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Iran Marks a Watershed in the Middle East
Graham E. Fuller
Huffington Post, 12 December 2012
Yes, it is tentative, temporary, and reversible, as the White House cautions
us after unveiling its breakthrough understanding with Iran. The agreement
could yet collapse as entrenched conservatives on both sides, including Israel
and Saudi Arabia, condemn it. All these forces fear the ground is shifting
beneath them--and it is. If the dialog continues to inch forward in the coming
months, the longer range implications are huge.
First, it marks a signal step away from the obsessive centrality of Iran in
US Middle East policies-a hostile confrontation of thirty-five crippling years.
The Iran optic distorted everything else. Syria was more about Iran than about
Syria. The Iraq war was as much about Iran as about Iraq. Lebanon is mostly
about Iran and its Hizballah allies. Washington and Tehran could not explore
many shared goals in Afghanistan. Eurasian pipeline routes required fanciful
rerouting to foreclose any benefit to Iran. Riyadh sought to enlist Washington
in its virulent and destructive anti-Shi'ite campaign. Iran came to cloud our
vision, rob us of flexibility, and limit our ability to assess individual
regional problems on their own merits.
If we can now liberate our geopolitical imaginations a bit, we might perceive the outlines of a new Middle East emerging. It touches what we do with Russia, China, Afghanistan, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Turkey, Israel, the Arab world, Pakistan, India, and East Asian energy.
If we can now liberate our geopolitical imaginations a bit, we might perceive the outlines of a new Middle East emerging. It touches what we do with Russia, China, Afghanistan, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Turkey, Israel, the Arab world, Pakistan, India, and East Asian energy.
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