Iran-Saudi Talks Signal Strategic Shift in the “New Middle East”
May 31, 2007 – 10:38 pmU.S. Iran Peace Project
ANALYSIS - May 31, 2007
In the past few months Saudi Arabia’s leading national security advisor Prince Bandar traveled to Tehran to meet with top goverrnment officials, while Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, has been courting House of Saud royalists in Riyahd. Despite the adversarial relationship of the two most formidable powers in the Middle East, they have opened an extraordinary series of discussions on issues ranging from Lebanon to Syria. At the same time both countries have been intensely maneuvering in Iraq, where their national security interests have collided and taken on the character of a proxy war.
The talks between Saudi-Iranian dialog represent a significant foreign policy change for Riyahd, whose strategic alliance with the United States committed them to a unified foreign policy of contaning and isolating Iran–a policy which has failed. Notwithstanding Iraq’s insistence that the U.S. engage in direct talks with Iran, the Baghdad meeting between U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Iranian attache Hassan Kazemi Qomi, is an acknowledgement that achieving stability in Iraq, and a broader peace in the Middle East, cannot be realized without Iran’s active involvement.
The Iranian Juggernaut
The expansion of Iran’s sphere of influence in Iraq, coupled with Saudi fears that the U.S. troop surge war will not stabilize Iraq, forced King Abdullah to spearhead efforts to push back the Iranian juggernaut across the Middle East. The consolidation of a Shi’a-led majority government in Iraq has brought the Saudi’s avowed enemies directly to its borders, and unsettled the other Sunni-led Gulf states with significant Shi’a populations. Within Lebanon, Iranian-supported Hezbollah forces continue to gain strength and Iran’s ties with HAMAS has complicated U.S. plans to resurrect al Fatah as the sole representative of the Palestinian Authority. Overshadowing these developments is the U.S.’s failure to halt Iran’s uranium enrichment program.
Just as the Saudis opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, King Abdulla objected to Bush administration hardliners call for a military invasion and U.S. air strikes to degrade Iran’s nuclear program. Instead, the Saudi’s and Secretary of State Rice developed an alternative strategy to challenge Iran’s advances. In 2006, a high level working group of political, military and intelligence operatives from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, the UAE and Kuwait was formed. The goal of the working group is to systematically destabilize Iran and frustrate its political designs across the Middle East. Rice has been chairing the group and coordinating its activities.
As the principle financier of the ongoing Sunni insurgency in Iraq, the Saudi’s hoped to pressure the al Maliki regime to make significant concessions to the Sunni and ex-Baathists, and curtail Iran’s support of Iraq’s Shi’a militias. But sectarian violence and the Sunni-Shi’a civil war have failed to achieve these objectives. Moreover, the Bush administration has been forced to prop up Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s regime or risk the collapse of Iraq’s coalition government.
The Saudi’s claim they are acting to protect the Sunni minority. But their goal remains installing a more pro-US government led by Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite, ex-Baathists, Sunni’s Kurds and secular Shiites. Similarly, in April the Saudis attempted to sever the strategic alliance between Kurdistan’s Regional Government and the Shi’a majority. The effort failed when KRG leaders rejected King Abdullah’s offer of millions of dollars to postpone the referendum on Kirkuk that would make the oil-rich city a part of the Kurdistan region.
The impetus for Iran to pursue talks with the Saudis reflects their growing concern about the Bush administration’s covert U.S. attempts to foment regime change. One day before the U.S-Iran talks were held in Baghdad, major U.S. news outlets reported that the CIA is running covert operations inside Iran. The White House and the State Department made no attempts to deny the reports. Quite the opposite, Vice-President Dick Cheney suggested the destablization policy was working. The Iranians have appealed to the Saudi’s to persuade the U.S. to ratchet down its provocations. The Saudis believe the U.S. naval buildup in the Persian Gulf, encouraging discontent among Iran’s minority nationality communities, financing opposition groups and running “black operations” inside Iran will only strengthen the grip of the ruling conservative clerics.
Should the Saudi’s agree to scale back their support of the Sunni/Baathists insurgency, and Iran reigns in the Shi’a militias, the Maliki regime might gain enough breathing space to move forward with agreements on sharing oil revenue and de-Baathification. Iran can also contribute to stabilizing the economy in Southern Iraq’s Shi’a dominated region, where they have made substantial investments. Saudi concerns about the vulnerability of their long border with Iraq, has led the government to begin construction of a high-tech security fence. The security barrier is meant to discourage infiltration of radical Shi’a radical militia and Saudi-born al Queda elements who have been fighting in Iraq, and have thier own scores to settle with the royal family.
Iran’s strategic goal in Iraq is to prevent the re-establishment of a hostile Sunni led regime that poses a military threat. Over time, the Iranians also want U.S. troops out of Iraq. The consolidation of Shi’a-led majority government peacefully co-existing with Iran is a reasonable accommodation that could improve the situation on the ground and lead to further stability in Iraq. Iran and Saudi Arabia have the most to lose if Iraq descends into chaos and a broader regional conflict erupts. Thus, the possibility of the two countries collaborating to realize some successful confidence building measures is a real possibility.
Lebanon: A New Balance of Power Between Shi’a and Sunni
The Saudi’s willingness to assist Iran is also contingent on gaining Iran’s cooperation in Lebanon, where the two countries interests are also at odds. In the aftermath of Hezbollah’s resounding effort in turning back Israel’s military incursion, Lebanon’s Shia community is asserting its political muscle as the nation’s largest majority. Shiites make up sixty percent of Lebanon’s population, but are only entitled to 48 of 175 legislative seats under Lebanon’s “confessionalâ€? political system.â€? Furthermore, Lebanon’s constitution guarantees that the country’s president must be Christian, its prime minister must be Sunni Muslim, and the speaker of parliament must be Shi’a Muslim.
In January, Hezbollah’s Shi’a Muslim political party pulled out of the governing coalition along with Amal, another Shi’a political party. Claiming their defense of Lebanon against Israel entitled them to greater political representation, Hezbollah and Amal forces took to the streets. Their demands included gaining four seats in the cabinet. The demonstrations turned violent and Hezbollah threatened a general strike aimed at toppling the Siniora government. With the assistance of Iran the strike was averted.
Under pressure to guarantee the security of Lebanon’s Sunni community and counter Hezbollah’s drive for power, the Saudi’s are pumping millions into the Sunni Druze and Christian Marionite communities. The Saudi’s are also seeking assurances that Hezbollah’s militia won’t move against the Siniora government. Iranian acquiescence to the Saudis entreaty may be working. Hezbollah’s mercurial leader, Hassan Nasrallah, recently announced he will work within the electoral framework to change the political equation in Lebanon. Whether Iran and Saudi Arabia can broker a deal that balances Hezbollah’s political interests with that of Lebanon’s Sunni and Christian communities’ remains to be seen? The creation of a new national unity government and fresh parliamentary elections are critical to prevent Lebanon’s slide into further chaos.
The U.S. Setback in the Levant
The third major issue on the Saudi’s agenda is the continuing political chaos between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The quid pro quo for Saudi support of Secretary Rice’s Middle East strategy called for tangible progress on a deal between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. Rice’s insistence on holding the Palestinian Authority elections was predicated on her expectation that a new generation of reform minded al Fatah leaders would defeat the corrupt and politically inept elders. HAMAS’s shocking victory unraveled Rice’s plan. In a desperate attempt to recoup their losses, the U.S. and Israel armed al Fatah to the teeth, in hopes they would defeat HAMAS in the street wars. While the fighting continues to rage in Gaza, Iranian and Syrian support allowed HAMAS to turn back Fatah’s offensive.
Frustrated by the failure of Rice’s plan, King Abdullah summoned HAMAS and al Fatah leaders to Riyadh to forge a truce. While Rice and the Bush Administration opposed a Palestinian unity government, they were in no position to dissuade King Abdulla. The Mecca Agreement called for a new unity government between al Fatah and HAMAS. King Abdullah pledged a billion dollars to underwrite the merger. Although the truce has not held, King Abdullah gambit was in part meant to limit Iran’s growing influence with HAMAS.
The New House of Saud
The seriousness, in which Saudi Arabia and Iran are pursuing new political and security arrangements in Iraq and Lebanon, underscores the changing realities of the emerging new Middle East. The Persian Gulf is now ground zero of the struggles that will shape the future of the Middle East. The potential shift of Iraq into Iran’s sphere of influence would constitute an enormous geo-strategic setback for the United States–a setback the Bush administration may attempt to balance by launching military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.
The political epicenter of the Middle East has shifted from the Levant to the Persian Gulf. A new front of struggle has opened up betweent the rising Shi’a movement led by Iran, and the old Sunni authoritarian regimes. Increasingly the Shi’a-Sunni divide will inform the calculus of Middle Eastern politics. Saudi Arabia, once the font secret diplomacy and master of backroom petro-dollar deals to achieve its objectives has been forced to take on a new role in the region. The Saudi’s lurch into the breech to hold the alliance of U.S and Sunni authoritarian Arab regimes together, and help blunt the tip of Iranian expansionism, is yet another defining movement in the development of a New Middle East.
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Webster Brooks is the Editor of the U.S.-Iran Peace Project’s website: www.usiranpeace.com. His articles have appeared in newspapers and websites in the Middle East and the United States. The USIP advocates the restoration of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Iran
2 Responses to “Iran-Saudi Talks Signal Strategic Shift in the “New Middle East””
There is a good deal of geopolitical CIA/MI5 backed hanky-panky in that theatre which has brought us to the present day.
The only reason why most think it just happened yesterday is that the kind of fare Entertainment Tonight and Oprah provides to the masses is what preoccupies their lives. Nothing deeper.
They need a serious primer on history. The self-appointed experts in the 40s and 50s did not forsee any of this when they conspired to install the last Shah and set the stage for the present.
It really does not matter who is running the show. Everyone has had a piece of it in the past, and we are no better off now, than we were a century ago.
You can analyze this thing to death if you care to, but the train just keeps rolling.
By DAD on Jun 2, 2007
It’s an unholy alliance between the United States and the Saudi ruling family of autocratic monarchists who have supported Islamic terrorists.
Surely the Bush family has an exalted place at the feast-table of the Saudis. Don’t they enjoy it so?
The princes of weapons sales, oil and construction contracts are pouring fine scotch tonight.
By Vince Williams on Jun 8, 2007