The geopolitics of the Middle East has become more complicated and dangerous than it already was since Donald Trump has become the president of the United States. How is that, one might ask? While there are a number of strands in this story, one that particularly stands out is Trump administration’s decision to strangulate Iran’s clerical regime.
Mr Trump is not the first US president to focus on Iran. US relationship with Iran has been toxic since the revolution in 1979, which overthrew the Shah, a US ally, and ushered in the country’s clerical regime. The humiliation of the US embassy hostages in the wake of the revolutionary upsurge has never been forgotten. That was when Iran transformed into an inveterate enemy of the US.
The geopolitics of the region changed fundamentally as the new regime in Iran seemed to presage potentially disruptive regional changes, by example and encouragement. It was feared that Iran might destabilize other neighbouring countries that were part of the US strategic design for controlling the region.
The fear led the US to encourage Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, with its military and intelligence assistance, to start a war with Iran. The eight-year war was a humanitarian, political, economic and strategic disaster, with huge casualties, particularly, on the Iranian side. It seriously weakened Saddam’s position by adversely affecting the country’s economy and its capacity to repay loans contracted from some of its oil rich neighbours, including Kuwait.
To the great satisfaction of the Israeli government, as well as Riyadh, Trump has repudiated the Obama administration’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, and re-imposed economic sanctions
To get out of this situation and to improve his political and economic clout, Saddam attacked Kuwait, hoping to make it Iraq’s richest oil producing region and thus emerge as the region’s strong man and arbitrator. The US ambassador had reportedly been sounded out and Saddam had concluded that the US would not be particularly upset. In any case, Saddam had hoped to annex Kuwait quickly and present it as a fait accompli. That was not to be.
This led to the first Gulf War. With US determined to push Saddam back, he barely survived, mainly because President Bush Sr had no plans to create an alternative regime. Saddam was now gravely weakened and his country subject to severe economic sanctions. Iraq’s citizens were facing serious hardships and its children dying from hunger and lack of medicines.
During the period of the US preoccupation with Iraq, its neighbour, Iran, ceased to be the primary focus of regional instability. But US-Iran relations remained bad. The Al Qaeda-inspired terrorist attacks of 9/11 on the World Trade Centre in New York created a highly inflammable and explosive situation.
The US attacked Afghanistan for hosting Al Qaeda leaders including Osama Bin Laden and followed it up with an invasion of Iraq, alleging – wrongly, as it turned out – that Saddam’s regime had links with Al Qaeda and was working on weapons of mass destruction.
All this while, Iran was again emerging as a major regional threat. It was accused of developing a nuclear weapons capability. Iran denied it and asserted that it was seeking only to develop nuclear capability for peaceful uses. For this, it was subjected to severe US and international sanctions.
Two major pillars of US regional policy have been its alliances with Saudi Arabia and Israel, both determined to contain and push back Iran. Israel was keen to destroy Iran’s developing nuclear facilities with US help. However, the US was not too enthusiastic to start a potential regional conflagration.
Barack Obama’s presidency started on a note of caution. When the Arab Spring erupted in 2011, the Obama administration did not try to protect Egypt’s dictator Hosni Mubarak despite pleas on his behalf by Saudi Arabia and Israel.
At another level, the Obama administration gently sought to encourage some opening up of the oppressive system in Saudi Arabia, which wasn’t taken kindly by the monarchy. It also sought to encourage a deal with Iran to limit its nuclear programme to peaceful research. This eventually led to the 2015 nuclear deal, to the annoyance, if not the horror, of both Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Obama was not liked by the Netanyahu regime as his administration sought to encourage the two-state solution and restrain Israel’s annexation of more Palestinian territory, while still underwriting its security.
Not surprisingly, Trump’s ascension to presidency was welcomed with great relief. More so, when President Trump set off to do what no other US president had done so far, i.e. to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move its embassy there from Tel Aviv. He has followed that up with recognizing Israeli sovereignty over occupied Golan Heights.
The Trump administration has also discontinued economic aid to the Palestinian Authority, apparently as a mark of displeasure that the Palestinian administration is not supportive of Trump’s initiatives, illegal as they are under international law.
To the great satisfaction of the Israeli government, as well as Riyadh, Trump has repudiated the Obama administration’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, and re-imposed economic sanctions. Iran has once again become the prime focus of US regional policy.
There is no subtlety about Trump’s imperatives, a compelling one being, as he has been reported as saying, “undoing the policies of the man who preceded me [Obama].”
Considering that Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran was an important foreign policy breakthrough, Trump’s repudiation of it shouldn’t be too surprising. Where it might take the region is another story.
The writer is a freelancer