Another messy Middle East mistake

Almost a century ago Mahatma Gandhi railed against the victorious World War I powers for carving up the Ottoman Empire.

This, he said, was in contravention of promises made to Indian Muslims in return for them joining British Imperial forces in the conflict.

Gandhi was protesting the first in what was to be a catalogue of duplicity, mismanagement and irresponsibility characterising the West’s involvement in the Middle East, leading to the maelstrom that is the region today.

As a result there are many who concede there can never be a solution in this troubled region without the cauterisation of some cataclysmic, all-out conflict. That doomsday scenario has been brought closer by the reckless, shoot-from-the-hip diplomacy from the current Administration in Washington.

President Donald Trump’s decision to move the United States Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and his eager courting of the despotic Saudi Arabian regime has removed the United States from any semblance of neutrality in the region.

It is difficult to see how any future Administration can ever make up the ground and play the honest broker again.

The biggest misstep has been the decision to resume the confrontation with Iran, all the more tragic because it seems to have been done not for any reason other than to negate the major foreign policy initiative of Trump’s despised predecessor, Barack Obama.

The best hope of bringing Iran back into the international fold was the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), otherwise known as the 2015 nuclear deal, which exchanged Iran’s nuclear ambitions for sanctions relief.

Trump castigated the JCPOA from the onset of his presidency, describing it as the worst the US had ever signed up for — something which seemed incomprehensible, not only to Teheran but to the other partners, the European Union, Russia and China, who thought it was working quite well.

Before Trump’s precipitous action it seemed there was a chance of genuine reform in the Islamic Republic. In late 2017 protests against harsh economic conditions spread throughout the country, constituting the greatest challenge to the theocratic regime in recent years.

While the crackdown eventually turned bloody, the events were widely covered on State television and the voices of reformist lawmakers were heard.

Washington’s reimposition of sanctions threw a lifeline to Iran’s hard-line elements opposed to any lessening of tensions with the West.

There is nothing like an external threat to unite a country and Trump’s actions have brought Iranians into the streets in their tens of thousands to support the Government.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, initially seen as a moderate, is now firmly in the camp of those who now describe the US as a duplicitous Great Satan. The threat that Teheran will now push forward with its nuclear and missile development has been voiced and remains real.

Most observers now believe nothing short of military intervention will bring about regime change in Iran — a possibility that is horrifying Trump’s military advisers and likely to result in the end-game conflict mentioned above.

If Iran was a significant threat to regional stability before, it is a much greater one, on a far wider stage, now.