Arab World Adjusts to Shift in U.S.-Iran Relations
|
Version 0 of 1. CAIRO — Almost as soon as he had announced a nuclear deal with Iran, President Obama called King Salman of Saudi Arabia to reassure him of America’s “enduring friendship.” Returning the courtesy, King Salman, who is Iran’s chief regional rival, responded that he hoped the deal would “reinforce the stability and security of the region and the world,” the Saudi Press Agency reported on Friday. But the picture on the ground was not so harmonious. As Tehran and its clients around the Arab world celebrated the accord as a triumph of Iranian resolve, Saudi Arabia and its allies declared that the agreement had only reinforced their determination to push back against Iranian influence, with or without Washington. On the front lines of battles with Iranian proxies in Syria and Lebanon, some cried betrayal. “The Saudi king decided his country could no longer bear the provocative Iranian expansive policy in the Middle East, or the American silence over it,” wrote Jamal Khashoggi, a veteran Saudi journalist and former government adviser, in a commentary this week on what he called “the Salman doctrine.” “Saudi Arabia no longer cares if this silence is the passing weakness of a president whose term ends in two years,” he wrote, “or if it is a conspiracy or a major deal that President Barack Obama is negotiating with the Iranians.” On Friday, Mr. Khashoggi’s column was translated into English on the front page of the website of the Saudi-owned network Al Arabiya. The opposition between Washington and Iran has been an organizing principle of regional affairs for 35 years, wrapping the oil-rich Persian Gulf monarchies in a blanket of American military protection and determining the balance of political and military power among competing Iranian- and Western-backed factions across Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. Now, the prospect of United States-Iranian cooperation on a nuclear deal threatens to upend all that. Amid an escalating power struggle between the two regional heavyweights, Iran and Saudi Arabia, the unquestioned allegiance of the world’s only superpower no longer seems so axiomatic. Some question how Iran might respond, and factions across the Arab world scrambled on Friday to make sense of who wins and who loses. Moving quickly to reassure American allies, the White House released a statement saying that Mr. Obama had told King Salman that the understanding with Iran “will not in any way lessen United States concern about Iran’s destabilizing activities in the region.” The president also invited the king and the leaders of the other Persian Gulf monarchies to meet at Camp David this spring “to continue consultations.” “The agreement does not reduce fears,” a subheadline on Al Arabiya’s website declared. “Of course, things did not change,” said a Saudi diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, following protocol. “The agreement addresses one aspect but not the whole issue of Iranian expansionism.” For the ninth straight night, Saudi jets were conducting a bombing campaign against the Iran-backed Houthi movement in Yemen, an operation widely billed in Saudi Arabia as a message to Tehran that the Arab states can put up a fight, even without Washington. The United States announced after the fact that it would provide intelligence and logistical support to the Saudi-led campaign, though the Obama administration views the Houthis as an independent movement that takes money from Iran rather than an instrument of Iranian influence. In Syria, where Iran has sustained President Bashar al-Assad in a proxy war against mostly Sunni Muslim rebels backed by the Persian Gulf monarchies, many in the opposition denounced the deal as a betrayal of Mr. Obama’s stated support for their cause. Aboud Dandachi, an antigovernment activist now living in Turkey, bitterly suggested that the Sunni Islamist militants who recently captured the Syrian city of Idlib follow Iran’s example: “Set up a theocracy in Idlib, fund terror groups worldwide, & then Obama will give you your heart’s desire,” he wrote in a Twitter message about the deal. Monzer Akbik, a representative of the Syrian opposition coalition in exile, said that the lifting of sanctions on Tehran would mean more cash to support Mr. Assad. “If the news we’re hearing is true, that $150 billion in Iranian deposits will be released from banks soon, this will help Assad a lot,” he said. “We fully object to any agreements signed at the expense of Syria.” In Yarmouk, the rebel-controlled Palestinian refugee camp on the southern edge of Damascus, one activist criticized the deal as a form of prostitution, using an Arabic term that denotes a euphemistic “temporary marriage.” “Iran made some concessions, but my fear is that they got a green light” to extend their influence in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, said the activist, Rami al-Sayed, who is trapped in the camp. In Beirut, Lebanon, a coalition of Shiite political factions and the militant group Hezbollah, all backed by Iran, issued a statement congratulating Iran. “After years of suffering and patience and confrontation with the West,” the statement declared, “this historic achievement is the fruit of a long struggle by the Iranian people under conscientious, wise and valiant leadership.” But Nayla Tueni, a Lebanese member of Parliament from a Saudi-aligned coalition and the deputy general manager of the Annahar newspaper, accused the West of making back-room deals with Iran to carve up the Arab world, just as the European powers did after World War I. “The U.S. overlooks all the accusations and sanctions it imposed on Iran and negotiates with the latter over its nuclear program — and of course over more than that, i.e., on dividing shares and interests,” Ms. Tueni wrote this week in a column titled “A World Designed in Our Absence?” That column, too, was translated and published on Friday by Saudi Arabia’s Al Arabiya. In Baghdad, politicians from Shiite factions aligned with Iran, the region’s leading Shiite power, also trumpeted the agreement as a boon to the greater region. “The agreement is a victory to Iran’s foreign policy,” said Hakim al-Zamili, a lawmaker from the party of the anti-American Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr. “It is a positive step that an Islamic state possesses a peaceful nuclear reactor, and it increases Iran’s power.” Lawmakers from majority Sunni Muslim blocs, normally wary of Iranian influence, applied a positive spin, perhaps because they are aligned with Iran and its proxies in the fight against the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL. “As Iraqis, we have paid the cost for deteriorated relations between Iran and the U.S.,” said Dhafir al-Anni, from the Sunni-majority Mutahidoun bloc. “We hope this will help stabilize the region.” The International Crisis Group, an independent monitoring organization, warned that the agreement might make either the Iranian or Saudi blocs feel “the temptation to take provocative measures against the other in order to demonstrate to their domestic hard-liners that nothing else has changed or can change between them.” Before the June 30 deadline for finalizing the preliminary agreement, the Western powers should work with Iran on “issues of common interest, such as stability in Afghanistan and Iraq and ending the bloodshed in Syria and Yemen,” the crisis group said. “For its part, Tehran should take concrete steps to convince its neighbors that, even as it rehabilitates itself politically and economically, the accord has not come at their expense.” |