Containing Iran Posted by Ilan Goldenberg

So, supposedly the President's trip to the Middle East is to push forward on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.  But there is no question, that at least of equal or not greater priority for this administration is an attempt to bring in more support from our Arab allies and Israel on a containment strategy for Iran.  Unfortunately, as Ray Takeyh and Vali Nasr explain in an excellent article in this month's foreign affairs, containment is not going to work and will likely make things worse.  Nasr and Takeyh describe the Administration's strategy:

Containing Iran is not a novel idea, of course, but the benefits Washington expects from it are new. Since the inception of the Islamic Republic, successive Republican and Democratic administrations have devised various policies, doctrines, and schemes to temper the rash theocracy. For the Bush administration, however, containing Iran is the solution to the Middle East's various problems. In its narrative, Sunni Arab states will rally to assist in the reconstruction of a viable government in Iraq for fear that state collapse in Baghdad would only consolidate Iran's influence there. The specter of Shiite primacy in the region will persuade Saudi Arabia and Egypt to actively help declaw Hezbollah. And, the theory goes, now that Israel and its longtime Arab nemeses suddenly have a common interest in deflating Tehran's power and stopping the ascendance of its protégé, Hamas, they will come to terms on an Israeli-Palestinian accord. This, in turn, will (rightly) shift the Middle East's focus away from the corrosive Palestinian issue to the more pressing Persian menace. Far from worrying that the Middle East is now in flames, Bush administration officials seem to feel that in the midst of disorder and chaos lies an unprecedented opportunity for reshaping the region so that it is finally at ease with U.S. dominance and Israeli prowess.

They then offer a number of arguments for why it won't work  (I'm in a listing mood today if you haven't noticed from previous posts)

1.  Washington's containment wall, which would go across the entire Gulf and the rest of the Arab world (including Israel)  would have to run right through Iraq, only further destabilizing the country.

2.  The Arab World is not monolithic.  For example Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are extraordinarily concerned about Iran due in part to their significant Shi'a minorities.  The UAE and Qatar have been doing business with Tehran for years.  And Egypt and Jordan are more interested in intra-Arab politics and the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

3.  Without a powerful Iraqi military the only force that can militarily contain Iran is the United States, but that would require large numbers of troops indefinetly in the region.  Not a good idea.

4.  The linchpin of a unified Israel and Arab state containment strategy is the successful implementation of a Middle East Peace agreement.  That's a tough one and is a massive project all on its own.

5.  And finally my favorite.  "The last time the United States rallied the Arab world to contain Iran, in the 1980s, Americans ended up with a radicalized Sunni political culture that eventually yielded al Qaeda. The results may be as bad this time around: a containment policy will only help erect Sunni extremism as an ideological barrier to Shiite Iran"

Finally, they offer a much more constructive strategy of engagement, which you should go read yourself.

Comments

[md]

Nice work. I actually just put up a post on this same topic. Have a look: http://fpwatch.blogspot.com/2008/01/bushs-containment-dilemma.html

[cheap coach handbags]

Thank you for your sharing! I like i very much!

[pandora bracelet]

i like it

[Pandora Bracelets]

A fish always rots from the head down

[chat]

religious sect may degenerate into a political faction,' wrote James Madison, but the new American nation would nevertheless be protected against the ungovernable combination of religious fervor and political power as long as the Constitution prohibited the federal government from establishing any particular creed as preeminent.
Chat | Bedava Chat | Chat Odalari | Sohbet | Chat