The Middle East's state of flux

When everyone goes home from the negotiating table satisfied, it’s either a well-calibrated deal or someone has been comprehensively rooked. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Saudi Arabian government, among others, have made it clear they consider the Iranian nuclear deal an example of the latter. But Geneva was no Munich. Purely on its merits, the deal is a surprisingly good one for the US and its allies — but it does not exist in a vacuum. The P5+1 dialogue with Iran has taken place against a backdrop of regional geostrategic reconfiguration in the wake of the Arab Spring, intersecting at various points with Sunni-Shi’a sectarian strife. And all of it is underpinned by historical factors that are nudging rational actors towards non-rational behaviour.

The most crucial sticking point of the decade-long series of negotiations has been the insistence that Iran cease enrichment activity altogether. The fear of regime change and erosion of Iranian sovereignty permeates the country to an extent that many western observers seem unable to recognise. Over a century of manipulation by the British and the Russians followed by Washington’s role — from deposing democratically elected president Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 to backing Iraq in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war and the downing of Iran Air Flight 655 by US navy ship Vincennes in 1988 — have cemented this. Thus, giving up the enrichment programme, a potent symbol and guarantor of sovereignty — even if cost-benefit analysis favours it — never was and is unlikely to ever be acceptable to Tehran.

The Geneva deal manages to finesse the issue to an extent by focusing on dissolving Iran’s stockpile of medium-enriched uranium and settling for capping its stockpile of low-enriched uranium. This differentiation is the only plausible foundation for a comprehensive solution. Getting there, however, will be difficult. For the moment, the joint statement kicks the can down the road by referring in the joint statement to a  “mutually defined enrichment programme”. What that mutual definition will be — and how the negotiators will arrive at it — is the tricky part.

The possibility that it will be along current lines is what is causing Tel Aviv and Riyadh so much heartburn. The former’s stance is more clear-cut in a way. For the current right-wing Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu dispensation, Iran’s nuclear programme is more an existential issue than a strategic one. It was only a little over three decades ago, after all, that Tehran and Tel Aviv were allies, the latter supplying arms to the former in exchange for support in a region where there was precious little to be had. But with the revolution in 1979 and the Iranian questioning of Israel’s existence, the ‘never again’ principle has come into play.

From this perspective, any enrichment programme — no matter the constraints placed upon it — is unacceptable, a violation of that principle. This is not a monolithic view within Israel, by any means. There are a number of voices within the country that have cautiously welcomed the Geneva deal and consider further opposition to it pointless. But when Netanyahu attempts to stand athwart history and yell stop, it is an ideological stand buttressed by the history of Israel’s founding and existence. Tactical considerations are unlikely to alter it.

Saudi Arabia’s opposition — and for all that Riyadh has taken a perfunctory stab at making conciliatory noises, it remains just that — is more complex. The Geneva deal heralds the possibility of a Washington-Tehran détente; a comprehensive solution six months down the line with both sides reaching an agreement on the scope of Iran’s enrichment programme would raise the spectre of a rapprochement. This runs counter to every interest Riyadh has in the region.

Since 1979, it has been Washington’s closest ally in the Muslim world, and by dint of its support, arguably the most influential player in the Middle East. But in the decade preceding that, the scenario was very different. With Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger putting out the Nixon Doctrine in 1969, Washington’s Persian Gulf strategy depended upon Iran under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and Saudi Arabia as the “twin pillars” that would protect US interests in the region — and Saudi Arabia was very much the junior partner in that equation. This is not something Riyadh has forgotten.

Tangled up in this is the current Sunni-Shi’a conflict with Syria at the heart of it. The battle-lines are drawn clearly enough there; Shi’ite Iran backing the Alawite Bashar al-Assad regime with Tehran-funded Hezbollah across the border in Lebanon pitching in and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ elite Al-Quds Force providing direct support. Sunni Saudi Arabia and Qatar, meanwhile, provide a steady pipeline of funds for the Sunni rebel forces. But it is by no means contained within Syria’s borders; the Syrian civil war is on its way to becoming a broader Middle East struggle defined by alliances of convenience and asymmetric tactics. Riyadh now finds itself in the unlikely situation of sharing Tel Aviv’s stance on Tehran, while the suicide bombing of the Iranian embassy in Beirut by a Sunni group less than two weeks ago shows just what form the spillover could take.

There is a mismatch between ground realities and perceptions here as well. Certainly, Iran exerts considerable influence in the region; it has won in Lebanon, is winning in Syria, and the US invasion of Shi’a majority Iraq has managed to turn its former foe into an ally. But that influence is a far cry from what it was in the 1980s. Consequently, the Saudi perception of Shi’a populations as potential fifth columnists is both dangerously reductive and self-fulfilling. When the Arab Spring started in 2011, it was the Saudi and Bahraini governments that portrayed Bahrain’s Shi’a population as the ‘other’ in an effort to tamp down the rumblings of popular discontent, and subsequently cracked down on it.

How these differing perceptions and interests and the policies they breed will play out will start to become apparent as the comprehensive solution negotiations begin. Much of it depends on Tehran, of course; whether, given a successful deal, it chooses to focus on common interests with the US such as in Afghanistan, or sees that deal as carte blanche for expanding its regional footprint. Whatever the eventual direction, the next year or so is likely to see a massive state of flux in the Middle East.

The author is senior editor, dna