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Middle East can turn on a new axis
By Kaveh L
Afrasiabi
2008 Asia
Times Online
Millions of
people in the Muslim-dominated
Middle East have celebrated your
victory in the hope of witnessing a
much-needed change in the
foreign policy
behavior of the United States toward
the region.
Despairing
decades of misguided and biased US
policies that have resulted in
serious damage to the US's image on
the part of millions of ordinary
citizens in this crucial region of
the world, they have now been moved
to a new level of expectation from
the
US government
that is unparalleled in recent
history. In a word, the people of
the Middle East have vested a great
deal of hope that you will soon
deliver on your promise of "change
we can believe".
But, what
kind of changes in the US's Middle
East policy are needed before the
people in this region can begin to
feel exonerated in their initial
enthusiasm over your historic
election as the 44th US president? I
urge you to consider the fact that
your willingness to listen to the
diverse voices of the region,
instead of recycling the previous
pattern of lending ears to a narrow
spectrum of vested interests, would
certainly constitute an important
barometer of change.
A
dialog-based, rather than
monologue-based, interaction is
sadly missing today, and your
failure to respond to the
congratulatory letter of
Iran's
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad does
not bode well in this regard.
Indeed, how would you
feel if you had sent a similar
letter to a Middle East leader
congratulating him or her on an
election victory, making sure that
your letter was also a symbolic
gesture of a small olive branch
meant to diffuse tensions between
nations, yet without receiving as
much as an acknowledgement? From the
vantage point of people of the
Middle East, not respecting the
protocol of dispatching a formal
response is tantamount to arrogant
disrespect, indeed a tissue of the
familiar Western hegemonist and
neo-colonial mindset that is deeply
ingrained with "Orientalist" master
and servant predilections.
The fact that the US government
finds itself today in deadly
quagmires in parts of the Middle
East is not divorced from the
longevity of this ossified and
counter-productive mode of thinking
that underlies the US's policy
toward the Muslim Middle East.
A major "house-cleaning" of the
US's Middle East policy, whereby the
old arrogant approach gives way to
post-hegemonist behavior that is
marked with full respect for the
sovereign rights of the region's
nation-states, is desperately needed
and, again, one hopes that your
administration will be able to
introduce the significant changes
that are required in this respect.
The Middle East, a cradle of
civilizations, birthplace of three
of the world's greatest monotheistic
religions, Judaism, Christianity and
Islam, and a fulcrum of the world's
energy supply, is already broad
enough and the misleading terms such
as "broader Middle East" or "greater
Middle East" carry the false
connotation that the region is not
broad or great enough, or that the
outside world has a special mandate
for social engineering vis-a-vis
this region.
That is
19th-century Western colonialism
still talking, and a real change
toward the Middle East must not be
limited to the policy level but also
the underlying epistemological
assumptions, linguistic jargons and
semantics that cement
neo-imperialist intentions. A
wholesale change of vocabulary, to
sanitize the policies infected by
implicitly disparaging, even
downgrading, paternalistic behavior
seen on the US's part so far, is an
important prerequisite of a
qualitative improvement in the US's
relationship with the region, away
from the furnace of clashing
civilizations.
Indeed,
rhetoric and rhetorical
self-presentation should not be
minimized here: a direct refutation
by you of the dangerous thesis of
clashing civilizations can go a long
way toward building bridges of
confidence between the US and the
Muslim people of the Middle East,
who constitute more than 90% of the
region's entire population and who,
rightly or wrongly, by and large
think that their interests are
bypassed or devalued by US
policy-makers for the sake of the
state of
Israel,
encompassing less than 5% of the
region's territory and population.
Bringing a balance to US policy with
respect to countervailing Jewish and
Muslim interests in the region is as
you know one of the biggest
expectations of your administration.
Unfortunately, the foreign
policy team that you have put
together does not seem very
promising in this regard and,
consequently, we are already
witnessing a rapid evaporation of
the initial enthusiasm
aforementioned, lapsing to the
sustained cynicism that US foreign
policy is in the clutches of
pro-Israel interest groups that much
prefer the world to focus on other
Middle East issues, instead of on
the continuing oppression and
suffering of Palestinian people.
Henceforth, should your
administration fail to correct the
egregious flaw of your predecessor,
who consistently failed to move the
stalled
Middle East peace
process forward by
giving it only lip service priority
and without the slightest pressure
on Israel, then you would be risking
a lion's share of the faith and
trust of the people in the Middle
East and, indeed, the entire Muslim
World. The de-prioritization of the
Palestinian problem under the guise
of an "Iran threat" and the like
must stop, no matter how many policy
proposals are hurled at you that
seek precisely this objective.
Fact is that the state of Israel
talks one way and acts another, it
pledges commitment to a future
Palestinian state and, yet in
practice, takes all the steps
necessary to preclude its
fulfillment, particularly of a
"contiguous" Palestinian state,
nowadays scene to greater and
greater cantonization by relentless,
illegal Jewish settlements on
Palestinian lands in direct
violation of the 1993 Oslo Peace
Accord.
History proves that
only when pinched with the threat of
backlashes in the form of curtailing
or freezing of the US's financial
and
military
assistance to Israel, Israeli
leaders respond, otherwise they
simply ignore any US call to respect
the peace accords that it has
already signed. Thus, unless you
send a strong signal to Israel that
times have changed and the US will
not tolerate any more infringement
on the rights of Palestinian people,
I am afraid the Israelis will
interpret your silence as a green
light to continue with their
business as usual, decried by former
US president Jimmy Carter as "worse
than apartheid".
Nor should
you be oblivious to the other
apartheid in the Middle East,
nuclear apartheid, according to
which Israel's nuclear arsenal is
treated as benign and
non-threatening to its Arab
neighbors and as unrelated to the
threat of Middle East proliferation.
You must make Israel realize that
its dream of infinite nuclear
monopoly in the Middle East is
self-delusional, and that it is in
Israel's own best interests to take
tangible and concrete steps toward a
non-proliferation regime and the
United Nations' initiative of a
nuclear-weapons free zone in the
Middle East.
The US's
approach is indirectly increasing
the threat of nuclear terrorism in
the Middle East and the best remedy
here is to adopt a comprehensive,
all-inclusive stance that addresses
the lingering anxieties of millions
of Muslims about Israel's nuclear
arsenal. One only hopes that your
administration will do more than
simply issue the traditional US
support for Israel and its security,
but rather nuance this support from
blind support to a critical support
that does not shy away from
criticizing Israel when necessary.
Today, Israel is
increasingly menacing Iran with
military strikes against its nuclear
facilities and, per recent reports,
was held back recently by President
George W Bush. Any military
adventurism against Iran will have a
devastating impact on regional and
global peace and will likely
adversely affect a global economy
that is already reeling.
Israel is not under any "existential
threat" by Iran, whose leaders are
keenly aware of Israel's nuclear
capability against their country,
nor is Israel a top priority for
Iran's foreign policy, which is
geared first and foremost toward the
immediate crises in neighboring
states.
Iran has legitimate
national security concerns about
conflict spillover and the
post-September 11, 2001, exponential
increase in the US's military
presence in Iran's vicinity, and it
does not serve your administration's
interest to continue to press Iran
without due consideration of its
national security concerns.
As a major Middle East actor, Iran,
thanks to its long uninterrupted
history and regional influence, is
today a force to be reckoned with,
instead of being wished away. Iran
and the US in the present context of
Middle East politics have shared or
"overlapping interests", to quote
William Burns, deputy
secretary of state
under the current administration,
and a wise US policy would be one
that focuses on how to normalize
relations with Iran based on those
interests, instead of solely
focusing on the divisive interests.
An official White House
declaration that would send the
"axis of evil" terminology to the
dustbin of history is needed, as
this terminology precludes a
meaningful decipherment of US-Iran
shared interests. Iran has formed an
"axis of cooperation" with both Iraq
and Afghanistan, and with
appropriate changes in the US's Iran
policy, a great deal more Iranian
cooperation with respect to the
theaters of conflict in Iraq and
Afghanistan could be gained (as well
as in the rest of the Middle East).
With respect to Iraq, the
stage is now set for a new round of
US-Iran dialogue on Iraq's security
and, in light of Tehran's
willingness to drop its opposition
to the US-Iraq security agreement,
such a dialogue is critical for the
fulfillment of that agreement's
stipulations about the withdrawal of
US combat forces from Iraq by 2011.
In the absence of a US-Iran
mutual understanding on Iraq, the
chances are that the US will renege
on its withdrawal agreement by
citing Iran's "meddling". But a good
deal of what the US considers as
"meddling" pertains to the close
geographical proximity and strong
religious and historical ties
between Iran and Iraq. With the
bitter memories of Iraq's invasion
of Iran in 1980 still fresh in Iran,
Iran's leaders cannot take the risk
of remaining aloof from the
political evolution in Iraq, where
the risks of re-Ba'athification
still rattle the new regime. Your
administration can bring the US and
Iran closer on Iraq and Afghanistan
by assuring Iran that any compromise
with the Taliban or remnants of the
Ba'athist regime is not on your
agenda.
In Afghanistan,
where opium production has
skyrocketed since 2000, the US and
Iran have a common enemy in the form
of narcotics traffic and Iran is
likely prepared to engage in direct
cooperation with the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) against
this menace, by perhaps even
allowing NATO supply convoys to
traverse its territory, despite
Iran's misgivings about NATO's
eastward expansion. For this to
happen, the US must first reorient
its Iran policy away from coercion
and toward cooperation, as such
incremental steps have important
side effects in security
confidence-building and indirectly
and directly tie in with the nuclear
standoff.
What is more, Iran
has already sent strong signals
regarding its willingness to
seriously consider a US request for
a consular office in Iran; your
administration's early move in
sounding this request will instantly
break some ice and will have
disproportionate symbolic
significance in terms of a prelude
toward a future rapprochement.
In conclusion, after so many
years of misguided, lop-sided and
self-injurious US policies in the
Middle East, a golden new window of
opportunity exists as a direct
result of your election. Either your
administration will seize on this or
will spoil it, by dictating
continuity instead of discontinuity,
and hopefully you will make the
right decisions that will fulfill
rather than frustrate the hopes and
expectations of so many millions of
people across the Middle East.
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