Iran trumps Saudi project in Syria-Iraq

Monday, 5 January 2015

Iran trumps Saudi project in Syria-Iraq

By M K Bhadrakumar – January 2, 2015

A grudging admission that Saudi Arabia has lost out to Iran in the regional rivalry is apparent in the opinion piece by a senior editor in the establishment daily Asharq Al-Awsat. The hubris that money can buy anything or anyone in Washington, the triumphalism that the Islamic State spells the doom for the Iranians, the over-confidence that Sunni-Shi’ite schism transcends regional politics – all these Saudi assumptions have gone horribly wrong. In retrospect, 2014 stands out as the year the Saudis lost the plot.

As the year 2014 ended, it became clear that the Iranians outwitted the Saudis in both Iraq and Syria. Just as the Iranians turned the US invasion of Iraq and the Shi’ite empowerment that followed to their advantage ten years ago, they promptly seized the spectre of the IS(which haunted the West) to project themselves as the factor of regional security and stability.

Suffice it to say, Iranian influence in Iraq has surged through 2014. Tehran today wields influence not only with Shi’ites but also with the Iraqi Sunnis and Kurds (here). Tehran’s robust military intervention in Iraq has degraded the IS beyond all expectations. In sum, Iran has emerged as the provider of security for Iraq, as the visit of the Iraqi defence minister to Tehran last week testifies.

The fact of the matter is that IS is a much diminished force today and its ability to seize more territories – even to retain much of it – is in serious doubt, thanks to the effectiveness of the Iranian military intervention in Iraq. On the other hand, the spectre of the IS has brought the West to realize that the Syrian regime, which is supported by Tehran, is a bulwark against Islamist terrorism that threatens Europe.

The Saudi expectations on the one hand that Tehran will be bogged down in a quagmire in Iraq and on the other hand that the US intervention against the IS would logically reopen the agenda of ‘regime change’ in Syria and compel the Obama administration to put its weight behind the Saudi project have both been belied.

But the single biggest Saudi miscalculation has been as regards the raison d’etre of the US’ engagement of Iran. The Saudis estimated that President Barack Obama will be forced to backtrack in the face of the huge assault by their lobbyists in the US in tandem with the formidable Israeli Lobby in the recent months.

Instead, Obama stood his ground. He did that out of the strength of his conviction that Iran’s cooperation will have a multiplier effect on the US strategies to calm the Middle East and restore American prestige and influence in the region, while also enabling him to focus more on the full recovery of the American economy and give more attention to the US’ global strategies.

Obama candidly spoke about all this in a major interview with the NPR News recently. He taunted his domestic critics, “There are times here in Washington where pundits… think you can just move chess pieces around the table. And whenever we have that kind of hubris, we tend to get burned.” He rejected the idea of “devoting another trillion dollars” to put boots on the ground to fight the IS in Iraq. “We need to spend a trillion dollars rebuilding our schools, our roads, our basic science and research here in the United States,” Obama said.

This is where the Saudis got Obama all wrong. They are still stuck in the mud in an earlier era of US gunboat diplomacy and ‘humanitarian intervention’ in the Middle East. Significantly, Obama in his interview also acknowledged that Iran would become a “very successful regional power” if it seized the “chance to get right with the world” and concluded a nuclear agreement, which is “possible”. He said: “Because, if they [Iranians] do, there’s incredible talent and resources and sophistication inside of Iran and it could be a very successful regional power that was also also abiding by international rules – and that would be good for everybody.”

Again, Obama went an extra league to recognize that Iran has “legitimate defense concerns” after it “suffered from a terrible war with Iraq” in the 1980s. Asked whether the US would restore relations with Iran, he replied, “I would never say never.”

Iran Daily, the influential newspaper that reflects the top leadership’s thinking in Tehran, has since responded with an editorial entitled “Obama’s suggestions need closer study”. The editorial appreciated Obama’s acknowledgement that stability in the Middle East requires Iran’s cooperation. It estimated that a rapprochement with the US will “not only spur activity by American investors, but also attract European investors” and revive the Iranian economy, and this in turn “will give rise to the importance of bilateral diplomatic ties [with US].”

The editorial concluded that “amicable relations” with Tehran will enable Washington to “press ahead with policies aimed at easing tensions in the Middle East” and will help the US “to mitigate its ongoing challenges in the region.”

Are the Saudis willing to see the writing on the wall? The Saudis stand pretty much isolated today. Neither Egypt under president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (who opposes the rise of Islamism in Syria or anywhere in his neighborhood) nor Turkey (which backs ‘regime change’ in Syria but sees it through the prism of the Arab Spring and is championing the Muslim Brotherhood — which is of course anathema to the Gulf Arab regimes) supports the Saudi project in Syria. As for the West, it dreads the instability in Syria. As the Syria peace talks under Russian initiative come nearer, Saudis come under compulsion to reassess how their regional policies ended up in a cul-de-sac. A good starting point for the Saudis will be to retract from their latest bluster of using oil as a weapon to bring Iran down on its knees.