MAY 15, 2019
Brexiteers in Britain are denouncing the EU as an all-powerful
behemoth from whose clutches Britain must escape, just as the organization is
demonstrating its failure to become more than a second-rate world power.
The EU’s real status – well behind the US, Russia, and China – has just been
demonstrated by its inability to protect Iran from
US sanctions following President Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal
of 2015. A year ago, Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron made humiliating visits
to Washington to plead vainly with Trump to stay with the agreement, but were
rebuffed.
Since then the US has
successfully ratcheted up economic pressure on Iran, reducing its oil exports
from 2.8 to 1.3 million barrels a day. The UK, France, and Germany had promised
to create a financial vehicle to circumvent US sanctions, but their efforts
have been symbolic. Commercial enterprises are, in any case, too frightened of
the ire of the US Treasury to take advantage of such measures.
Iranian president Hassan
Rouhani said on Wednesday that Iran would stop complying with parts of the
nuclear deal unless the Europeans provided the promised protection for the oil
trade and banks. Everybody admits that Iran is in compliance but this is not
going to do it any good.
These are the latest moves in
the complex political chess game between the US and Iran which have been going
on since the overthrow of the Shah in 1979. It is this conflict – and not the
US-China confrontation over trade, which has just dramatically escalated –
which will most likely define any new balance of power in the world established
during the Trump era. It is so important because – unlike the US-China dispute
– the options include the realistic possibility of regime change and war.
The Europeans have proved to
be marginal players when it comes to the Iran deal and it was never likely that
they would spend much more diplomatic capital defending it once the US had
withdrawn. In the long term, they also want regime change in Tehran, though
they oppose Trump’s methods of obtaining it as reckless. Nevertheless, the
contemptuous ease with which Trump capsized the agreement shows how little he
cares what EU leaders say or do.
The Europeans will be
spectators in the escalating US-Iran conflict. The US potential is great when
it comes to throttling the Iranian economy. Iranian oil exports are
disappearing, inflation is at 40 percent and the IMF predicts a 6 percent
contraction in the economy as a whole. The US can punish banks dealing with
Iran everywhere, including countries where Iran is politically strong such as
Iraq and Lebanon.
Tehran does not have many
effective economic countermeasures against the US assault, other than to try to
out-wait the Trump era. The caution has worked well for Iran in the past. After
2003, Iranians used to joke that God must be on their side because why else
would the US have overthrown Iran’s two deeply hostile neighbors – the Taliban
in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
Many Iranian leaders appear
confident that they can survive anything Trump can throw at them other than a
full-scale shooting war. Past precedent suggests they’re right: in the wars in
Lebanon after the Israeli invasion of 1982, Iran came out on top and helped
created Hezbollah as the single most powerful political and military force in
the country. Likewise, after the US/UK invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran
undermined their occupation and saw a Shia-led government sympathetic to its
interests hold power in Baghdad. In Syria after 2011, Iranian support was
crucial in keeping its ally Bashar al-Assad in control.
Iran was on the winning side
in these conflicts in part because of mistakes made by its opponents, but these
will not inevitably happen again. Because the media and much of the political
establishment in Washington and western capitals are so viscerally anti-Trump,
they frequently underestimate the effectiveness of his reliance on American
economic might while avoiding military conflict. At the end of the day, the US
Treasury is a more powerful instrument of foreign policy than the Pentagon for
all its aircraft carriers and drones.
Trump may not read the briefing
papers, but he often has a better instinct for the realities of power than the
neo-conservative hawks in his administration who learned little from the Iraq
war which they helped foment.
So long as Trump sticks with
sanctions he is in a strong position, but if the crisis with Iran becomes
militarised then the prospects for the US become less predictable. Neither
Tehran nor Washington want war, but that does not mean they will not get one.
Conflicts in this part of the Middle East are particularly uncontrollable
because there are so many different players with contrary interests.
This divergence produces lots
of wild cards: Trump is backed by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, but these oil states have had a dismal record of operational incapacity in Syria and Yemen.
The Iranians, for their part,
have had their successes where their fellow Shia are the majority (Iraq), the
largest community (Lebanon) or are in control of government (Syria). Given that
they are a Shia clerical regime, it is always difficult for them to extend
their influence beyond the Shia core areas.
Benjamin Netanyahu has led
the charge in demonizing Iran and encouraging the US to see it as the source of
all evil in the Middle East. But Netanyahu’s belligerent rhetoric against Iran
has hitherto been accompanied with caution in shifting to military action,
except against defenseless Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
A danger is that a permanent
cold or hot war between Washington and Tehran will become the vehicle for other
conflicts that have little to do with it. These would include the escalating
competition between Saudi Arabia and Turkey over the leadership of the Sunni
world. Turkey’s independent role would be threatened by an enhancement of US
power in the region. So too would Russia which has re-established its status as
a global power since 2011 by its successful military support for Assad in
Syria.
Trump hopes to force Tehran
to negotiate a Carthaginian peace – particularly useful if this happens before
the next US presidential election – under which Iran ceases to be a regional
power. Regime change would be the optimum achievement for Trump, but is
probably unattainable.
If Trump sticks to economic
war it will be very difficult for Iran to counter him, but in any other
scenario, the US position becomes more vulnerable. There is an impressive
casualty list of British and US leaders – three British prime ministers and
three US presidents – over the last century who have suffered severe or fatal
political damage in the Middle East. Trump will be lucky if he escapes the same
fate.
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