Most of the American presidents devoted a chapter in their diaries to how they addressed the Middle East’s disputes. Currently, the outgoing President Barack Obama is gearing up to launch two books — Jeffrey Goldberg is editing one of the books.
US President-elect Donald Trump will be encounter a fairly large number of conflicts in the Middle East, perhaps the highest since President Dwight Eisenhower’s era during the WWII.
Today, a slew of wars and conflicts are simultaneously raging in the region. So, will Trump adopt his predecessor Obama’s approach by refusing to manage crises? Or will he consider proposals by the his Republican Party leaders like John McCain, who is pressing for intervention instead of letting chaos and terror threaten the world’s and the US’ security.
The ongoing crises are the outcome of the collapse of an international balance that was established after the WWII and the nuclear deal between Iran and the western powers. Obama, who debuted his presidency eight years ago by calling for change in the Middle East, backed off when changes loomed large and instead opted to watch silently. In 2009, the very year when Obama became president of the US and delivered his two famous speeches calling for openness and moderation in Istanbul and Cairo, demonstrators in Iran were killed after they protested rigging in the Iranian presidential election.
The then US administration made no responses like tightening the existing sanctions or imposing fresh sanctions. Two years later, when uprisings erupted in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Yemen, the US administration backed the wave, calling for change, but once again chose to monitor remotely. When the crises escalated, the Obama government chose to favor the Islamist movements in Egypt, Tunisia and Iraq against the civil society actors.
President-elect Trump can do the same, yet the price would be higher and the dangers would get bigger. Wars may grow and terrorist organizations’ activities may increase. The chaos could even extend to stable nations. Events have proved that the policy of isolation, which the US adopted in the case of Syria, was wrong. It caused huge losses to the US and the rest of the world.
It has become obvious that the ongoing wars in Syria, Yemen and the partial war in Iraq have one factor in common: Iranian military intervention. The Iranian role has grown as a result of abandoning the “policy of containment,” which prevented Iran from extending outside its territory.
As a consequence of the biased nuke deal with Iran, restrictions on its foreign activities have been removed. The Revolutionary Guard generals, not Iranian soccer players or musicians, have become celebrities as they pose for photographs while they’re fighting in conflict areas in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.
The critical questions now are: Will the next US administration take measures to contain Iran? Or will it continue Obama’s policy of isolation? Does Trump plan to revive the US alliance with moderate countries including Gulf nations, Egypt and Jordan — as reported by Trump’s consultants — to be followed by a collective project to stop the chaos and bring stability back to the region and prevent the extra-regional intervention? Is the president-elect keen to revive the new Iraq project for which 4,000 Americans were killed and $1 billion were spent. Actually I expect that Washington will reject Iranian interference in the region and will insist on realizing Iraq’s independence and sovereignty and it will liberate Iraq from the clutches of the Iranian clerics and the Revolutionary Guard.
But, why do we expect reforms from Trump who himself attacked the invasion of Iraq? The reason lies in his country’s ultimate economic and security interests. Currently, Tehran, not Washington or even Baghdad, is the party that is harvesting the fruit of Iraq invasion. In addition, working to preserve Libya’s unity and stability will reduce chances of the North African country’s collapse and threats to south Europe. It will also open new and large economic markets. For the last six years, Obama’s administration ignored all the crises, which led to bigger dangers. The new administration should not continue with the same policies that have resulted in several tragedies in the region.
• Abdulrahman Al-Rashed is a veteran and internationally acclaimed columnist. He is the former general manager of Al Arabiya news channel and ex-editor in chief of Asharq Al-Awsat.
* Originally published in Asharq Al-Awsat
