Zalman Shoval
All along, it has been no secret that Washington has maintained a bilateral channel of communication with Iran regarding strategic issues in the Middle East, even as the U.S. has worked to halt Iran’s nuclear program. The New York Times, often the voice of the Obama administration, recently wrote that the U.S. and Iran, “find themselves on the same side of a range of regional issues,” including their mutual opposition to al-Qaida
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has not tempered his anti-American rhetoric, but words are one thing and interests are another. Khamenei understands that his country has been presented with a golden opportunity that could serve both its ideological aspirations and its hegemonic strategic interests
Iranian decision-makers are aware of the reluctance of Washington, and especially U.S. President Barack Obama himself, to actively intervene, particularly militarily, in the chaos of the Middle East. The Iranians therefore assume, for example, that their military assistance to the Shiite Iraqi government in its fight against Sunni rebels will not encounter American resistance. In fact, it seems that the fact that Iraq is quickly becoming an Iranian estate does not overly concern Washington at this time. The certain people who say that Israel faces no threat from the east are those who are not worried about how Iraq is being drawn in by Iran (bringing the front closer to Jordan and Israel).
To speak of a U.S.-Iran alliance would be exaggerating, but the regime in Tehran represents a mixture of ideology and pragmatism that perhaps has not been seen since the Soviet Union. While Iran is continuing to seek nuclear weapons, repress internal dissent and export terror around the world, it is effectively using PR methods to convince the West in general, and the Obama administration in particular, that it has truly moderated its policies. This has created a new situation.
By the way, the American romance has not kept Iran from strengthening its ties with Russia, including regarding Iran’s nuclear program (which is for “peaceful purposes,” of course). Despite its discontent, the U.S. is restraining itself. The speed at which the U.S. lifted some of the sanctions on Iran before the ink had even dried on the problematic Geneva interim nuclear deal indicated Washington’s determination not to harm the emerging “detente” with Iran.
Until recently, most public and media criticism of the Obama administration had centered on domestic issues, like the unpopular healthcare plan and unemployment. But now, the U.S. government is also starting to take fire on foreign affairs and national security matters. Not only was there the bipartisan Senate initiative, in defiance of the Obama administration, to increase sanctions on Iran, but there have also been various critical statements by a number of commentators. Respected geopolitical expert Robert Kaplan wrote, “Following the withdrawal of tens of thousands of U. S. troops from Afghanistan in 2014, Iran will fortify its zone of influence in the western and central parts of that country.” Senior Washington Post foreign affairs columnist David Ignatius called Obama’s foreign policy “broken,” saying Obama needs to be “more strategic and less political.” He blamed Obama’s rush to pull the U.S. military out of Iraq for the rise of al-Qaida’s power there as well as Iraq’s transformation into an Iranian satellite state.
But no outside criticism can be as lethal as criticism from the inside. This came from Robert Gates, who served as defense secretary under Obama until 2011. According to Gates, the White House and National Security Council are rife with political appointments and academics, who involve themselves in operational decisions without the required experience. That was just one of the gentler insights in his book, but the more important question for us is how this affects the Obama administration’s handling of other burning matters, including the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and, of course, relations with Iran.
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