If
there is a common denominator explaining so many recent events in the
Middle East — actions by Saudi Arabia, the U.S., Syria, Israel and Yemen
— it can be expressed in one word: Iran. Everyone has Iran’s growing
power and influence in the region on the mind — including Iran — and
that obsession is making a lot of people crazy.
For instance, the Trump administration, like Barack Obama’s, actually wants to get away from the Middle East — as much as possible — but while leaving as little Iranian influence behind as possible.
Saudi Arabia, under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as M.B.S., wants to get ahead
in the Middle East and reform his economy for the 21st century — while
curtailing as much Iranian influence in the region as possible.
And the Iranians want to get wide
— to expand their influence from Tehran to the Mediterranean — not by
creating a successful and attractive development model at home that
Arabs and other Muslims would want to emulate, but rather by forcing
their way into Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq through local Shiite
militias that have created states within these states.
This
is generating a lot of anxiety in the Arab world, the U.S. and Israel
without enough people stepping back and thinking: So pro-Iranian
militias control a bunch of bad neighborhoods in Beirut, Sana, Damascus
and Baghdad. Tell me, what is second prize? What are they really
“winning”?
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Iran
has a richly talented population, and rich Persian culture. But instead
of unleashing both and enabling Iran’s youth to realize their full
potential — and making the country influential that way — the ayatollahs
are suppressing those talents at home and unleashing the power of
Shiite mercenaries on Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and compelling
influence that way instead.
It’s
actually rather pathetic. The greatest thing that the U.S. and Saudi
Arabia could do is to stop working each other into a lather over this
Iranian “threat” and to focus on their domestic reform agendas. That
would be the best revenge on Tehran.
For
starters, American, European and Arab leaders should all be encouraging
M.B.S. to keep going where no Saudi leader before him has dared to go —
pursuing his stated goal of reversing the religious right turn that the
kingdom took in 1979, after the takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca
by Muslim extremists. That prompted the Saudi rulers at the time to ban
fun, tighten the control of the religious police over society and to
much more aggressively export the most misogynist, anti-pluralistic
interpretation of Islam to mosques and madrasas across the Muslim world,
tilting the whole faith community to the right.
If
M.B.S. fulfills his vow to bring Saudi Islam back to “moderation,” it
will surely improve the status of Muslim women, the quality of education
in Muslim communities and the relationship between Muslims and other
faiths across the globe. We in the West have spent tremendous sums
“countering Muslim extremism.” We may finally have a Saudi leader ready
to do that work — from the wellspring of Islam — and it would over time
hugely benefit Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
But
for M.B.S. to advance that agenda requires a strong, economically
healthy Saudi Arabia. Alas, for now Saudi Arabia is far from that; its
trajectory in recent years has been sharply downward. Most Saudis today
are focused on jobs and education, not on Iran, and if M.B.S. can fix
those needs with his reform plan it will only propel his push to
moderate Saudi Islam.
Precisely
because these intertwined religious and economic reform agendas are so
critical, wise friends of M.B.S. would also be offering him some tough
love — by telling him that it’s great to arrest thieving Saudi
billionaires and throw them in the Ritz-Carlton, but it has to be done
with transparency and within a rule of law — which would enhance his
legitimacy — not in an arbitrary way that will hurt his legitimacy and
frighten future investors. They also have to stress to him that to be an
effective anti-corruption campaigner, he has to be open to criticism
himself and live modestly. No more giant yachts.
On
foreign policy, M.B.S.’s real friends would also tell him that while
Iran has expanded its influence across the Arab world, the Saudis do not
have the muscles to take it on head-on right now. The Iranians have
spent nearly 40 years developing their influence through underground
networks and Shiite proxies.
Meanwhile,
the Saudis wrote checks to Sunni militias, who never stayed bought. Or
they bought big weapons systems that are useless in this age of
irregular warfare — and only lead to the kind of Saudi aerial
bombardments of Yemen that have led to so many civilian deaths, disease
and starvation — and a costly stalemate for Riyadh. Saudi Arabia needs
to end that war — now — and get out of Yemen, even if it means leaving
some Iranian influence behind.
I
was just speaking to a Kuwaiti banker who told me that M.B.S.’s
popularity among Kuwaiti women and youth on Kuwaiti social media is
unlike anything he has ever seen. Kuwaiti youth are asking why isn’t
anyone throwing their corrupt princes into a Ritz-Carlton or just a tent
in the desert? Why doesn’t their aging and unimaginative ruling family
have someone shaking things up like M.B.S.?
But
they don’t like M.B.S.’s foreign policy — Yemen most of all, but also
the ham-fisted interventions in Lebanon and Qatar. They look bullying.
M.B.S. would unlock so much more good will and influence for himself if
he curtailed these ill-conceived, Iranian-obsessed foreign adventures.
My
view on Saudi Arabia today is very simple: Because it has so much
deferred reform to undertake — before its oil money runs out — the
biggest question is not if M.B.S. is too brash, too brutal, too
power-hungry or too imperfect. It’s whether he’s too late — that
Saudi Arabia is now un-reformable. I think not, but that is why, with
all of M.B.S.’s flaws, we need to help increase his chances for success.
If he can turn Jiddah into another Dubai, where so many Iranians now
love to vacation and bank, he will do more to increase his influence in
the region and diminish Iran’s than anything else he could do.
But
just about the last thing Saudi Arabia or any of our Arab allies need
right now is for President Trump to do what the White House says he will
do Wednesday — announce plans to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from
Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. I can’t think of anything more unnecessary and
destabilizing. It is such a gift, wrapped with a bow, to Iran and
Hezbollah. You can bet they will use it to present the Saudis,
Jordanians, U.A.E., Palestinian Authority and Egypt as enablers of an
American “Zionist agenda.”
At
a time when Iran is extending its influence, and our Arab allies are
preoccupied with domestic reforms — which require a lot of pain for
their publics that strains the legitimacy of their leaders — this is the
last thing they need from their American friend. It is such a pathetic
way for Trump to deflect attention from his utter failure to make any
progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front.
And
it is such a pathetic way to disguise the fact that America really is
not present in the Middle East these days. Our ability to shape events
there is less than anytime since World War II.
“For
the first time since 1945 America is no longer a leader,” argued Ivo
Daalder, the president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a
co-author of a forthcoming book, “The Empty Throne: How America
Abdicated Its Global Leadership Role.” Though we are less powerful “we
could still be influential,” he added. “But that influence has to come
by building strong coalitions.”
Alas,
Trump has neither the patience for such coalition-building nor the
willingness to make the compromises with allies — let alone with
distasteful rivals like Russia or Iran — that will be required to
stabilize the Middle East when we have neither power nor desire to do it
alone.
So
Trump will rail against Iran and pretend that he is Thor, throwing down
thunderbolts, like recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. But he’s
really just a lost tourist, looking for his bus. Which is really
unfortunate at a time when Saudi Arabia needs a wise U.S. ally more than
ever, Iran needs to be confronted with smart diplomacy more than ever
and Israel’s security requires some kind of creative diplomacy in Syria
more than ever.
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