurgent Iran. President Rouhani, in his 2014 address to the UN General Assembly, pointed out, “The right solution to this quandary comes from within the region and regionally provided solutions with international support and not from outside the region.”

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“America’s Middle East Challenge,” Cairo Review, Hossein Mousavian with Mehrdad Saberi. Published by the Cairo Review of Global Affairs, April 6 2014.

Articles, Publications

How to Fix the Syrian Mess

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The bloody conflict in Syria since early 2011—whether we call it a civil war or by any other name—has brought in its wake actual disaster with vast destruction of the country and its infrastructure and over 200,000 dead, 6.7 million internally displaced, 3.8 million refugees and 13 million people in need of urgent humanitarian assistance.

Staffan de Mistura, the third in a series of United Nations envoys tasked to find a solution for the Syrian conflict, has introduced an “action plan” aimed to make 2015 the year in which movement toward a political settlement of the conflict takes place.

As things stand, and given the factors that pushed the previous efforts and initiatives, including Geneva I and II, to failure, success of the new plan proposed by UN special envoy depends on a much larger political orchestration. As I see it, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (P5) and the five relevant regional players—Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Saudi Arabia/ GCC and Egypt (R5)—should adopt a fresh look and approach to the Syrian crisis. Overall, agreement on the following steps could pave the way for an exit from the current deadly impasse.

There are six steps that must be taken.

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“How to Fix the Syrian Mess,” Hossein Mousavian, The National Interest, March 24, 2015