Is Saudi Arabia an ally of the United States? Is Iran an enemy?
This is not your grandfather's Middle East. In days past the Cold War, an aggressive Saddam Hussein, and al-Qaeda provided a comfortable set of common enemies; you didn't need a score card to keep track of who was on the field, or for the most part, who was on your side. In the wake of the Arab Spring, the rise of Iran, the meltdown of Arab state authority, and the rise of the self-labeled Islamic State, the Middle East is changing, and nowhere are the differences more apparent than in how Washington has come to regard its so-called friends and adversaries.
It's still easy to identify bad guys and to recognize their very bad behavior: among those categories fall the Islamic state, the affiliates of al-Qaeda, and Iran's imprisonment of U.S. citizens, as well as its support of terror and of the regime of Bashar al Assad. But these days it's a lot harder to look at U.S. allies and adversaries in the region and place them in airtight boxes. In fact, the categorizing is getting downright complicated.
The United States is moving in a new direction, and Washington finds it now has significant differences with its traditional friends and is developing newfound common interests with its old adversaries. This confusion isn't going away any time soon. It's driven in part by a rising Iran and the deal reached on Tehran's nuclear program, but also by a changing Middle East in which the United States is having trouble finding its footing. Indeed, the old designations of ally and enemy may no longer strictly apply. Let's take a short trip around the region and find out why.
Saudi Arabia: Can an authoritarian state that beheads people, discriminates against women, exports Wahhabist fundamentalist ideology, and even funds al-Qaeda affiliates, really be a U.S. ally? Long considered an alliance, the Saudi-U.S. relationship has come under considerable strain. The effects of the so-called Arab Spring, and the perception that Washington wanted to encourage authoritarian regimes to step down (see Egypt and Bahrain), put uncertainty in the relationship. Washington's failure to act boldly against the Assad regime in Syria, and its willingness to cut a nuclear deal with Iran, have persuaded Riyadh that Washington is prepared to accept and even cooperate with a Tehran that is strengthening in the region. So the Saudis have struck out on their own, pursuing a disastrous war in Yemen and funding al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria that are opposed by the United States -- even while Riyadh remains central to the U.S. effort to arm and finance other elements of the Syrian opposition. Saudi Arabia remains a key oil producer that the United States cannot afford to see destabilized. But Washington now finds itself cooperating with a Saudi Arabia whose interests overlap on some issues but diverge sharply on others. Where the interests split, there is little chance of bridging the gap.
Egypt: With Egypt, things are even more complicated because of that country's size and its centrality in the Arab world. Largely driven by the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, Washington for years saw Cairo as its key strategic partner in the region. I remember trips, with a half a dozen secretaries of state, when we stopped first in Cairo to coordinate. No more. The United States and Egypt are no longer closely coordinating their regional strategies and are at odds over human rights and political reform. The memory of what the Egyptian military perceived to be the Obama administration's flirtation with the Muslim Brotherhood has broken trust. And the Egyptians, even while they maintain their military relationship with Washington, have branched out to the Europeans and Russians for arms sales. As the Arab world's most powerful country and as peace-treaty partner with Israel, Cairo is a player whose support Washington must keep. But gone are the days of the late 1980s and 1990s, when Egypt was America's closest Arab partner in matters relating to peace and war.
Israel: As the one democracy in the region, Israel is the only state in the Middle East that shares values and some interests with the United States. For years, no matter what else divided Washington and Jerusalem, the partners shared an unequaled cooperation in matters relating to peace and war that made America's relationship with Israel quite unique. In the past several years, however, U.S. and Israeli interests have begun to diverge greatly, both on the issue of how to handle Iran, and on what to do about the Palestinians. These differences are not merely tactical. They flow from deep and divergent perceptions of threats and opportunities, and emerge from differing assessments of risk, particularly as the Middle East continues to melt down. They have been made worse still by a dysfunctional relationship between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama. Paradoxically, the worse the region becomes, the more Washington may look to the Israelis as an island of stability and increase the U.S.-Israeli security cooperation. Indeed, unlike Lehman Brothers, the U.S.-Israeli relationship may be too big to fail. At the same time, the unresolved Palestinian issue and different perceptions of Iran will inject continued tension into the relationship. Symptomatic of that new reality is Israel's growing closeness to Egypt and some backdoor cooperation with Saudi Arabia out of common concern over a rising Iran.
Iran: Perhaps the main stress point of the fraying relationships between the United States and its old allies is the Iran nuclear deal, and the broader perception that Washington is ending 40 years of tension with Iran in favor of finding a new modus vivendi with Tehran. This is indeed more than a perception. While relations remain contentious, there is little doubt that there now exist both a channel to communicate, and an incentive to do so. The Iranian nuclear deal is the administration's signature foreign policy legacy, and the administration is eager to see it implemented. Washington is looking to Tehran for help in sorting out the mess in Syria; in the struggle against the Islamic State; and in the effort to stabilize Iraq. Whether Iran will cooperate in these matters is unclear. But this U.S. administration has accepted something its predecessors never did: the centrality of Iran's role in the region. Driven by the nuclear deal, this acceptance has unsettled traditional allies who worry about a newfound dependency. Managing a rising Iran may well be the single greatest challenge not just to maintaining relations with Washington's friends, but to protecting U.S. interests as well. The administration argues that the nuclear deal was not aimed at moderating the Islamic Republic. But it will not be easy for the United States to maintain a close relationship with an authoritarian regime that is a leading executioner of juveniles, that imprisons U.S. citizens, denies the Holocaust, and represses its own citizens.
The problem of who is an ally and who an adversary is not going away, nor will it get any easier. If Washington wants to sort out the situation in Syria, it will need the help of its old adversaries, Iran and Russia. If it wants to see the nuclear deal last, it will need to work with Tehran even as it tries to contain it. And this newfound dependency and cooperation will have the effect of sowing mistrust among old friends who may well go their own way to secure what they see as their interests, regardless of U.S. preferences. If it wants a solution to the Palestinian issue, and to pursue serious political reform and a human rights agenda, Washington is likely to clash with Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.
Indeed the United States is stuck in a region it cannot transform and it cannot leave. And sadly, America is trapped there with old friends that don't trust it and have their own agendas, and emerging frenemies to whom it looks for solutions to problems it alone cannot resolve. Putting this round peg in a square hole will be no easy matter.
(AP photo)