Can Iran Become a Cooperative Partner? - Michael Doran & Max Boot
- President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry are quietly pursuing a strategic realignment that, they believe, will end decades of semi-open warfare between Iran and the U.S. In our view, the Obama administration wants to see a "concert" of great powers - Russia, America, the European nations and Iran - working together to stabilize the Middle East.
- There are two main reasons for this attempted shift. One is simply the desire of the president to extricate the U.S. from the Middle East. The other is fear of al-Qaeda: The White House undoubtedly sees Iran and its Shiite allies as potential partners in the fight against Sunni jihadism.
- However, this strategy is destined to fail. Iran does not share a common enemy that would force it to unite with America. Though Iran's proxies are fighting Sunni extremists in a number of theaters, Iran itself has cooperated with al-Qaeda and other Sunni extremists, such as Hamas and the Taliban, when it has served its interests to do so.
- Iran's rulers simply do not regard al-Qaeda as an existential threat on a par with the "Great Satan" (as they see the U.S.).
- The second major problem is that Iran has always harbored dreams of regional hegemony. There is no sign that the election of the "moderate" cleric Hassan Rouhani as president has changed anything. On the contrary, Iran is stepping up its support for militants in the region.
Michael Doran is a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
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UPDATE:
Allies don't let allies destruct -Caroline Glick
Kerry is holding marathon meetings with Netanyahu to try to coerce him into helping the PLO build another Jew-free terrorist state in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. Rather than try to blunt the growing power of Hezbollah - Iran's terrorist army - in Syria, the US's policy is inviting Iran, the party most responsible for the war, to join the phony peacemakers club at Geneva.
As for the rest of the region, from Tunisia to Bahrain, from Egypt and Libya to Iraq, and Yemen, Kerry and the Obama administration as a whole are content to watch on the sidelines as al-Qaida reemerges as a significant force, and as Iran undermines stability in country after country.
[Jewish World Review]
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3 comments:
These are misguided simplifications or purposeful misstatements. One supposes a lot. it is ridiculous, as I have stated before, to decide Iran can never change and to treat them that way. If this were the case the free world would not be aligned with Germany or japan either. No one has done more to empower Iran than the United States, first by supporting the brutal Shah, and then by removing the balancing force of Saddam's Iraq. No one has empowered Al-Qaeda more in that specific area than the U.S. by inviting Al-Qaeda in by pushing Saddam out and leaving a weak, fractured government in its place. The U.S., by invading Iraq on false pretenses (we knew they did not have weapons of mass destruction and we knew they had nothing to do with 9/11) has fueled much in the way of anti-western pro-jihadist sentiment, which has made it more difficult for Israel, and for the U.S. to broker a pro-Israeli solution. Everyone that is complaining about how Obama is handling the MidEast are the same people who applauded all of George W. Bush's lies and poor use of power that has helped to create the specific problems of the MidEast today.
The only thing I could find in your comments that I agree with is your comparison of Iran to Japan and Germany. Indeed. Both Japan and Germany had to have their imperial aspirations crushed. The same is required now.
I didn't think you'd agree but you're welcome to "search" the unintended effects of the Iraq war. In the meantime, the update from Glick is a bit erroneous. The U.S. is not helping or condoning Iran involvement with Syria, and they forced the UN to rescind the invitation to the peace conference. I also wouldn't say the U.S. is content to sit on the sidelines as Al-Qaida reemerges. From the Afghan war to everything Obama has done in hunting down bin laden to the entire drone program, has been to nullify Al Qaida. However, the unintended consequence of the Iraq war and the known consequence of supporting our ally Israel, is that Al-Qaida will find some Arab extremist support and will do its best to remain around, just as we will do our best to rid the world of them.
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