A Geopolitical Turning Point for the Middle East

Is this a new start between Iran and the United States? The Iranian people are really hoping so, and it’s hard to contain their enthusiasm after the Lausanne agreement: In the past, too many hopes have been thwarted and squashed. Middle Eastern geopolitics could radically change starting from the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq, but it is far from easy to eliminate the mutual hostility, the threats, the continuing tensions, the pressures, at times overwhelming, from the allies of the Americans, such as Israel and Saudi Arabia, and at the same time the controversial role of Bashar al-Assad’s regime and the Lebanese Hezbollah, protected by Tehran.

And yet, last summer, Iran became the first country to declare war on the Islamic State group, and if Shiite militias supported by Tehran had not intervened immediately, the Islamic State group would have swallowed the capital too after Mosul. Maybe it is worth recalling that so far, Israel hasn’t shot once against the Islamic State group. And the Saudis, even if they are part of the coalition and share borders with the Islamic State group, have not wasted a single bullet against the jihadis, preferring to bomb the Shiite Houthis in Yemen.

The problem with the U.S. and Iran getting closer again is the following: The two countries have a common enemy, the Islamic State group, but the allies and the interests that need to be protected are different. The issue is ideological and religious, with the overlap of the Shiite and Sunni factions; it certainly has nothing to do with the question of democracy. The Saudi kingdom, which for more than 60 years, along with Israel, has been the pillar of American relations in the region, is an absolute monarchy. Iran is an Islamic republic led by ayatollahs, but where elections take place: It is not a democracy in the Western sense, but undoubtedly pluralism and the balance of power really exist there. The United States and Iran have a different view of international relations, and it is only now that they have come to talk to each other to reach a negotiation that constitutes a process for building the mutual trust that has never existed.

It started on the fatal day when Washington and Tehran ended up on opposing sides, even if things could have been completely different. “Kick them out, and send them back home,” is how Imam Khomeini reacted, according to Ibrahim Yazdy, then-minister of foreign affairs, when he found out that a group of students had occupied the American Embassy. It could have ended like that, but the ayatollah who had stirred up the revolution against the shah saw a huge crowd on TV and decided to make the most of this mobilization to reinforce his power and have a monopoly on events. The detention of the American hostages started on Nov. 4, 1979, and it provoked an irremediable schism. The crisis, which lasted 444 days before the hostages were released, was seen in the United States as a national tragedy, and it made easier the victory of Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter during the November 1980 presidential election.

The geopolitical conflict between the superpower and the developing country began very emotionally and dramatically, but quickly turned itself into a confrontation in every field: Khomeini’s regime, as the one of the shah, had the ambition to make Iran a leader in the region, aiming for a political Islam and the support of the Muslim masses. There was nothing more opposed to the vision of the United States and Israel. Then, in the 1980s the Iran-Iraq War happened, the Americans and the Gulf monarchies helped Saddam Hussein, and the Americans also secretly supported Tehran in a strategy of “double containment,” where they didn’t want either of the two countries to win the conflict. The containment strategy hasn’t changed much: Today, the United States has to soothe Israel and satisfy its Sunni allies, while preventing them from becoming too powerful. But at the same time, the U.S. needs Shiite Iran to fight jihadism and aim at the stabilization of Mesopotamia. The collaboration will be everything but easy and will be marked by a profound ambiguity anyways. But these historical precedents show that the American president, Barak Obama, and the Iranian one, Hassan Rouhani — supported by the shadow of Supreme Leader Ali Khameini — had the courage to look forward to the future.