Obama 2014: America’s EnergyDiscoveries Reshape the Middle East

The world learned one of the lessons of international politics in the Middle East, or we can say that an objective link was established between regional phenomena and their international counterparts: We discovered, for example, that local conflicts in the region affect the world’s energy security. That became a given for any analysis decades ago, one that sufficiently explained why Washington becomes involved, directly and indirectly, in the conflicts of the Middle East. Now, with the large discoveries of energy in America, the shape of the situation has changed: The relative scarcity of energy resources no longer exists to put pressure on American decision-makers. The opposite has occurred: The relative abundance born of the large discoveries of energy has changed the image of the region in America’s eyes. It has changed it from a region of elevated importance in America’s national security priorities to just one significant region in the world. This cognitive change in the way that the American elite thinks about the region will be followed by a change in Washington’s mode of managing the conflicts there. The U.S. is no longer forced to get involved militarily there, as occurred in previous centuries, to secure the flow of oil. Objectively, this means that a new regional order is currently crystallizing to fill the gap from America’s anticipated retreat, in relative terms, from the region, and that, in this new order, a conflict is breaking out onsite between the two poles of regional conflict, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Here, it seems that the world is about to learn a new lesson of international politics, one it did not know before: A relative global abundance of energy sources exacerbates regional conflicts, which is a new model that the Middle East is also presenting.

Obama 2014 and Iran

The U.S. will remain a player in the Middle East to protect its interests there, but it will not necessarily have extensive military involvement. The evidence of America’s retreat from its involvement in the region’s affairs appeared with the withdrawal of forces from Iraq, then its negotiations with Iran on the nuclear issue and its reluctance to intervene militarily in Syria. The aforementioned reluctance means that Washington has withdrawn from the role of a regional player in the Middle East that it had played since the 1990s, with its military presence in the waters of the Gulf, and since 2001 and 2003, with the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. Washington’s retreat from the region consolidates new balances of power that seem to favor Iran.

The fall of two regimes hostile to Iran, in Iraq and Afghanistan, was extremely favorable to Tehran, although that was not immediately apparent because U.S. forces took the place of the two fallen regimes militarily. With Washington’s effective withdrawal from Iraq and imminent withdrawal from Afghanistan, the birth of a regional vacuum from the fall of these two regimes seems to resound as though it only occurred yesterday. Similarly, the Iranian-American negotiations on the nuclear issue stabilize a fundamental point of contention and do not interfere with Iran influences in the region born of Washington’s retreat from it. This means that the U.S. implicitly acknowledges Iran’s regional influence, which transforms negotiations over Iran’s nuclear issue into a point of mutual understanding and regional cooperation between Washington and Iran.

Because Washington is no longer very interested in the region, or at least is not as interested in it as it was before the large discoveries of energy resources at home, it is likewise no longer interested in portraying Iran as a scarecrow to rally the countries of the region against and justify its military presence in the region and its selling of weapons to the Arab Gulf countries to confront the Iranian danger. On the contrary, Iran will play a role in the coming regional order by virtue of its influence extending from Iraq to as far as southern Lebanon. This is a situation that suits America’s new interests in the region. That is, the emergence of a new territorial order lightens Washington’s security and military burdens. The Iranian elite surrounding Rouhani is aware of these facts and is, therefore, using the nuclear issue and the negotiations over it as a means of normalizing relations with the U.S. to first end the economic blockade and then fill as many of the regional vacuums that Washington will leave behind in the Middle East as possible.

Obama 2014 and Saudi Arabia

The Obama administration has been living a silent crisis with Saudi Arabia for a considerable time — review our al-Safir article "Obama and the Hidden Crisis with Saudi Arabia," March 11, 2013. The conflict does not have ideological dimensions, but geopolitical ones. Saudi Arabia exports 10 million barrels of oil a day, which made it highly important before America’s recent discoveries. The partnership between Riyadh and Washington was strengthened over decades and various historical stages, but it is no longer so strong, especially after the rise of Iranian influence and decline of Saudi and Arab influence in the region.

Saudi Arabia has depended on Washington to protect its national security for decades, and the clear appearance of America’s new direction in the Middle East has put Riyadh in danger. The withdrawal of the U.S. — the great country that can become a local power in specific regions alongside its global role, while the opposite, a regional country becoming a global player at the same time, is impossible — from its regional roles in the Middle East means a new regional order, in which the Arab Gulf states do not keep the current balance of power. Washington’s entry into negotiations with Iran consolidates the latter’s influence in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and damages Saudi Arabia’s influence in those countries. With the continuation of the Syrian regime as is and current balances of power, the Geneva II negotiations will not produce the solution that Saudi Arabia wishes to see realized in Syria.

All these factors pushed Saudi Arabia into "resisting" Washington and opposing its policies on an increasing number of occasions over the last months. The same factors also prompt Riyadh to relinquish its usual conservatism in its regional policies and become involved more in the theaters of the Levant, in an attempt to balance Iranian influence and enter the coming regional order with fewer losses. The Saudi predicament is further entrenched because there is no possible international alternative to Washington, and the current balances of power in the Arab Levant cannot be easily modified — they are the sum of the accumulation of the 10 years extending from 2003 to now, the effects of which did not manifest clearly, until Washington withdrew from Iraq and its regional role in the Middle East.

Riyadh will continue cooperating with Obama economically, financially and politically, and will, at the same time, goad the oil lobby allied with it to coordinate with the opponents of the Obama administration in Congress and obstruct his opening up to Iran. The heart of Saudi Arabia’s problem with Washington and with the Obama administration is not ideological or even political; rather, it is geopolitical because Washington’s new perspective, after the large energy discoveries inside America, no longer intersects Riyadh’s interests on a big area in the Middle East, as it had in the decades extending from the establishment of the kingdom.

Conclusion

America’s large discoveries of energy sources have led to a relative decline in the importance of the Middle East in its strategic imagination and a stated withdrawal from the region. Since this withdrawal is certainly producing a new regional order to fill the gap, the regional conflict between Riyadh and Tehran is flaring up in the theaters of the Arab Levant in the form of Sunni-Shiite division. All of that will be reflected in Obama’s policies in the coming year: The negotiations with Iran over its nuclear issue will continue, just as the tension with Saudi Arabia will continue, but there will be no decisive success with Iran or final deterioration with Saudi Arabia. The factors of time and oil are no longer putting intense pressure on Washington. Thus, it is impossible to measure the effects of the massive discoveries of energy in the U.S. on the Middle East in just one year. Rather, they will need a longer time period to become clearer.

Based on this, the specific crises in the formation of a new Lebanese government, Syria’s Geneva II conference, the battle in Anbar, in Iraq, and all the details and sectarian quotas related to each of these theaters are merely marginal, trivial details in the bigger picture that explains what is happening. In short, the Middle East no longer occupies the same place in America’s priorities, and this will, from now on, have effects on the region and particulars of movement in the conflict theaters.