[lbo-talk] The US and Iran

Marv Gandall marvgand2 at gmail.com
Tue Jun 18 07:19:47 PDT 2013


How would you foresee an Israel-Iran confrontation in Syria? I can't conceive of the Israelis, for example, using air power to support the rebellion, not least because of its uncertain political direction - the same hesitation bedevilling the Americans.

On 2013-06-18, at 10:00 AM, joel schalit wrote:


> My inclination is to believe that the Iranian deployment, in Syria, does
> not diminish the possibility of an Iranian-Israeli fight. The Americans
> might not, in my view, be able to restrain such an event from taking place,
> even if it is restricted to Syrian territory. I say this, in full agreement
> that Iran's new President is a moderating force.
>
> Joel
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 3:28 PM, Marv Gandall <marvgand2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The Israelis, with grudging US support, have been talking about bombing
>> Iran for a decade now in a vain bid to stop the development of its nuclear
>> program. The election of the Western-educated Hassan Rohani makes that
>> prospect all the more unlikely. Rohani was instrumental in negotiating the
>> suspension of Iran's nuclear enrichment program under the reformist
>> president Mohammed Khatami and has indicated his eagerness for renewed
>> talks. More to the point, the US and its allies will not want to do
>> anything to derail the revived movement of middle and working class
>> Iranians against the current regime. The urban masses gave Rohani the
>> presidency and for cultural and economic reasons are seeking improved
>> relations with the West.
>>
>> Israel is always an unpredictable and troublesome wild card for the US,
>> but it seems clear that the US defence and foreign policy establishment has
>> reconciled itself to "containing" rather than preventing a nuclear-armed
>> Iran. Hillary Clinton said as much last year. The reported dispatch of 4000
>> Iranian troops to Syria plus Rohani's election will likely place more
>> pressure on the Obama administration to negotiate a settlement of the
>> conflict and stabilize the situation in the Middle East. Whether it can do
>> so in light of the multiple interrelated class, religious, and ethnic
>> conflicts in the region is another matter.
>>
>> The underlying historical factors encouraging the Americans to pursue a
>> policy of peaceful coexistence with Islamist regimes and movements, along
>> the same lines as they once did with the Communist regimes in USSR and
>> China, are shrewdly summarized below:
>>
>>
>> The west’s dominance of the Middle East is ending
>> By Gideon Rachman
>> Financial Times
>> June 17 2013
>>
>> Those calling for deeper US involvement in the Syrian conflict are living
>> in the past
>>
>> Should the west arm the Syrian rebels? That is the issue of the day in
>> Washington, London and at the Group of Eight summit. But behind this debate
>> lies a bigger question. Can western powers continue to shape the future of
>> the Middle East as they have for the past century?
>>
>> The current, increasingly fragile borders of the Middle East are, to a
>> large extent, the product of some lines on the map drawn by Britain and
>> France in the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916. The era when Britain and
>> France were the dominant outside powers ended definitively with the Suez
>> crisis of 1956 – when the US pulled the plug on the two nations’
>> intervention in Egypt. During the cold war, the US and the USSR were the
>> big players. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, America stood
>> alone as the great power in the Middle East: organising the coalition to
>> defeat Saddam Hussein in 1991, protecting the flow of oil from the Gulf,
>> containing Iran and attempting to broker a peace settlement between Israel
>> and the Arab states.
>>
>> Those who are urging the US to get more deeply involved in the Syrian
>> conflict now are living in the past. They assume that America can and
>> should continue to dominate the politics of the Middle East. But four
>> fundamental changes make it no longer realistic, or even desirable, for the
>> US to dominate the region in the old way.
>> These changes are the failures of the Afghan and Iraq wars; the Great
>> Recession, the Arab spring and the prospect of US energy independence.
>>
>> Over the past decade, the US has learnt that while its military might can
>> topple regimes in the greater Middle East very quickly, America and its
>> allies are very bad at nation-building. A decade of involvement has left
>> both Afghanistan and Iraq deeply unstable and wracked by conflict. Neither
>> country is securely in the “western camp”.
>> The result is that even the advocates of western intervention in Syria,
>> such as Senator John McCain, proclaim that they are opposed to “boots on
>> the ground”. Instead, they are pushing to supply weapons to the Syrian
>> rebels – arguing that this is necessary to secure a more desirable
>> political outcome.
>>
>> President Barack Obama has given some ground to the “arm the rebels” camp.
>> But his reluctance and scepticism are evident – and amply justified. If a
>> full-scale western occupation of both Iraq and Afghanistan was unable to
>> secure a decent outcome, why does anybody believe that supplying a few
>> light weapons to the Syrian rebels will be more effective?
>>
>> The Great Recession also means that the west’s capacity to “bear any
>> burden” can no longer be taken for granted. European military spending is
>> falling fast – and cuts in the Pentagon budget have begun. With the direct
>> and indirect cost of the Iraq war estimated at $3tn and the US government
>> borrowing 40 cents of every dollar that it spends, it is hardly surprising
>> that Mr Obama is wary of taking on new commitments in the Middle East.
>>
>> The third new factor is the Arab spring. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt
>> was a long-time ally and client of the US. Nonetheless, Washington decided
>> to let him fall in early 2011 – much to the disgust and alarm of other
>> long-term American allies in the region, notably Saudi Arabia and Israel.
>> But the Obama administration was right to drop Mr Mubarak. He could not
>> have been propped up without risking a Syria-style bloodbath.
>>
>> More fundamentally, the US has recognised that, ultimately, the people of
>> the Middle East are going to have to shape their own destinies. Many of the
>> forces at work in the region – such as Islamism and Sunni-Shia sectarianism
>> – are alarming to the west but they cannot be forever channelled or
>> suppressed.
>>
>> Finally, the ability of the US to take a more hands-off attitude is
>> greatly enhanced by the shale revolution in the US, which lessens American
>> dependence on Middle Eastern oil.
>>
>> Accepting that western domination of the Middle East is coming to an end,
>> however, should not be confused with saying that western nations will not
>> defend their interests.
>>
>> The US has large military bases in the Gulf and, together with its allies,
>> will still try to prevent the Middle East becoming dominated by a hostile
>> power. Despite its role in Syria, Russia is not a plausible regional
>> hegemon. But Iran worries the US; an attack on its nuclear programme
>> remains an option, despite the encouraging result of this weekend’s
>> presidential elections. Jihadist forces, linked to al-Qaeda, will also
>> encounter western resistance – one reason why the Syrian opposition
>> continues to be treated very warily. And the US and its European allies
>> will remain deeply involved in regional diplomacy over Syria.
>>
>> Western humanitarian instincts will play a role too – as they did in the
>> decision to support the Libyan rebellion. But, as Syria is demonstrating,
>> there is a limit to what the west will take on. Even former Australian
>> foreign minister Gareth Evans, the intellectual godfather of the doctrine
>> of the “responsibility to protect” civilians, is warning against military
>> intervention in Syria.
>>
>> Despite the US decision to begin to supply military assistance to the
>> rebels, Mr Obama is obviously still wary of deep involvement in the Syrian
>> conflict. More than some of his advisers and allies, he seems to appreciate
>> the limited ability of outside powers to control the new order that it is
>> emerging in the region. The era of direct colonialism in the Middle East
>> ended decades ago. The era of informal empire is now also coming to a close.
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> joel schalit
> skype: jschalit
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