In order to trace down the current state of affairs in the Middle East—where a whole host of menaces ranging from terrorism, civil wars, and unrepresentative regimes are hallmarks of its politics—we need to have a thorough observation of the historical intricacies that have brought about this situation.
“Ambassador Mousavian on Iranian Foreign Policy and Its Challenges,” Foreign Policy Concepts, November 12, 2015.
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Ayatollah Khamenei first permitted direct negotiations between Iran and the United States on the nuclear issue after US President Barack Obama came into office, during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Direct talks were held first in Vienna in 2009 and continued in Muscat in 2012. With the election of Rouhani in June 2013, a more professional nuclear negotiating team was appointed and a more favorable international political climate for serious negotiations was created. To accommodate a nuclear deal, Ayatollah Khamenei gave permission again for direct talks between Iran and United States, allowing for the bilateral negotiations that proved to be the critical prerequisite to the nuclear deal to eventually be reached.
Indeed, it is of crucial importance to note that the Rouhani administration would not have been able to reach and uphold the nuclear deal without the support of Ayatollah Khamenei. Hard-line domestic opponents of Rouhani would have certainly killed the deal if not for the supreme leader’s explicit support for the administration and nuclear negotiators. When the parliament was debating the nuclear deal these past several months, I was in Iran and witnessed firsthand the bellicose nature of the opposition. The rhetoric reached such a level of hostility that at one point a hard-line parliament member menaced Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, threatening to put him and Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization head Ali Akbar Salehi in the “heart” of Iran’s plutonium reactor and “bury” them “in cement.”
“Will Iran’s nuclear diplomacy lead to regional solutions?” Hossein Mousavian, Al Monitor, November 3, 2015.
The Pivot to Tehran
For more than four years, the Obama administration has accused Iran of being a chief instigator of Syria’s bloody conflict and has rebuffed persistent appeals by the U.N.’s top peacemakers, who maintained that any durable political settlement would be unthinkable without granting the Islamic Republic a seat at the table. The price of a ticket to peace talks, the State Department long insisted, was an unequivocal commitment from Tehran to endorse a U.N.-brokered peace settlement resulting in a political transition and the departure of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power.
“The Pivot to Tehran,” Foreign Policy, October 29, 2015.
After a U.S. Shift, Iran Has a Seat at Talks on War in Syria
Iran on Wednesday accepted an invitation to attend a broad new round of negotiations to resolve the Syrian war, sitting with longtime adversaries including the United States and Saudi Arabia who once sought to bar the Iranians from any role in Syria’s future.
“After a U.S. Shift, Iran Has a Seat at Talks on War in Syria,” New York Times, October 28, 2015.
Dim prospects for US-Iranian rapprochement in Syria
It took more than four years, 250,000 lives and millions of refugees, but for the first time, all of the major players will sit down at the same table and discuss a road map to end the civil war in Syria.
“Dim prospects for US-Iranian rapprochement in Syria,” Deutsche Welle, October 29, 2015.
“Russia Entry Adds New Fuel to Syria War,” Yaroslav Trofimov, The Wall Street Journal, October 1, 2015.
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.
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.”
“America’s Middle East Challenge,” Cairo Review, Hossein Mousavian with Mehrdad Saberi. Published by the Cairo Review of Global Affairs, April 6 2014.
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.
“How to Fix the Syrian Mess,” Hossein Mousavian, The National Interest, March 24, 2015
