WarSclerotic

Two experts on North Korea and Iran have told The Jerusalem Post that in light of ongoing developments, they fear both states might succeed at obtaining nuclear weapons. However, the experts view many of the issues involved differently.

Emily Landau, the director of the Institute for National Security Studies Arms Control, is concerned that Iran might try to play for time, waiting out US President Donald Trump in the hope a new, less confrontational president will replace him in 2020.

From there, she worries that the few remaining options for preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon may not succeed.

Landau does hold out hope that Trump’s process of pressure can achieve a better deal than the one cut by the Obama administration, which she viewed as too weak.

She is also pessimistic that North Korea can be convinced to give up its nuclear weapons. She says the high-profile nuclear summit between Trump and Kim Jong Un was, in reality, merely about reducing tensions and never about actual denuclearization.

Jeffrey Lewis, of Middlebury Institute’s East Asia Nonproliferation Program, is concerned that Trump will just call any agreement stronger and better than the Obama deal simply because Trump negotiated it, and then close his eyes to Iranian duplicity.

Regarding North Korea, Lewis said there was not the slightest evidence that denuclearization would be achieved by the summit, other than that Trump kept repeating it.

The two experts disagree about the connection between North Korea and Iranian strategic decision-making. Landau views them as mostly unrelated, while Lewis sees them as closely connected. (Landau, however, does believe the states have cooperated in the nuclear arena in the past.)

Landau said North Korea’s goal has always been to get a bilateral audience with a US president, whereas for Iran, “Talking to the US almost goes against the essence of the Islamic Republic. ‘Death to America’ and ‘Death to Israel’” are part of their motto, so the two countries “come from very different starting points.”

She noted that North Korea is already a nuclear state, while Iran can still be prevented from becoming one.

Because of that – and because Iran’s troublemaking in the Middle East disturbs the US more than North Korean adventurism – Landau said the Trump administration has treated the two tracks differently “since day one.”

She said it was positive that Trump’s team has been aggressive in dealing with Iran as a strategic decision since the start of his term. She faulted the Obama administration and the EU for letting Iran push them around.

“Of course, a big problem is that… the Europeans were not forthcoming from February to April, when the US was trying to strengthen the deal before Trump left [the deal]. And now we see the extent that the EU is going to in shielding European companies to undercut Trump’s sanctions. They want to save the Iran deal even at the cost of opposing the US,” she said.

“There is a race now regarding the economic pressure. There will be more pressure in November. There is still a chance to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear state. But if it happens, then it’s over and we face all the terrible consequences.”

In contrast, Lewis said Iran’s saw the North Korean success in teasing and toying with the Trump administration, just enough to keep the president staying publicly positive. And he feels that will make the Islamic Republic more likely to try to do the same.

Lewis said Trump could only “hang onto this fiction” of progress with North Korea for so long and that negotiations will likely deteriorate eventually when Pyongyang “feels the need to test something.”

Likewise, he said that at some point Iran’s patience with sanctions will run out, or it will violate some new deal it signs with Trump and then start testing “longer range solid-fuel missiles” under the guise of non-nuclear tests.

He said for Iran, the North Korean case, along with “India and Israel, shows that if you go ahead and get it done and it is a fact that people will be sore about it for a while, but then people get used to it.

“I do not want to say we need to live with a nuclear Iran. We should try to prevent that outcome. But if things keep going the way they are going, that is where we are headed.”

The first round of what US President Donald Trump called “the most biting sanctions ever imposed” against Tehran went into effect on August 7. “Anyone doing business with Iran will NOT be doing business with the United States,” Trump continued, in a tweet posted that morning. An even more damaging second round of US sanctions against the Islamic Republic, reinstated after Washington pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, is expected to take effect in November.

Yet economic pressure is not the only tool the United States and its allies are using to counter Iran. In recent months, the Trump administration has been quietly working to forge a new security alliance, with the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman – as well as Egypt and Jordan, to counter what Washington views as aggressive Iranian expansion in the region. Tentatively known as the Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA) – but already nicknamed “Arab NATO” by the international press – US and Arab officials say the coalition is being planned in an effort to expand cooperation on counterterrorism, missile defense and military training, partly to address the security challenges posed by Iran and its proxies.

The basic concept of an Arab NATO, however, is structurally flawed, and stands little chance of success.

Unlike the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which was established on the basis of shared interests and a more or less common “strategic culture,” in the face of a shared Soviet threat, the Sunni-led countries that the Trump administration expects to join the new alliance disagree on fundamental matters, including the crucial question of how best to conduct relations with Iran. While Saudi Arabia and the UAE view Tehran as their greatest enemy and are fighting a protracted war against Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen, Kuwait and, especially, Oman have historically enjoyed peace, and periods of close cooperation, with Iran. While Muscat facilitated the secret negotiations between Iranian and American officials that ultimately produced the historic nuclear deal, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain have consistently opposed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the accord is formally known.

An even greater obstacle to the formation and effective functioning of an Arab NATO is the schism pitting the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain against Qatar. That crisis began in June 2017, when Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Manama decided to ostracize their tiny neighbor, cutting trade and diplomatic ties with Doha over its alleged support for terrorism and relationship with Iran. Qatar, notably, is home to the largest US air base in the region, while Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest buyer of American weaponry; the crisis, therefore, put the United States in an awkward position vis-à-vis two of its most important Middle Eastern allies.

Officially floated for the first time by Trump during his 2017 trip to Riyadh, the idea of forging an Arab NATO seems to be an attempt at what has come to be known, in international relations, as “buck-passing.” In other words, by pursuing an “America First” foreign policy the Trump administration is trying to shift the responsibility for taking on Iran to its Arab allies. The administration appears to be intent on using the plan as a catalyst for profitable arms sales to those countries; hours after the US president landed in Riyadh last year, he and Saudi King Salman signed a number of agreements, including an arms deal worth about $110 billion, effective immediately, plus another $350 billion over the coming decade.

But buck-passing is exactly what America’s Arab allies want, too, when it comes to countering Tehran. Unwilling or unable to engage with Iran directly, its Sunni rivals hope to persuade the United States and even Israel to do the heavy lifting for them. As one analyst pointedly put it, Saudi Arabia seeks to fight Iran “to the last American,” by luring it into a war with the Islamic Republic. This fundamental clash of perceptions and expectations at the heart of the concept does not bode well for the successful launch of an Arab NATO – especially given the irony that these plans are being mooted at the same time Trump has threatened to break with the original NATO if other allies don’t increase their military spending.

Lastly, is it far from clear how such an organization would go about confronting Iran in practice. A successful alliance might manage (as Israel has emphasized recently) to prevent Tehran from establishing a long-term military presence in Syria as well as defeat Shi’ite Houthis in Yemen and restore the ousted Saudi-allied President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi to power or, more concretely, to set up a missile defense shield covering the wider Middle East.But unless internal rifts between potential members are resolved and a political consensus on burden-sharing is achieved, the Trump administration’s plans for passing the buck to an Arab NATO are unlikely to become reality.