Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Middle East Power Shifting To Turkey And Iran

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Middle East Power Shifting To Turkey And Iran

    MIDDLE EAST POWER SHIFTING TO TURKEY AND IRAN
    by Alastair Crooke

    Christian Science Monitor
    November 25, 2009, Wednesday

    While the United States and Europe have been struggling to find a path
    forward in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Afghanistan, and Iran,
    the strategic ground upon which their assumptions about the region
    rest has begun to shift dramatically.

    Most significantly, Turkey has finally shrugged off the straitjacket
    of a tight American alliance, grown virtually indifferent to beckoning
    European Union (EU) membership, and turned its focus toward its former
    Ottoman neighbors in Asia and the Middle East.

    Though not primarily meant as a snub to the West, this shift does
    nonetheless reflect growing discomfort and frustration with US and
    EU policy, from the support of Israel's action in Gaza to Iran and
    the frustrated impasse of the European accession process. It also
    resonates more closely with the Islamic renaissance that has been
    taking place within Turkey.

    If Turkey continues successfully down this path, it will be as
    strategically significant for the balance of power in the region as
    the emergence of Iran as a preeminent power thanks to the collapse
    of the Soviet Union and the later destruction of Sunni dominance in
    Iraq by the US invasion.

    In recent months, a spate of new agreements have been signed by
    Turkey with Iraq, Iran, and Syria that suggest a nascent commonality
    of political vision. A new treaty with Armenia further signals how
    seriously Ankara means its "zero problem" good-neighbor policy.

    More important, however, the agreements with Iraq, Iran, and Syria
    reflect a joint economic interest. The "northern tier" of Middle
    Eastern states are poised to become the principal supplier of natural
    gas to central Europe once the Nabucco pipeline is completed - thus not
    only displacing Russia in that role but gradually eclipsing the primacy
    of Saudi Arabia as a geostrategic kingpin due to its oil reserves.

    Taken together with the economic stagnation and succession crisis
    that has incapacitated Egypt, it is clear that the so-called moderate
    "southern tier" Middle Eastern states that have been so central to
    American policies in the region are becoming a weak and unreliable
    link indeed.

    Political players in the region can't but notice the drift of power
    from erstwhile US allies Egypt and Saudi Arabia toward the northern
    tier states, and, as is the way in the Middle East, are starting to
    readjust to the new power reality. This can be most clearly seen
    in Lebanon today, where a growing procession of former US allies
    and critics of the Syrian government, including Prime Minister Saad
    Hariri, Walid Jumblat, and, reportedly, some of the March 14 movement's
    Christian leaders, are making their pilgrimage to Damascus.

    That message is not lost on others in the region.

    If the Obama administration is not fully cognizant of these
    developments, its awareness will surely be raised as it attempts to
    mobilize the world for a new round of punitive sanctions against Iran.

    These sanctions are likely to fail not only because Russia and China
    won't go along in any serious way, but precisely because the much
    touted "alliance of moderate pro-Western Arab states" is turning out
    to be a paper tiger.

    Given the shifting balance of power I've discussed, the "moderates"
    are in no position to seriously confront Iran and its allies. Hopes
    that the recent Saudi bombing of the Houthi rebels in Yemen would
    incite sectarian Sunni hostility toward Shiite Iran have not been
    realized. On the contrary, the Saudis' action has been clearly seen
    in the region as a partisan and tribal intervention in another state's
    internal conflict.

    In Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has not only embraced
    the legitimacy of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election, but has insisted
    as well on the right of Iran as a sovereign nation to enrich uranium.

    Unlike Western leaders, he doesn't at all seem inordinately worried
    about Iran's course.

    The US and Europe are going to have to grapple with the pending
    replacement of its southern tier allies in the Middle East by the
    rising clout of the northern tier states. It would be best to make
    this adjustment sooner rather than later. None of the issues that
    matter to the West - the nuclearization of Iran, Israel's security,
    the future of energy supplies - can be solved by ignoring the emergent
    reality of a new Middle East.

    Alastair Crooke, a former MI6 British intelligence agent in the
    Middle East, is author of "Resistance: The Essence of the Islamist
    Revolution."
Working...
X