The more immediate problem is ISIS.
By Syed Iqbal Hasnain
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SEATTLE: The White House narrative on Iran Nuclear Deal is logical and convincing. President Obama believes that if the United States had not engaged Iran in the deal by removing sanctions, it would have tested the first “Persian Nuclear Bomb” in a couple of years.
The deal has pushed the threshold level by 15 years and cut off Iran’s all paths toward becoming a nuclear state effectively. By making this deal, the United States has not only made Tehran more integrated with the global communities, but also forced it to behave responsibly. However, we must understand that the deal is not based on trust but on a robust intrusive verification regime under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
And this is not an overnight deal. American and Iranian officials held talks for more than a decade to come to terms. And the project was called “The Iran Project.”
The Iran Project
In 2003, former US diplomats formed “The Iran Project,” a non-profit agency funded by Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Since then, this agency has spent more than $4.3 million in promoting a nuclear pact with Iran. Since 2003, a series of meetings was held between the US and Iranian think tanks. However, these secret meetings were suspended in 2005 when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won Iran’s Presidency. Later, with the election of President Hassan Rouhani in 2013 and Mohammad Javad Zarif taking over as foreign Minister, the negotiations kicked off again.
After 20 months of dogged discussions and 17 days of daily marathon meetings, the US team led by Secretary of State John Kerry and the Iranian delegation led by Zarif finally inked the deal on July 14, 2015.
Though the agreement restricts the nuclear capabilities of Iran for the 15 fifteen years, many Americans find loopholes in the deal. Firstly, Speaker of US Congress John Boehner rejected the deal. However, Obama defended it saying that it was not based on trust but on verification.
While the deal enormously improves Iran’s economic power by linking its economy with the rest of the world, it will not stop the nuclear proliferation race in the Arabian Peninsula. There are other contenders in Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described the nuclear deal as a “stunning historic mistake” by smartly pivoting the sectarian divide of the region to his advantage.
Though Israel has no dispute with Iran, it is irked by Tehran’s articulations on the former’s attack on Palestinians. The Israel leadership wants to utilize the internal tussle between Saudi Arabia and Iran. It wants Saudi Arabia and Egypt on its side of the equation.
ISIS the biggest Middle East nightmare
Posts 9/11, American policy czars created a new equilibrium between Saudi Arabia and Iran by outsourcing Iran to fight ISIS in Syria, Yemen, and in Iraq. However, Saudi Arabia and its regional allies see Iran as a driver of much of the region’s violence; its support to Assad in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine and Shiite militia in Iraq.
In response, Saudi Arabia is getting closer to Israel. The young Saudi royal leadership sees Israel as their ally who can realize their dream of owning an “Arab Nuclear Bomb,” similar to the “Jewish Nuclear Bomb” believed to be developed by Israel decades ago. This will help Israel to put the powerful Arab states against Iran to water down the pressure on Palestine-Israel conflict.
In reality, the deal has brought the celebration to the Jewish leadership as for the first time the geopolitics of the Middle East has taken a full circle in favor of Israel.
Meanwhile, the US strategy has checkmated the Arabs and brought Iran, a Shiite power, to the fore. This way, Americans have permanently removed their boots from the Middle East by making the powerful nations of the region stand against each other.
How Arabian peninsula looks at ISIS?
Though there is a rivalry, the monarchies of the Arabian peninsula do not see any existential threat from Iran. Their immediate threat is the growing swamp of ISIS in the Middle East. ISIS has already entrenched in Syria, Yemen, Libya and in a large swathe of northern Iraq, where it has partly established a caliphate and is marching towards Saudi Arabia.
Even for the west, the immediate problem to look into is the strategy of ISIS. It is recruiting thousands of educated and tech-savvy youths from the western world.
The Muslim youths in the west are being attracted to the motto of ISIS – to turn the world into an Islamic caliphate. Akhrat (the concept of life after death) has been continuously romanticized by Muslim priests to lure the educated youths into ISIS. This became clear when Tennessee-based Jihadi named Mohammad Abdulazeez wrote in his last blog that his existence in the world is a “prison of monotony and routine.”
So, we will have to wait and see how this new equilibrium formed due to the US-Iran deal will tackle the ISIS and other terrorist groups to bring peace to the region. (Global India Newswire)
(The writer is a consultant on education and climate change, based in Seattle. He is a former Vice-Chancellor of University of Calicut, Kerala, and Professor of Environmental Sciences at the Jawaharlal Nehru University.)