Middle East peace hinges on
will By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts - The cause of
peace is predicated on the propensity of
decision-makers to opt for peaceful resolution of
conflicts. While there are nearly always a host of
historical and political factors that trigger
conflicts, the optimal necessity for bringing
those conflicts to an end always revolves around
the will towards peace, an important ingredient
often missing in the Middle East.
By all
indications, 2013 will be a pivotal year for war
and peace in the Middle East. The questions of who
will gain the upper hand and whether the region
will experience positive or negative development
are difficult if not impossible to predict, but
trends are unmistakable and tabulating them
individually helps to
decipher the evolving
dynamics.
To begin with, we can safely
assume that the tumults of state-building in
post-Arab Spring countries will continue in
Tunisia and Egypt, and that Bahrain and Jordan
will likely experience a continuation of the
political struggle for change. It seems clear that
the Kurdish issue in Iraq will grow more prominent
and that Baghdad will be more beset with problems
of terrorism and political factionalism.
It can also be assumed that the Saudis
will continue to struggle with issues of
succession, and internal and regional instability;
that regime change will rear as an issue in Syria;
and that Israel's expansionism will be left
unchecked by the US and other Western powers.
The Iran nuclear standoff will still
likely dominate the foreign policy agenda of the
second Obama administration, particularly if the
"Israel Lobby" has its say.
But there are
also doubts in the year. For example, what are the
chances that the Syrian regime will survive in
2013? Or the Saudi-backed Bahraini regime, or
Egypt's Mohamed Morsi administration? Is it
feasible that the US, led by a new secretary of
state, could start pressing Israel for a viable
peace process, as well as for a peaceful
resolution of the Iran nuclear standoff?
The fundamental ambiguity surrounding such
questions stems from our inability to predict the
nature of policies that will be adopted and
pursued by the multiple actors, given the welter
of policy options that individually or collective
can tip the balance towards or away from war or
peace.
Geopolitically, the struggle over
Syria will be the dominant issue in the coming
year, in light of the country's strategic
significance. Should Damascus falls to the Western
and Saudi-backed rebels, this would create a
significant shift in the regional balance.
The trend is toward a re-enactment of the
Libya scenario, where parts of Syria are declared
a North Atlantic Treaty Organization-protected "no
fly zone". However, any regime change process
could be accelerated by the introduction of
chemical warfare, considered the US's "red line".
A United Nations peacekeeping force may be
stationed in a de facto partitioned Syria, but
that would require a more durable rebel advance
and an ability to retain zones of control, which
may or may not happen in the coming months, given
the conflict's fluidity. For those seeking
genuine peace in Syria, there is no doubt that in
2013 that much more attention must be given to the
role of the UN special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, who
insists on the need for a political dialogue
between the embattled government and the
opposition.
A new peace
process There is broad consensus in policy
circles around the world that a push for a new
Middle East peace process is urgently called for.
The week-long Gaza war in October and the
subsequent Israeli announcement of new settlement
expansions - as well as Palestine's acension to
observer status at the UN - have breathed new
impetus into pursuing what is needed and yet
continues to be ignored by Washington.
Obama will lose face in the world if he
ignores this priority any further. He should
appoint a new special envoy, direct his new
secretary of state to pursue another Camp David
meeting with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders,
and send clear signals to Israel that it must halt
land-grab actions that defy international law.
Most likely, Israel will placate such US demands
to some extent but only on the condition of a much
tougher US approach toward Iran. The problem with
this request, however, is that it militates
against the improving conditions for fruitful
nuclear talks.
If Iran is handed such a
setback in Syria, this could derail talks over
Tehran's nuclear program, as it would result in
heightened national security concerns.
Syria has afforded both Russia and more
recently Iran a Mediterranean foothold that is too
valuable in the strategic realm to give up without
a big fight, given the global spread of US and
NATO power, so it is a given that Tehran and
Moscow will do all they can to prevent Assad's
demise.
On the other hand, should Iran
take a proactive role in shaping an orderly post
al-Assad Syria - akin to the part it played at the
2001 Bonn summit on Afghanistan - then this may
ease Iran-US tensions.
What is clear,
however, is that Iran is strongly opposed to
foreign intervention in Syria and will likely
increase its military assistance to Damascus in
parallel with increased foreign meddling. A
greater proxy war throughout the Middle East is
thus anything but foreclosed, particularly if the
US steps up its counter-Iran strategy. This brings
us to a consideration of the chance for Iran
nuclear talks succeeding in 2013.
Prospects for Iran nuclear
talks It is likely we will witness a major
breakthrough in the Iran nuclear standoff in 2013.
Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) are making decent progress to reach a new
modality for cooperation (see Iran
nuclear talks produce a litmus test, Asia
Times Online, December 18, 2012 ) and this should
set a positive tone for the multilateral talks
between Iran and the "5 +1" nations (the United
Nations Security Council's permanent five members
plus Germany).
Guarded optimism is
therefore not out of place, since Iran's nuclear
program remains under the IAEA's supervision and
Tehran has backed away from certain steps that
could be deemed provocative, such as amassing a
high volume of 20% enriched uranium. It has
instead displayed concrete signs of its
willingness to build confidence with the West,
reaching out to sections of the Syrian opposition
and playing a more active role in regional
conflict management.
But will Israel and
its powerful lobby in Washington succeed in
torpedoing the potential for a breakthrough in the
nuclear crisis? This crucial question hinges on
the ability of the White House to devise a sound
Middle East policy in 2013 that does not cater to
Israel's warmongering.
Already, there are
serious efforts by the Jewish Lobby under way to
ensure that after the "fiscal cliff", the US's
highest priority should be "preventing a nuclear
Iran", to paraphrase a policy article in Wall
Street Journal, dated December 17, penned by
Charles Webb, Dennis Ross and Michael Makovsky.
A clue to the absurd nature of Iranophobic
discourse in the US, this seminal article makes a
strong pitch for Obama's prioritization of the
Iran threat by describing the fictitious scenario
of a "Saudi-Iran nuclear exchange". Unfortunately,
no matter how absurd, the pro-Israel lobbyists are
busy at work in Washington and it remains to be
seen if Obama can withstand their pressure.
Lest we forget, the first Obama
administration's Iran engagement policy was a
dismal failure, due mainly to contradictory and
half-hearted mini-steps poorly articulated at the
strategic level, and not the least because of the
influence of such ardent voices of Israel within
the administration such as Dennis Ross.
Whether or not the second Obama
administration can improve and diversify its Iran
policy skills is an important question that will
have significant implications for the broader US
Middle Eastern policy. A new foreign policy team
determined to reach out for genuine dialogue with
Tehran is desperately needed in Washington, and in
the coming weeks and months we will have a clearer
picture that would shed lights on the answer to
this question.
What is beyond doubt,
however, is the US's domestic economic concerns
and the impact another costly Middle Eastern war
would have on these. This strong US disincentive
for war with Iran should be a plus for diplomatic
transactions in 2013. But this is premised on a
Western rationality that, as in the disastrous
invasion of Iraq, has been shown to be in deficit.
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