The United States and Iran are on the path to resume diplomatic relations since the overthrow of US backed Shah Regime in the year 1979. Since then the United States and Iran used to trade barbs on many regional and international issues. Iran’s controversial nuclear programme and its leader’s cutting remarks to annihilate the State of Israel have added fuel in the animosity. But, verbal barbs and threats never led to the direct U.S. military intervention in Iran.
Iran’s newly elected President Hassan Rouhani, termed by many as a moderate, has started a new beginning in the relationship with the West in general and with the United States in particular. The U.S. President Barack Obama and the new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani had telephonic conversation on 27 September, the highest-level contact between the two countries in three decades signalling their commitment to reach a pact on Tehran’s nuclear programme. The telephonic call at the highest level is a culmination of positive talks between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif, a day earlier, on the sideline of UN general assembly meeting.
The call is the finale of a dramatic shift in tone between Iran and the United States. Obama has said for years he was open to having direct contact with Iran while also stressing that all options – including military strikes – were on the table to prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb. According to Ali Vaez, a senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group, “The biggest taboo in Iranian politics has been broken. This is the beginning of a new era.”
“The phone call was an important milestone – a calculated risk by two cautious leaders mindful of domestic constraints,” said Yasmin Alem, senior fellow at Atlantic Council’s South Asia Centre. “More than anything else, it shows the high level of political capital invested in a peaceful resolution of the nuclear crisis.”
It is pertinent to say that the bonhomie between the United States and Iran will create a tectonic shift in the region already settled between pro-US and anti-US camps. Moreover, it is being observed by many that it is the U.S. that was not in favour of establishing a congenial relationship with Iran not the vice versa, and whenever the U.S. likens will manage to create a working or a strategic relationship with Iran.
“It is early days and it will require a lot of testing but Mr. Rouhani has been more ambitious than I would ever have hoped,” says Suzanne Maloney, a former US State Department official and now an expert on Iran at the Brookings Institution. “His PR has been masterfully orchestrated, even if his speech at the UN was a dud.” Though the relations between the US and Iran have shifted decisively over the past week, yet the million dollar question here is that what compelled the United States to extend a hand of friendship towards Iran.
The Middle East is witnessing great changes since the eruption of Arab awakening where the United States has started losing its unchallenging grip on the region. The US accord with Russia on Syrian chemical weapons has brought Russia back in the geopolitics of the Middle East as a significant player. Turkey, a major US-NATO ally, has been on odds with the United States on major regional issues including the coup in the Egypt backed by the latter. Recently, Turkey has opted for a Chinese firm bypassing US and European NATO partners for its longstanding long range air defence system termed locally, TLORMADIS. Many observers believe that this Turkish decision will infuriate the United States.
Israel, which has been campaigning for strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, may find itself in a fix if Iranian nuclear issue is solved peacefully. Iranian nuclear bomb or Ayatollah’s cry to annihilate Israel is not Israel’s real threat. Israel’s real threat is Iranian call for peace and renounce nuclear arsenal. For the last one month Israel has been horrified to see Rouhani’s peace proposals. Such a peace proposal is giving Israel the real nightmares – the very thought of international pressure to give up its own nuclear arms. Saudi Arabia and other GCC States having been close US allies since decades may also feel nervous on growing US-Iranian relations.
Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, strikes a cautious note on the possibility of a breakthrough. “The most difficult negotiations may not be between Obama and Rouhani, but between Obama and Congress and Rouhani and Ayatollah Khamenei. Both presidents are constrained by their domestic politics,” he says. “For long-time observers of US-Iran relations this appears to be a rare and propitious moment. Yet you have to manage expectations, mindful of the fact that the last 35 years has been littered with hopes of breakthroughs which never came to fruition.”
If Iran is persuaded to abandon its policy of regional strategic-depth, then the Syrian civil war, Iraqi ethnic and sectarian strife and other looming issues in the region may be solved diplomatically and the continuing bloodshed can be minimised if not totally stopped. The divulgement of current Iranian policies is more in the interest of the entire region than the sidelined Iran surviving on the hatred of the West and Arabs.
It is significant to add here as to how Iranian political and bureaucratic leadership will manage its approaching relationship with the United States when its pillar of regional strategy is based on axis of resistance against US-Israel. The whole aura of Iran’s anti US-Israel tirade will become fictional from Levant to South America and from Iraq to Russia. Apparently, Iran’s axis of resistance will lose its sheen after the resumption of diplomatic ties with the United Sates.
Suffice it to say here that imminent United States-Iranian rapprochement will hugely impact the geopolitics of the greater Middle East where new permutations and combinations have already started taking shape.
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