The agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear programme is imperfect – everyone can agree on that. A litany of bad or even disastrous consequences has dominated the air waves since the deal was signed on Monday.
Among the major criticisms are that by removing the possibility of war over Iranian nuclear enrichment for a decade, it will expand the existing proxy war in Syria to engulf Lebanon. With Iran’s nuclear programme drastically reduced, but not destroyed, other states in the region will inevitably be making plans for the time when the nuclear weapons race resumes. Perhaps most urgently, the lifting of sanctions will fill the Iranian treasury with billions of dollars, giving Tehran more room to support its surrogates, including the faltering regime of Bashar Al Assad in Syria.
The deal may not even get implemented. It has powerful enemies in the US Congress, though perhaps not strong enough to override a presidential veto. In Iran itself, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has flip-flopped over his red lines. While being initially supportive of the efforts of the Iranian negotiating team, he now says the text needs to be “carefully scrutinised”, and insists that Iran’s fight against “arrogance and global imperialism” is never ending.
All these criticisms are true. But it is worth looking at what the opponents are offering instead. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has loudly proclaimed it an “historic mistake” and is still talking of military action against Iran.
But the world needs no lessons from Israel about nuclear proliferation: thanks to the complicity of France and the efforts of the old peacenik, Shimon Peres, Israel was allowed to create its own nuclear arsenal while the world turned a blind eye. Mr Netanyahu has known what was coming for months, and the Israeli security establishment no doubt already has a shopping list of demands by way of compensation from Washington.
As for the Republicans in Congress, it is clear that regime change in Tehran is still the desired goal, or at the very least a humbled leadership in sackcloth and ashes begging for forgiveness. Jeb Bush, brother of the president who launched the 2003 invasion of Iraq and himself a contender for the Republican presidential nomination, described the agreement as an act of “appeasement” that “consolidates the grip on power of the violent revolutionary clerics who rule Tehran with an iron fist”. Does he really want another war to effect a change of regime in Iran? Of course not.
Strangely, few US politicians are ready to talk about what has happened in the real world since the Iranian revolution of 1979, and the humiliation of the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran. From that time, the US has sought to isolate and weaken Iran, not least through a firm US-Arab alliance.
During those 35 years Iran’s regional influence has grown in proportion to the efforts deployed by the US to contain it. In that time the despised and powerless Shia communities of Lebanon and Iraq have risen under Iranian tutelage to become dominant political forces. Iraq, once a citadel of Arabism, is now a buffer zone for Tehran. The most effective forces in fighting the jihadist cutthroats of ISIL are the Iranian-trained Shia militias in Iraq and the Kurdish forces in Syria. Iraqi forces trained at vast expense by the Americans have cut and run.
The unpalatable conclusion is that being stamped on by Uncle Sam has made Iran stronger, teaching it to match ends and means in the most cynical and ruthless fashion. This has been most clearly shown in Iraq, where the former commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, Gen Yahya Rahim-Safavi, declared that the US occupation must be rolled back in order to prevent Washington subduing the whole of the Middle East. The Iranian goal was achieved, perhaps more spectacularly than even the general could have imagined.
Meanwhile, the Arab states, many of whom have enjoyed a close security relationship with Washington, have a poor record in matching ends with means. Sub-contracting Arab security to Washington has not been a good teacher of statecraft. One can see in Saudi Arabia’s response to the Yemen crisis a determination to demonstrate that following the Americans is no longer the order of the day. So Plan A with Iran has failed. Plan B has been agreed, for better or worse. This presents powerful challenges to the Arab states: the US will not ditch its Arab alliances, but may, in some circumstances, prefer to do business with Iran. This is going to require a higher level of statecraft from the Arab states. This will not be easy, given that Egypt, the only Arab country of similar population to Iran, is mired in its own domestic problems, and will remain so for years to come.
But the burden will be on Washington. The primary US goal will be to contain Iran, to borrow a term from America’s Cold War policy towards the USSR, while doing business with the mullahs when it suits both sides.
Unfortunately for Washington, this is no longer a world of two superpowers. The deal was possible due to the efforts by John Kerry, US secretary of state, to hold the major powers – including Russia and China – together. Differences among the powers were apparent during the talks and these will no doubt widen as time passes: Russia and China see Iran as a market – including for arms – while the US will be cautious in lifting sanctions.
So the future depends on the US holding together a broad coalition to ensure that the agreement is implemented in full for the next decade. By which time Iran – no longer threatened with regime change from abroad – might have lost its expansionist edge. That is a tall order, and few diplomats would put money on the rosy outcome that the Iranian president Hassan Rouhani describes as “the start of new cooperation in the world”. But never forget that old policy failed.
Alan Philps is a commentator on global affairs
On Twitter: @aphilps
