Daily Times

The mirror review of the Trump’s last year in the While House shows his advisors had persuaded him he had been anointed by God to help the Jews regain their epic land and glory. He looked the other way while Prime Minister Netanyahu was unabashedly expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank and provocatively declaring the Israeli sovereignty and control over the united Jerusalem and any piece of Palestinian territory west of Jordan River.

While Donald Trump was on rampage, the Arab leaders seemed paralyzed. They met in a summit under the banner of the Arab League in Tunisia in March 2020 to register their protests particularly over his proclamation recognizing the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights. The Final Communiqué issued at the end of the session was littered with the usual clichés and repeated the well beaten stand of the Arab countries on Palestine and the occupied Arab lands.

The hostility of the US leaders including Donald Trump and Joe Biden against Iran owes much to the perceived security threat from Iran to Israel and some Arab allies. During the turmoil of the Middle East, Iran undoubtedly strengthened its sphere of political and strategic influence from Yemen to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Hamas-ruled Gaza. The Iranian entrenchment in the Middle East posed a security challenge to some Arab monarchies and emirates impelling them to embrace Israel in a joint endeavour to isolate this common adversary.

Their joint pressure on President Donald Trump resulted in the US exit from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May 2018, and reintroduction of economic sanctions on Iran. We recall, three countries of Israel, Saudi Arabia and UAE had opposed JCPOA. To ratchet pressure on Iran, the US leader declared Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as terrorist organization and, to further squeeze Iran economically, refused to extend the sanctions waiver for buyers of Iranian oil that included Turkey, India and China. The latter is the biggest Iranian oil importer. The Iranian oil exports dipped from 2.5 million barrels a day to less than 1.3 million.

The US presented Iran some 12 tough conditions for the renegotiation of the JCPOA which amounted to total surrender to the American diktat. These demands notably called on Iran to dismantle all nuclear programmes, withdraw forces from Syria, terminate support to armed groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, Al-Quds and Houthis, stop the destabilizing policies in Iraq, Afghanistan and Gulf region and supporting Al-Bashar in Syria, Noori Al-Maliki in Iraq, and many more demands.

All analysts knowing the Iranians hastened to conclude that they would prefer to perish in a war than surrendering so ignominiously to the US. Hence, the situation in the Gulf region remained in a flux with every possibility of war which would have been the last nail in the coffin of the Muslim world. Given the Iran’s strategic location and military capability with all medium and long range missiles, the war would have set alight the entire Gulf region.

The hostility of the US leaders against Iran owes much to the perceived security threat from Iran to Israel and some Arab allies.

President Joe Biden followed his predecessor’s policy in the Middle East blindly supporting Israel. His open support to Israel in the wanton killing of the poor Palestinians in Gaza despite protests all over the world proved his callousness and cruelty on one hand and the helplessness of the Muslim countries on the other. Protesters gathered in hundreds of thousands in the Western capitals to condemn the US support to the Israeli brutality in Gaza. The Muslim countries didn’t allow their people to vent their anger over this bloodbath. So is pervasive the fear of the wrath of the USA and Israel.

Ambassador K.K. Ghori writes somewhere that Pakistan was a silent spectator during all the years of turmoil in the Muslim world and the Gulf war. It was a challenge knocking at Pakistan’s door for over a decade and crying out for responses that would safeguard its vital national interests. Pakistan was caught between the devil and deep blue sea during the short lived ‘Arab Spring’ and no-hold-barred game of one-upmanship between two important Muslim countries- Saudi Arabia and Iran – the contenders for regional domination in its neighbourhood.

Pakistan saw such situations in the past, but it was in a position to navigate safe through the explosive minefield by playing its cards well. But the ground reality within Pakistan, then, was different from today. The past regimes were in a position to parry the pressure from rival states because Pakistan wasn’t beholden to either, which isn’t the case today. The governments of Imran Khan and his successors were too deeply beholden to the rich Arab countries which bailed them out of tight economic straitjacket through generous support.

Ambassador Ghori further writes Pakistan’s economic dependence on rich Muslim countries and the western financial institutions has since increased. This hamstrings bold initiative or policy move not kosher to rich Arab countries and the USA. It also makes it a mute spectator of, if not a hostage to, the sectarian-based ideological conflict between the Arabs and the Iranians notwithstanding its own fragile sectarian fault-lines. The Pakistani leadership’s failure to attend the Kuala Lumpur Summit or implement the gas pipeline agreement with Iran is a glaring case in point.

The country has suffered badly from the sectarian warfare and has to be ever extra-vigilant to ensure it doesn’t get caught on a wrong footing particularly when the militant organizations of a particular political and religious hue are active from across the western borders. These organizations have been undermining its relations with immediate neighbours and its security as well.

The independent foreign policy experts forcefully argue that Pakistan would be compelled to follow regional and international policies disadvantageous to its long-term geo-strategic interest if it remains shackled to its economic handicaps. To break these economic shackles, Pakistan needs to increase its revenue and drastically cut expenses. However, no plan of belt-tightening is in sight. We feel no shame in borrowing money and spending lavishly and living ostentatiously. It is stupidity of the highest order.

(Concluded)

The author was a member of the Foreign Service of Pakistan and he has authored two books.