Daily Times

My last piece concluded with this thought: if containing China is the primary American interest, it is very probable that the US will ensure Afghanistan remains in a state of insecurity; to such an extent that the country becomes a staging post from which instability is exported to all its neighbours, and thus indirectly to China.

This must surely have occurred to someone somewhere in Kabul. Yet this does not necessarily mean that the Afghans will have arrived at the same conclusion as those of us on this side of the border: that the aforementioned scenario is virtually guaranteed. Therefore the biggest favour that Pakistan can for its western neighbour, while helping itself in the process, is to have a quiet chat and explain why this is almost certainly the case.

As for the Iranians, they were conspicuous by their (deliberate) absence in my last effort. And while they may or may not have quite the same take on the situation – they are, however, well aware that American manoeuvrings against Tehran are nothing if not nefarious. Yet the question remains as to whether or not this is simply by dint of the shared Iranian-Afghan border.

Let’s now examine this in some detail.

President Obama had worked hard to find common ground on the Iran nuclear issue that both sides would find ‘doable’. And he found it. Moreover, this was a multilateral effort, with six nations (including the US) signing off on the deal with Tehran. The prevailing consensus is that the latter is not in violation of the pact. Yet this hasn’t stopped the Trump White House from sending the agreement to Congress on the grounds that “it has flaws and needs to be renegotiated”.

Undeterred by both UN and EU opposition to this, Trump remains steadfast. Naturally he must have compelling reasons for this. All of which can be traced back to our old friend Iran and the containment of China.

Beijing is fundamentally weak in two areas. Firstly, it is an agriculture-deficient country; and despite having built enormous dams on all its rivers, only about 20 percent of its land is actually arable. Secondly, even though it has signed a $470-billion dollar deal to import oil from Russia – China remains oil-thirsty. Iran desperately needs access to energy markets; and Pakistan, not wishing to unduly provoke either Riyadh or Washington, has continued to go slow on the Iran oil pipeline. By contrast, however, Beijing is eager to import oil from Tehran via CPEC; something that the US naturally wants to prevent.

The US understands that much like the Sino-Russian energy pact; it is powerless to prevent any deal whereby China imports Iranian oil via CPEC. Thus Washington appears to have resorted to its tried-and-tested strategy of destabilising the Middle East

However, Washington is mindful that much like the Sino-Russian pact; this is another oil deal that it is powerless to prevent. Thus Trump appears to have resorted to the tried-and-tested American strategy of destabilising the Middle East with a view to redrawing it to Washington’s own liking. Putting not only the region is at risk – but CPEC, too. It may be pertinent to note that Russia’s proactive opposition to US meddling in the Middle East is in fact a ‘front’ for Chinese counter-moves.

It’s a pretty amazing coincidence, isn’t it, that some six years after the execution of Osama Bin Laden, the thousands of documents that the CIA has released have among them evidence that Iran had been helping Al Qaeda all along? The prolonged Shia-Sunni divide nurtured for so long and for so many years by the Saudi-Israel nexus was such an astounding failure that despite Riyadh’s official and unofficial support to Al Qaeda – the later needed the Iranians to swoop in and save the day. Utterly mind boggling, don’t you think?

But that’s not all, folks. A week ago, Lebanon’s Saad Hariri announced that he would be stepping down as Prime Minister; accusing Hezbollah of taking his country hostage and citing Iranian interference as the cause for the spread of “evil” throughout the region. How truly astonishing! Given that Lebanon has Syria and Jordan as its immediate neighbours – it still must fall to the Iranians to provide the necessary unrest. Really, the whole world must envy the latter’s ability to infiltrate any border they want, with total impunity.

Yet even more flabbergasting is the fact that Hariri chose to announce his resignation in Riyadh. And this was enough for the Saudi kingdom to publicly conclude that Lebanon had declared war on the kingdom. Now why would that be? To understand the dynamics of the Middle East, it is important to repeat that the Saudis (and I refer here to the House of Saud) are not only signatories to the Balfour Declaration, they have been the Jewish state’s staunchest supporters since its creation. And as if this needed any confirmation – Israel’s Channel 10 News made leaked a diplomatic cable, written in Hebrew, and sent it to all its ambassadors around the world; explaining why Hariri had resigned and what Tel Aviv wanted them to do to support the national cause.

Thus whatever rethink there may have been in the US regarding its relations with Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran during the tail-end of the Obama administration – this seems to have been put firmly to bed by the new regime as it seeks to contain the Sin-Russo axis.

Yemen is in chaos, Syria may be recovering but now Lebanon seems to have joined the list of Saudi-Israeli enemies, which already consists of Iran and Qatar, with Turkey hovering on the periphery.

I am among those who have developed genuine respect for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Though he is perhaps more Machiavellian than Machiavelli himself. His decision to have his father dispatched to Moscow to establish indirect contact with Beijing was a stroke of pure genius. The same may be said of his recent moves to consolidate his power base in the kingdom in one fell swoop.

In Israel, there are no genuine ‘leaks’ of diplomatic cables. Rather this is an important way for Tel Aviv to make public what it pretends to be hiding. So, the next question is why Israel would want this on-the-record, as it were, now. Many possibilities come to mind. The most plausible, however, is that conscious of the implications of King Salman’s visit to Moscow – it (along with the US) moved to forestall any move by KSA to drift towards the Chinese camp.

And so the Great Game plays on.

The writer is a retired brigadier. He is also former vice president and founder of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI)

Published in Daily Times, November 12^th 2017.