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Theme: The expulsion of the Taliban from Afghanistan
and the neo-con fiasco in Iraq have strengthened the role of the Shias and of Iran
in the Middle East. Will a new regional war be avoided?
Summary: In recent decades, the Persian Gulf has been one of the regions to
have suffered most from armed conflict, the struggle for the control of energy
resources, political rivalries and the interference of foreign powers. One of
the main challenges facing the US in its position as the global superpower is Iran’s
emergence as a key player with ambitions for regional hegemony. With the aim of
putting a brake on Teheran’s aspirations, the US could attempt to combine –not
without difficulties– two doctrines previously employed with Iran and Iraq: that
of a ‘balance of powers’ and that of ‘dual containment’, but this time on a
regional scale. A fourth Gulf War could have far more serious consequences for
the international system than the three previous wars put together.
Analysis: In recent decades, the Persian Gulf has been one of
the regions that has suffered most from armed conflict, the struggle for the
control of energy resources, political rivalries and the interference of
foreign powers. The triumph of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 provided
the Western support that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq needed to start a war against
the regime of the ayatollahs. The first Gulf War (1980-88) ended without
victors or vanquished, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of lives
were sacrificed. In 1990, believing that he would again benefit from Western
support, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and attempted to annex it. However, the
result was the biggest international coalition in the modern era, leading to his
expulsion by force in 1991 during the second Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm).
In addition to the victims of this war, the international embargo affecting the
Iraqi people from 1990 to 2003 increased the suffering of a population which
had been subjected to great hardship at the hands of the country’s own
tyrannical regime, causing the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis (especially
children). In 2003, Saddam Hussein was again the excuse for the US to assemble
a less representative coalition than its predecessor, this time more Western
than international, with the aim of bringing about a change of regime in Baghdad.
Four years on from Saddam’s political elimination and several months after his
polemical execution, far from decreasing, instability in the Gulf region has
actually become greater.
One of the main challenges facing the US as the global
superpower is Iran’s emergence as a key player with ambitions for regional
hegemony. The regime of the ayatollahs has always dreamed of extending its
influence abroad, but this was not possible while the dictator was alive in Baghdad.
Ironically, the Iranian leaders can be grateful to the current leaders of their
arch-enemy, the US, for the rise in Shia power in the Middle East. The expulsion
of the Taliban from power in Afghanistan in 2001 and the scant success of
regime change in Iraq have reinforced the role of the Shias throughout the region.
The arrival to the Iranian presidency of the populist and defiant Mahmud Ahmadinejad
in August 2005 magnified the consequences of altering the balance of power
brought about by the Iraqi adventure of George W. Bush’s Administration. Iran’s
nuclear ambitions and a number of inflammatory statements by its President, fuelling
nationalist sentiment inside the country and seeking to provoke abroad, are
maintaining the suspense worldwide in regard to a possible American or Israeli attack
on Iranian targets. The question is whether, as occurred in September 1980, August
1990 and March 2003, the errors of judgement and deceitfulness on the part of
inept and megalomaniac leaders might take the Gulf to its fourth war, the
serious consequences of which would certainly be felt beyond the region itself.
Balance
of Power and Dual Containment
For decades now, the strategic objectives of the US in
the Persian Gulf have been determined by two factors: oil and the State of
Israel. Washington’s main interest in the Gulf region has been, and remains, that
of ensuring protection for friendly regimes which, for their part, safeguard
the supply of crude oil, its free flow through the Straits of Hormuz, and its trading
at a reasonable price on the international market. The long-term objective is
the survival of these friendly regimes, which control enormous hydrocarbon
reserves. Considerations such as democratic values or respect for human rights have
always taken a back seat in relation to energy interests. The second driver underlying
American policy in the Middle East is to guarantee the supremacy of the State
of Israel as its leading ally and guardian of its interests in the region.
The first Gulf War gave birth to a US-Sunni monarchies-Iraq
axis, in which Iraq acted as a brake on Ayatollah Khomeini’s declared intention
of spreading the Islamic Revolution. Saddam Hussein thought that external
support would guarantee the achievement of his hegemonic projects. However,
Washington viewed its strategic partnership with the Iraqi regime from a
standpoint embracing ‘preventive war’ against a revolutionary, expansionist Iran
which was threatening security in the Gulf and its energy sources. In the context
of the Cold War, Iraq was the ‘least-worst option’, and actively supporting it
was a means of containing the expansion of Soviet influence. Given the
strategic asymmetry and Iraq’s military vulnerability, the US and certain European
countries provided it with vital support at certain junctures, both for planning
its military operations, and via the provision of arms, including the agents and
components required for manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. Saddam’s
allies were never happy about his overweening desire to be a key player in the region.
With the aim of averting both his victory and his defeat, the US adhered to a
policy of ‘balance of power’ with Iraq and Iran. On the one hand, it refrained
from condemning the use of chemical weapons by Saddam’s army against Iranian troops
and civilians on dozens of occasions (and also against Iraq’s own population). On
the other hand, when the theocratic Teheran regime was seriously weakened and
facing defeat, certain individuals in Washington did not hesitate to sell arms
to it, as revealed when the ‘Iran-Contra’ scandal was uncovered in 1986.
During the 1980s, despite the Iran-Iraq
war and occasional attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf, oil continued to flow without
difficulties, at significantly low prices. With a militarily and economically
exhausted Iran, a strongly-armed Saddam expected to be rewarded as the ‘saviour’
of Western and Arab interests. His unskillfulness as a strategist led him to
invade another country (Kuwait), and the obstinacy typical of all dogmatic
leaders prevented him from acknowledging his mistakes and correcting them in
time. The result was the second Gulf War, supported by a broad international consensus
and by almost all of Iraq’s neighbours. Although Iraq had attacked four of its
neighbours (Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Israel) and despite the fact that Saddam
remained a threat to peace and security in the Middle East, the Administration of
George H. W. Bush decided to maintain his regime in power, intact although
weakened, with the aim of dissuading Iran from reviving its old dreams of becoming
a regional power. For its part, the Clinton Administration chose to follow a ‘dual
containment’ strategy, the aim of which was to contain Iraqi military
capacities whilst simultaneously isolating Iran and limiting its influence in
the region. Advantage was not taken of the window of opportunity to seek common
ground between Iranian and Western positions following the election of the reformist
Mohammed Khatami in 1997, despite the fact that the new President initially
enjoyed widespread support from a youthful population seeking change and the
country’s opening up to the outside world.
Preventive War
The 9/11 terrorist attacks and
the American interpretation of international policy in black-and-white terms from
then on transformed the old strategies of ‘deterrence’ and ‘containment’, typical
of the Cold War and a multi-polar world, into new and more aggressive
preventive and domineering strategies. Against the backdrop of the ‘global war on
terrorism’ declared by President Bush, the neo-cons managed to impose their ‘preventive
war’ doctrine, the main aim of which was to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime, seen
as a long-term strategic threat to the interests of the US and its allies in
the Gulf. The alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction by Iraq and the
regime’s supposed links to international terrorist movements were the excuses employed
by those in favour of the war to invade the Arab country in March 2003. It has
not taken many years to show that the third Gulf War was based on false motives and that those
arguing for the invasion did not tell the truth to the general public. It is
significant that Iraq’s neighbouring states, which should have been those most
concerned about the threats posed by the country according to the neo-cons, were
opposed to the White House’s plans since they believed they placed the region’s
stability at risk, a factor considered to be more serious than the continuity
or otherwise of Saddam. Of Iraq’s immediate neighbours, only Kuwait joined the US-led
coalition, while Turkey, a NATO member, refused to allow its territory to be
used for the invasion.
The US aligned itself with Iraq in the 1980s in order
to safeguard against expansion of the Islamic radicalism and international terrorism
linked to the Iranian regime, a process that would have generated instability
in the Gulf and threatened the oil-dependent international economy. It is
ironic that two decades later the US attacked Iraq, citing these very same
reasons, thereby contributing to increased regional instability as a result of
deficient analysis of the situation and even worse execution of its plans. In the
Middle East, weapons of mass destruction are like a genie in a bottle: in the
first Gulf War, the US helped let the genie out. In the second, it started to
put it back in again, while in the third the idea was to screw on the
bottle-top and shut the genie in. We now know (although there were already many
signs of this at the time) that the there were no weapons of mass destruction in
Iraq in 2003. The problem is that, given the new balance of power, Iran is now
doing everything it can to obtain cutting-edge nuclear technology, officially for
peaceful purposes. The alarming thing is that the very same technology could be
used for military purposes in the future, meaning that Iran would finally be a
regional power, and would have to be consulted on everything. The genie would
now appear to be out of the bottle, although this time a very high price will
need to be paid to shut it back in again. At the present juncture, the cost of
doing so might already be unbearable for the international community and world economy.
A Double
Neo-Con Failure
Judging by the neo-cons’ declared
objectives, the invasion of Iraq has been a complete failure. Their aim was to replace
the Baathist regime with one allied to the US, to convert Iraq into a model of
democracy for the entire region and to provide an example for future changes of
regime in conflictive countries such as Iran and Syria; all of this with the
overarching aim of remodelling the so-called Greater Middle East. Instead
of this, Iraq is today an almost failing state, the region’s leading example of
internal instability, a contagious focus of ethno-religious radicalism and
fertile ground for the advance of violent and Jihadist groups. The altering of the balances of power, both
internal and regional, is failing to clear the way for a more stable and
peaceful new order in the Middle East. Therefore, the failure of those who
defended and waged the war is twofold: within Iraq there is a situation of
chaos and generalised violence in spite of the various security plans devised
from Washington. For most Iraqis, there is now no greater security, democracy
or cohesion in the country than when it was ruled with an iron fist by Saddam Hussein.
The second failure is in
regional terms, given the undiminished tension in the last four years and the
significant concern regarding the challenge represented by Iranian plans for
regional hegemony. A further factor is that the war’s human and economic cost continues
to rise, as well as the opposition within the US to the indefinite deployment
of its troops in Iraq. If this were not enough, American initiatives to promote
democracy have been seriously discredited in the Arab world, just a few years
after their launch. There are few positive elements to be found in a country
that is today the main international training ground for suicide bombers, the
world’s largest producer of car bombs and the regional laboratory for a
phenomenon of disintegration that would reap catastrophic results were it to spread.
Altering
Balances and the Search for a New Doctrine
The violent shake-up caused by the invasion of Iraq, the
continuous process of disintegration the country is suffering and the image of
powerlessness projected by the US have led the strategic positions of all the
regional players to be in the throes of transformation. They are all currently
engaged in attempting to protect their interests, form alliances, avoid
potential threats, deter their enemies and increase their ability to influence the
new power configuration that is emerging. Given the lack of even minimal
cohesion in Iraq, it was inevitable that Iran would try to become a regional
power. In fact, both the American strategy of offsetting the forces of Iran and
Iraq during the first Gulf War and the doctrine of ‘dual containment’ developed
in the wake of the second war were based on this premise. One of the neo-cons’
basic errors when planning the Iraqi invasion was to consider only the scenarios
favourable to their positions. There are many now paying the price for this recklessness,
starting with the Iraqis themselves, but also including the US, whose interests,
credibility and image in the Middle East have been seriously undermined.
The rise in Shia power has stirred up concern in the Sunni
Arab countries regarding Iran’s plans and its growing influence inside Iraq and
in other parts of the region. On the complex Middle East stage, all conflicts are
inter-connected in one way or another, and Iran is increasingly present in the troubled
situation in Lebanon and Palestine via its links with Hezbollah and Hamas. Its
influence is also rising in Arab countries in the Gulf such as Saudi Arabia (the
population of the oil-rich Eastern Province is 75% Shia), Bahrain and Kuwait. Both
the US and its regional and international allies have always tried to ensure
that there was never too much power concentrated in the hands of a single Gulf
country. However, this situation would change if Iran were to become a de
facto regional power, especially one with nuclear weapons, with the attached
risk of it forming a Shia ‘petrolistan’ in the Gulf to include Iran, southern Iraq,
the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
Certain Sunni countries could choose to support –if
they are not doing so already– their fellow Sunni insurgents in Iraq against
the Shia-dominated state militias and institutions, turning Iraq into a
battlefield between Iran and its Arab neighbours. The fact that this possible
conflict could take place on ethno-religious lines should be of concern to
countries with significant Shia minorities or those with religiously diverse
societies, such as Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. Likewise, the ethnic
ambitions linked to increased Kurdish power in northern Iraq are fanning the
activism of the Kurds in Turkey, Syria and Iran, a factor that might bring them
into conflict with their central authorities, or even lead these countries into
conflict with the fractured Iraqi state.
In its attempts to save face in Iraq and deal with
growing problems at home, the current US Administration seems to lack a clearly
defined set of ideas with which to tackle the difficulties it faces in the Gulf
region, or, in more general terms, in the Middle East. According to the
National Security Strategy, presented by the White House in March 2006, Iran is
the country presenting the greatest challenge to the US. With the aim of
blocking Teheran’s ambitions, the US could attempt the far from simple process
of combining the two doctrines employed in the past with Iran and Iraq: that of
‘balance of power’ and that of ‘dual containment’, only this time on a regional
scale. The repeated recent references of the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza
Rice, to ‘GCC+2’ (the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, plus Egypt
and Jordan) are viewed by a number of observers as evidence that the US wants
to create an Arab/Sunni front to offset Persian/Shia influence in the region. Likewise,
the idea would be to replace the Arab-Israeli conflict with an Arab-Persian or
Sunni-Shia one, as a means of establishing a new regional order in which the
emergence of new competitors to Israel would be impossible. This option, although
tempting for some, entails a high risk for the stability of the region and of
the international system as a whole, as a number of US allies seem to have
understood.
Regional
Moves
There has lately been evidence of distancing between certain
pro-Western Arab countries (the so-called ‘moderates’), including Saudi Arabia,
Egypt and Jordan, and the US. The Bush Administration’s forgoing of diplomacy as
a means of solving the Israeli-Arab conflicts, its unconditional support for
Israeli military operations in Lebanon and Gaza and the very negative
perception that Arab populations have of the current Administration, are
increasing the level of internal opposition faced by countries that are still
allies of Washington. One alarming factor to take into account in this context,
absent in its present form during the first Gulf wars, is the transnational Jihadist movement; a
global threat which grows stronger in situations of crisis and disorder. Should
sectarian violence spread through the Middle East due to the fighting in Iraq and
elsewhere in the region, the movement would grow stronger, while the more moderate
sectors within these societies, who support dialogue, would be once again
silenced.
In the light of the worrying regional outlook, Saudi
Arabia has taken up the leadership of the 22 Arab countries and its diplomacy is
trying to deactivate the crises afflicting the region. Saudi mediation allowed
the Palestinians to reach the Mecca agreement in February, by means of which the
Islamic Hamas movement and the nationalist Fatah committed themselves to a
government of national unity to bring an end to their violent struggle. By
means of this mediation, Saudi Arabia hopes to distance Hamas from Iranian
influence, while also winning the approval of Islamic societies as a mediator in
disputes affecting them. The Saudis are also trying to pacify the internal
Lebanese front through dialogue between the opposing sides and Syria, a country
that continues to exert an influence, which is not always positive, on its Western
neighbour. But the most ambitious Saudi initiative to date has been to host the
19th summit of the League of Arab States in Riyadh at the end of March of this
year. In a gesture of unusual sincerity and self-criticism, the Saudi king
declared that the Arab countries are suffering the consequences of the
disasters caused by their leaders, but he also criticised his American ally in
speaking of the ‘illegitimate foreign occupation of Iraq’, to Washington’s
surprise and distaste. The growing importance of Riyadh’s regional role reveals,
among other things, Egypt’s declining presence on the regional stage.
One of the main decisions of the Riyadh summit was to
re-launch the Arab peace initiative, designed by Saudi Arabia and presented
at the Beirut Arab summit in 2002, by means of which all the Arab countries
offer full normalisation of their relations with Israel in exchange for the
latter’s withdrawal from the territories it occupied during the Six-Day War in
1967. As opposed to the current US Administration’s tendency to ‘resolve’ conflicts
by means of the threat of force, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries are
maintaining communication channels with Iran and its allies in order to avoid
open confrontation. This is a process that requires recognising Iran as an
influential player, while simultaneously persuading it to join the regional system
as a provider of security. The visit of Russian President, Vladimir Putin, to Saudi
Arabia, Jordan and Qatar last February reflected the Arab interest in
diversifying the sources of support in the face of the ongoing crises in the
Middle East, as well as Russia’s desire to play a greater role in security
issues and energy policy in this strategic region.
A Tragedy
in Three Acts; with Epilogue?
A fourth Gulf War could have far more serious
consequences for the international system than the three previous wars put
together. Iran’s possible response if the country is attacked is not limited to
purely military aspects, but also includes its ability to generate greater regional
instability, to interrupt the transport of oil in the Persian Gulf and to
launch terrorist attacks abroad. Iran is seeking to increase its status and
achieve recognition as an essential player in the search for a comprehensive solution
to the region’s conflicts; an aim which, to date, Washington has not appeared to
be willing to accept. It is worth noting that both Bush and Ahmadinejad are
strongly ideological leaders facing problems at home (the Republican defeat in
the US congressional elections in November 2006 and the failure of Ahmadinejad’s
protégés in the municipal elections and those for the Assembly of Experts that
took place in Iran a month later). This could hinder any plans for an attack to
commence the fourth Gulf war, unless one of the principal players should decide
to follow a ‘flight forward’ strategy to silence his critics.
The absence of political negotiations, added to a deep
distrust and lack of communication, especially between the US and Israel on the
one hand and Iran and Syria on the other, mean that these countries are
preparing themselves for the worst possible scenario. Mediation on the part of
countries which will lose more than they will gain if armed conflict breaks out
is therefore vital. Iran and Syria, both together and individually, are part of
the problem faced by the US and its allies in the Middle East. It is precisely
because of this that they should become part of the solution. This is the
opinion of the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, who
visited Damascus at the start of April, and who has hinted that she will visit
Teheran to meet with the country’s President. In this context, the EU should
ask itself if it is doing everything possible to defend its vital interests in
the region.
Conclusion: The present US Administration is probably among those
that have least understood the political and social dynamics governing the
Middle East. Its foreign policy on Iran has two features that are difficult to
reconcile: demanding that the Iranian regime halts its nuclear research
programme, specifically in regard to enriching uranium, while simultaneously
employing a regime-change rhetoric with regard to Teheran. In other words, it displays
a desire to change the very regime that it is requesting to cooperate in good
faith. It would be more useful to focus efforts on the first proposition and to
work calmly so that the second is achieved from within. Above all, it is
necessary to establish a regional security framework in the Gulf, non-existent
at present, in which the essential interests of all countries are safeguarded, in
such a way that they are not moved to try to defend them unilaterally. If Iran really
wants nuclear power for peaceful ends, it should announce quickly that, having
achieved its aim of enriching uranium for power generation, it will open up all
its facilities to international inspectors. For its part, the international
community should support the signing of a treaty to suspend uranium enriching
and the reprocessing of plutonium throughout the Middle East, including Israel,
which would also provide for the possibility of establishing bilateral
monitoring and verification agreements, as well as possible joint management of
nuclear technology for civil uses. The Middle East would thus perform an
about-turn in its rush towards the abyss, and current political leaders would
receive recognition for having saved their peoples from further tragedy and
suffering.
Haizam Amirah-Fernández
Senior Analyst for the Mediterranean and the Arab
World, Elcano Royal Institute
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