The Middle East once had two types of countries: America’s allies, who usually abstained from fighting one another, and America’s foes, whom the U.S. helped contain or defeat. Today, after years of American disengagement, those distinctions have increasingly blurred.
In short, it’s a frenemy world out there.
The Obama administration’s successful push for a nuclear deal with Iran is paving the way to the lifting of sanctions and the resumption of trade with what used to be America’s most determined enemy in the region. At the same time—and in part because of that deal—America’s relations with its historic allies in the region, from Saudi Arabia to Turkey to Israel, have reached new lows.
Such an erosion of a decades-old architecture of regional alliances makes these countries’ behavior increasingly unpredictable—creating new potential for costly mistakes that could spark fresh conflicts or intensify existing wars. Meanwhile, mutual suspicion and hostility have blunted the fight of greatest concern to the West: defeating the Islamic State.
The U.S. is navigating this new Middle East with much-diminished leverage. On one hand, Washington’s outreach to Iran hasn’t demonstrably moderated the Islamic Republic’s conduct. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and its local proxies have continued their involvement in conflicts across the region, most notably in Syria.
But traditional American allies’ growing mistrust of the U.S. has made them less susceptible to influence from Washington. That’s most visible in the Persian Gulf.
In the past, when the Saudis knew they could count on the U.S. to defend them, they tended to listen to Washington. Now, feeling spurned, Saudi leaders believe they should do whatever it takes to survive—a mindset that prompted Riyadh to launch the costly war against pro-Iranian Houthi forces in Yemen. And that mindset is behind Saudi officials’ plans to have a (so-far civilian) nuclear program of their own.
“The U.S. is trying to place itself as almost a mediator, assigning equal blame. This is not going to sit well. America’s traditional allies in the region expect America to be on their side,” said Emile Hokayem, senior fellow for Middle East security at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in Bahrain.
A Saudi Arabia that feels isolated in front of the much more powerful Iran isn’t likely to be of great help against ISIS, a militant group that is even more hostile to Iran. Its gains in Syria and Iraq have cut in half the so-called Shiite crescent that runs from Tehran to Beirut.
Then there’s Turkey, unlike Saudi Arabia a formal North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally. The Turks feel they have been betrayed by the U.S. decision in 2013 to abort military action against the Assad regime in Syria, and, unlike the U.S., also consider defeating that regime more important than—and a necessary precondition to—routing ISIS.
Even more important for Turkey is the war against the PKK Kurdistan Workers Party, a powerful armed group that seeks to carve out a separate Kurdish homeland. But, while the U.S. still officially considers the PKK a terrorist organization, to Ankara’s fury it provides military assistance to the PKK affiliate that is combating ISIS in Syria.
Iraq also now falls in the frenemy camp. Formally, its prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, is a U.S. ally, and the U.S has sent troops there to train and equip the Iraqi army after ISIS advances in mid-2014. But, in fact, much of Iraq’s security apparatus is under the control of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. So any significant victory by Iraqi forces would only expand Iran’s regional writ.
It’s increasingly uncertain whether the government in Baghdad—like many others in the region—is a friend or a foe, argues Ali Khedery, a political analyst who advised U.S. ambassadors in Iraq: “It’s a wolf-in-sheep’s-clothes phenomenon.”
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