Post-Lebanon regional roles

To keep an upper hand over Israel, the Arabs should back Iran against the US, writes Mustafa El-Labbad*

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The end of the battle between the Lebanese resistance and the Israeli war machine has ushered the region into a new phase of political twists and turns. These developments are unfolding against the backdrop of a Security Council resolution that departs significantly from reflecting military realities on the ground towards reflecting an international power void that has enabled neoconservatives in Washington to hold sway.

As scarred and desolate as the Israeli aerial offensive left Lebanon, Israel failed to accomplish any of its declared objectives. It did not free the two Israeli soldiers captured by Hizbullah forces. It did not drive Hizbullah forces north of the Litani River let alone destroy its military infrastructure. And it did not ward off that barrage of Hizbullah missiles that, for the first time in history, struck deep into Israeli territory. As a result, it came nowhere near drawing the contours of that "new" Middle East that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice predicted would issue from Lebanon; a Middle East stripped of all resistance and reduced to mutually antagonistic sectarian and ethnic petit states under Israel's regional command.

At one level, the war against Lebanon was an offensive against Iran and its regional alliance (Hizbullah and Syria), the purpose being to strip Tehran of one of its major sources of leverage in advance of a more intensive build up against it on the nuclear issue. As Israel was bombing Lebanon, the Security Council issued Resolution 1696 giving Tehran until the end of August to halt its uranium enrichment activities. That deadline has come and gone, in large part due to Israel's failure on the Lebanese front. Yet now more than ever Washington has Iran in its crosshairs, the legal and technical questions surrounding the nuclear issue being little more than a smokescreen. Iran, set on advancing itself as a regional power through the acquisition of nuclear technology and manipulation of its network of regional alliances, has capitalised tremendously on Washington's foreign policy disasters. From the ruins of Afghanistan in 2001 through the American quagmire of Iraq that began in 2003, Iran's influence has expanded to a degree unseen since the age of Shah Ismail Al-Safawi in 1501.

The current residents of the White House are fuming, not only because Iran has outmanoeuvred them at every turn and obstructed their ambitions, but also because it is subjecting them to nearly daily lessons in the subtleties of contradictions of the region. With its intensive military presence in the region, especially following the occupation of Iraq, Washington has become a principal party of these contradictions. Moreover, it has aggravated the situation for itself by upsetting regional balances of power, sidelining such Middle Eastern allies as Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and elevating Israel to its sole regional proxy. The imbalance reveals itself most clearly in Iraq. In the north, the US may have won a stauncher ally by granting the Kurds an autonomous entity, but in deference to Kurdish sensibilities it has blocked Turkish attempts to influence the area. In the south, Washington accorded no attention whatsoever to Arab sensitivities. As a result, the only two powers with significant influence in Iraq are the US, which occupies the country militarily, and Iran, which prevails politically against the backdrop of military occupation.

Now, in light of its military/political debacle in Lebanon, Israel has shown that it is incapable of filling the void created by Bush administration policy failures. More importantly, this incapacity has called into question Israel's ability to fulfil the proxy role it has performed for the US since 1967. Herein resides the true strategic significance of the recent war against Lebanon, for which reason it merits being classified as a turning point between two eras in the history of power balances in the Middle East.

The situation presents a unique opportunity for such regional powers as Egypt and Saudi Arabia to take advantage of the outcome of the war on Lebanon to reassert an Arab role and to redress regional imbalances. Of course, there is no denying the many and diverse domestic and regional problems that plague these countries as well as the general limitations attendant to the Arab role since the division of the region into nation states. But likewise there is no denying the latent capacities they retain as well as the urgency, relative to their own interests and welfare, of taking advantage of the current opportunity to throw into relief Israel's weaknesses as a proxy state and, simultaneously, jockey into position to fill the void.

A key instrument is Turkey, which is similarly interested in recuperating its regional role. Building on this common cause is possible, even under the current conditions of American supremacy and Turkey's membership of NATO.

Yet, as vital as it is for them to reassert their regional role, the Arabs must bear in mind that this need not necessarily entail adopting a hostile stance towards Iran. Although any American-led war against Iran that accomplishes its objectives will create a vacuum, as things stand at present it would not be the Arabs who are poised to fill it, but rather powers outside the region, such as India or Russia. If there is some justification to the Gulf states' fear of Iran, with its 70 million people and its ambition to acquire nuclear technology, the "Iranian peril" fades in comparison to the prospect of an encroachment by India, with its 200 million inhabitants and its already vast nuclear potential. Therefore, in tandem with the move towards Turkey, the Arabs should lobby in the opposite direction of the American agenda against Tehran.

A new round of the American-Iranian confrontation is about to begin in the Security Council. Even as European-Iranian negotiations progress, Washington will be pushing for a UN resolution that imposes economic sanctions against Iran and, more importantly, reduces Iran's international legal standing to that of a country under international punitive measures. Then in the next phase, Washington will take advantage of Iran's reduced standing to push for regime change in Iran. The Arabs' task will be to keep Washington from pressing its advantage too far and, specifically, to do their utmost to prevent military action against Iran, the consequences of which will be only detrimental to Arab influence and favourable to an Israeli bid to recover its standing as the US's sole regional proxy.

Unfortunately, the record of the neoconservative administration in Washington does little to inspire optimism. It testifies to a mindset bent on embarking on courses of action counterproductive to American interests, let alone the interests of its presumed allies in the region.

* The writer is a political analyst specialised in Iranian affairs.