The French wanted influence in the Middle East since the days of Napoleon.
They had also made a commitment to defend the Arab Christians in the area against the majority Muslim population. During a civil war that raged in the region in the 1860s, the French had allied with factions that had forged ties with France. Paris wanted to maintain that alliance, so in the 1920s, when the French were at last in control, they turned the predominantly Maronite (Christian) region of Syria into a separate country, naming it after the dominant topographical characteristic, Mount Lebanon. As a state, then, Lebanon had no prior reality. Its main unifying feature was that its people felt an affinity with France.
Israel’s first patron was the Soviet Union, which saw Israel as an anti-British power that could become an ally. The USSR supplied weapons to Israel through Czechoslovakia, but this relationship crumbled quickly. Then France, still fighting in Algeria, replaced the Soviets as Israel’s benefactor.
The Arab countries supported the Algerian rebels, so it was in France’s interest to have a strong Israel standing alongside France in opposition. That Is why the French supplied the Israelis with aircraft, tanks, and the basic technology for their nuclear weapons.
The things the United States needed from Israel in the past are no longer there. The United States does not need Israel to deal with pro-Soviet regimes in Egypt and Syria while the U.S. is busy in other areas of the world. But Israel is valued for sharing intelligence and for acting as a base for supplies to support U.S. military intervention in the region.
Israel is unlikely to go to war soon. It does not quick delivery of tanks or planes, as it did in 1973. Nor does it need the financial assistance the United States has provided since 1974. Israel’s economy is robust and growing steadily.
Iraq’s population is about 30 million. Saudi Arabia’s population is about 27 million. The entire Arabian Peninsula’s population is about 70 million, but that is divided among multiple nations, particularly between Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The latter has about one third of this population, and is far away from the vulnerable Saudi Arabian oil fields. In contrast, Iran alone has a population of 70 million. Turkey has a population of about 70 million.
With Iraq essentially neutralized, its 30 million people fighting each other rather than counterbalancing anyone, Iran is for the first time in centuries free from significant external threat from its neighbors. The Iranian-Turkish border is extremely mountainous, making offensive military operations there difficult.
North of Iran is a buffer comprised of Russian power by Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, and Turkmenistan. To the east, they border Afghanistan and Pakistan, both in chaos. If the United States withdraws from Iraq, Iran will be free from an immediate threat. Thus, Iran is, at least for now, in an exceptional position, secure from overland incursions and free to explore to the southwest.
In trying to imagine cooperation between U.S. and Iran, think of the overlaps in these countries’ goals. The United States is in a war against some (not all) Sunnis, and these Sunnis are also the enemies of Shiite Iran.
Iran does not want U.S. troops along its eastern and western borders, but neither does the U.S. In the same way that America wants oil to flow freely through Hormuz, Iran wants to profit from that flow rather than interrupt it. Finally, the Iranians understand that the United States is the only nation that poses the greatest threat to their security. If they solve the American problem, the Iranian regime’s survival is assured.
The United States understands that resurrecting the Iraqi counterweight to Iran is simply not an option in the short term. Unless the United States wants to make a huge, long-term commitment of ground forces in Iraq, which it clearly does not, the obvious solution to its problem in the region is to make an accommodation with Iran.
Until now, the Israelis still had the potential option of striking Iran unilaterally, in order to generate an Iranian response in the Strait of Hormuz, thereby drawing the United States into the conflict. If the Americans and Iranians move toward an understanding, Israel would no longer have such influence over U.S. policy. An Israeli strike might trigger a very unfriendly American response rather than the chain reaction that Israel would have preferred.
The current president will need considerable political craft to position the alliance as an aid to the war on al Qaeda, making it clear that Shiite-dominated Iran is as hostile to the Sunnis as it is to Americans. He will be opposed by two powerful lobbies in this, the Saudis and the Israelis. Israel will be outraged by the maneuver, but the Saudis will be terrified, which is one of the maneuver’s great advantages, increasing American traction over its policies.
The Israelis can in many ways be dealt with more easily, simply because the Israeli military and intelligence services have long seen the Iranians as occasional allies against Arab threats, despite Iranian support for Hezbollah against Israel.
They have had a complex relationship over the last thirty years. The Saudis will condemn this move, but the pressure it places on the Arab world would be attractive to Israel. Even so, the American Jewish community is not as sophisticated or cynical as Israel in these matters, and its members will be vocal. Even more difficult to manage will be the Saudi lobby, backed as it is by American companies that do business in the kingdom
There will be many advantages to the United States. First, without fundamentally threatening Israeli interests, the move will show that the United States is not controlled by Israel. Second, it will put a generally unpopular country, Saudi Arabia—a state that has been accustomed to having its way in Washington—on notice that the United States has other cards to play. For their part, the Saudis have nowhere to go, and they will cling to whatever guarantees the United States provides them in the face of an American-Iranian entente.
Recalling thirty years of hostilities with Iran, the American public will be outraged. The president will have to frame his maneuver by offering rhetoric about protecting the homeland against the greater threat. He will of course use China as an example of successful reconciliation with the irreconcilable.
Iran is a defensive country. It is not strong enough to be either the foundation of American policy in the region or the real long-term issue. Its population is concentrated in the mountains near its borders, while much of the center of the country is virtually uninhabitable. Iran can project power under certain special conditions, such as the current moment, but in the long run it is either a victim of outside powers or isolated.
An alliance with the United States will temporarily give Iran the upper hand in relations with the Arabs, but within a matter of years the United States will have to reassert a balance of power. Pakistan is unable to extend its influence westward. Israel is much too small and distant to counterbalance Iran. The Arabian Peninsula is too fragmented, and the duplicity of the United States in encouraging it to increase its arms is too obvious to be an alternative counterweight. A more realistic alternative is to encourage Russia to extend its influence to the Iranian border. This might happen anyway, but as we will see, that would produce major problems elsewhere.
The only country capable of being a counterbalance to Iran and a potential long-term power in the region is Turkey, and it will achieve that within the next ten years independent of U.S. policies. Turkey has the seventeenth largest economy in the world and the largest in the Middle East. It has the strongest army in the region and, aside from the Russians and maybe the British, probably the strongest army in Europe. Like most countries in the Muslim world, it is divided between secularists and Islamists. But their struggle is far more restrained than what occurs in other countries.
Iranian domination of the Arabian Peninsula is not in Turkey’s interest because Turkey has its own appetite for the region’s oil, reducing its dependency on Russian oil. Also, Turkey does not want Iran to become more powerful than itself. And while Iran has a small Kurdish population, southeastern Turkey is home to an extremely large number of Kurds, a fact that Iran can exploit. Regional and global powers have been using support for the Kurds to put pressure on or destabilize Iraq, Turkey, and Iran. It is an old game and a constant vulnerability.
In the course of the next decade the Iranians will have to redirect major resources in order to deal with Turkey. Meanwhile, the Arab world will be looking for a champion against Shiite Iran, and despite the bitter history of Turkish power in the Arab world during the Ottoman Empire, Sunni Turkey is the best candidate.
In the next decade, the U.S. will want to ensure a non-hostile Turkey, as well as prevent an Iran-Turkey alliance that would dominate the Arab world. The more Turkey and Iran fear the U.S., the more likely this will happen. Iran will be appeased for a short time, but will be under no illusions as to the nature of their relationship with the U.S. Turkey want a longer term alliance with America. And the Turks can be an important player in other areas, such as the Balkans and the Caucasus, where it stands up against Russian objectives.
As long as the United States maintains the basic terms of its agreement with Iran, Iran will represent a threat to Turkey. Whatever the inclinations of the Turks, they will have to protect themselves, and to do that, they must work to undermine Iranian power in the Arabian Peninsula and the Arab countries to the north of the peninsula—Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. They will engage in this not only to limit Iran but also to improve their access to the oil to their south, both because they will need that oil and because they will want to profit from it.
Modern Europe is a search for an escape from hell. The first half of 20th century was a bloodbath, the second was lived under the threat of a U.S.-Soviet apocalypse. Europe, exhausted by constant conflict, imagined a world where conflicts were merely economic, and could be managed by bureaucrats.