Iran and the U.S.-Saudi Bargain

[Homajon]

Iran and the U.S.-Saudi Bargain
Posted By Jeremy Shapiro

Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - 9:11 AM

For the past 30 years, the United States has treated Saudi Arabia as its primary partner in the Persian Gulf and perhaps even the Middle East at large. While the two countries have cooperated on a number of issues, including preventing Soviet expansion and counterterrorism, the relationship at its core is based on a simple bargain: Saudi Arabia receives a U.S. security guarantee in exchange for ensuring the stability of global oil prices. Of course, Saudi Arabia is an autocratic Salafist state and the United States is a multiethnic democracy so they have naturally long differed on a variety of issues. But such divergent interests -- never insignificant -- were papered over, ignored, or resolved by unilateral compromise in the interests of preserving the basic bargain.

However, as the Middle East has changed over the last decade (the Iraq War, the Arab Spring, the diversification of energy supplies), these disagreements have grown both more public and frequent. Bitter rows over Egypt and President Barack Obama's unwillingness to intervene in Syria have led senior Saudi officials to question U.S. resolve and commitment to the region.

But nowhere has U.S.-Saudi tension been more apparent than on the Iranian issue, as Saudi opposition to a prospective nuclear deal surpassed even that of Israel. The contretemps over Iran's nuclear program masks a deeper conflict between the United States and Saudi Arabia over Iran's place in the Gulf and the broader region. Whereas the United States views Iran's return to the international fold as a potentially salutary development, Saudi Arabia regards this possibility as a crippling blow to the kingdom's regional standing and an existential threat to the ruling al-Saud family.

In other words, the problem is not that Saudi Arabia does not see the specific terms of the interim agreement negotiated in Geneva as unacceptable; the problem is that it views any nuclear agreement that loosens the shackles on Iran as unacceptable. Riyadh sees itself as engaged in a zero-sum competition with Tehran in which any improvement in the U.S.-Iranian relationship would necessarily come at its expense. Saudi Arabia does not just want the United States to consider Saudi interests when dealing with Iran, but rather wants the United States to always choose the Saudi side when their interests conflict with the Iranians'.

Riyadh believes the United States faces a stark choice between an antagonistic regime and a reliable friend, chaos and stability, and war and peace. In this view, Iran's status will determine the fate of the region. On this, the Saudis are not completely wrong. The stakes involved in a nuclear deal are, indeed, great, but it is an isolated Iran -- not a normalized Iran -- that threatens to tear the region apart. And, if the price of preserving the grand bargain has become war against Iran, it is time for the United States to re-evaluate the assumptions of its Gulf policy.

U.S.-Saudi relations have always been predicated on a security-for-oil quid pro quo, although bilateral cooperation along these lines reached a new level of intensity following the 1973 oil embargo and the 1979 Iranian Revolution. What these terms mean has often been misunderstood, particularly in terms of what the Saudis provide to the United States, but their practical application is not very complex and both countries have benefitted from the arrangement. The United States has served as Saudi Arabia's last -- and sometimes first -- line of defense against external threats to the kingdom. Originally, Saudi Arabia wanted U.S. assistance in thwarting Soviet designs on the Gulf, but with the Iranian Revolution the Saudis sought and received protection from two nearer enemies, Iran and Iraq. The most well known example of U.S. intervention on Saudi Arabia's behalf is, of course, the Gulf War, but the United States also played an important role in escorting oil tankers through the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq War.

In exchange for U.S. protection, Saudi Arabia has reliably exploited its status as the swing producer of oil to stabilize the price of this commodity, which is so critical to the global and U.S. economy. It is widely thought that the Saudis use their disproportionate share of daily oil production to keep prices low, but, as the current price of around $100 per barrel attests, this is not the case. What Saudi Arabia, with its unrivaled spare capacity (estimated at 2 to 3.5 million barrels per day), actually does is bring additional production online to prevent rapid, destabilizing spikes in the price of oil. Advanced industrial economies can handle almost any conceivable oil price, as long as they have time to make adjustments to consumption patterns. However, rapid price increases deprive them of the opportunity to adapt, leaving the international economy fully exposed to the dislocations caused by the price fluctuation. During the Gulf War, the Saudis ramped up their production capacity to offset the loss of Kuwaiti and Iraqi oil in the market. More recently, the Saudis upped their production to over 10 million barrels per day, a 30-year high, to control prices during Libya's civil war.

Beyond the basic bargain, the United States and Saudi Arabia provide diplomatic and intelligence support to each other on a variety of issues. For the United States, seeking Saudi support, particularly financial support (the "Saudi ATM"), is a fixture of any policy initiative in the Middle East and the kingdom has been intermittently helpful on a range of U.S. interests in the region, including the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Yemen, and Syria. The U.S. and Saudi joint interest in combatting violent and extreme Islamists has led to intelligence cooperation against the groups that threaten them both, many of which have ties in Saudi Arabia.

The potential deal between Iran and the permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany on Iran's nuclear program opens up new possibilities in U.S.-Iranian relations. Of course, that deal remains very tenuous. Even it were to come to fruition, one deal, no matter how important, will not build the trust necessary to overcome 30-years of enmity. And it will not make the United States and Iran see eye to eye on issues such as Syria or Iranian support to Hezbollah. U.S.-Iranian relations will, at best, remain prickly, mistrustful, and distant for some time to come.

But the United States and Iran don't need to be the best of friends to cooperate effectively on a range of issues that are important to both. They just need to cease to be the worst of enemies. That means they need to recognize that they can cooperate on issues in which they can find mutual benefit while they can simultaneously compete over issues on which they don't agree, as do most countries. There is precedent for U.S.-Iranian cooperation over specific issues of mutual benefit, particularly during the occasional brief periods of relative calm in the U.S.-Iranian relationship. Thus, for example in 2002, the United States and Iran were able to cooperate in effectively in Afghanistan.

Within that context, there are several issues of mutual interest on which the United States and Iran might be able to form hard-nosed bargains. On Iraq and Afghanistan, in particular, the United States may find that its interests accord more with Iran than with some of its more traditional partners in the region. The United States and Iran already see a mutual interest in stabilizing Iraq and its government and assisting it in its effort to combat the Sunni extremists that threaten it. Saudi Arabia is likely to be of relatively little assistance in this effort as it supports the extremists in Iraq. In Afghanistan, the United States and Iran will want to work together to ensure that after the NATO withdrawal at the end of 2014, the Taliban do not return to power in Kabul or otherwise further threaten regional stability. Once again, traditional allies such as Saudi Arabia or Pakistan will not likely take as great an interest in achieving this goal as Iran might, or might actually work at cross-purposes to the United States as they often have in Afghanistan. Syria will prove a much greater challenge for cooperation, but even there, if the current stalemate drags on for many years, as seems likely, Iran may find that cooperation with the United States on a power-sharing agreement is its only route out of a Syrian quagmire.

The United States and Iran will also see a mutual benefit in bringing Iran's oil and gas back to market. The unwinding of sanctions will immediately reduce risk premiums on all oil flowing through the Gulf and put over 1.5 million barrels per day of crude back onto the global market, which would reduce oil prices instantly. But more than that, Iran's oil and gas industry, which has been lacking in Western technology and investment for decades, has the potential both to relieve future supply bottlenecks and to help in the globalization of the gas market. The presence of Iran on the global market as both gas exporter and a transit county would in the coming years destroy any hope Russia has of maintaining its gas stranglehold on Europe or on establishing one on South or East Asia.

Saudi fears of Iran transcend the Iranian nuclear program and the possibility it could acquire a breakout capability. What really inspires fear in Saudi Arabia is Iran itself, as a geopolitical and economic threat to its place in the region and, more importantly, the reigning al-Saud family's hold on power.

Saudi Arabia's fear of Iran results from its perception of three distinct, though reinforcing threats. First, Iran poses a danger to Saudi Arabia's external security. The kingdom -- wealthy, militarily weak, sparsely populated, and occupying poor defensive terrain -- recognizes its potential vulnerability to the Persian behemoth across the Gulf. In realist terms, Iran is a natural regional hegemon with its relatively large population and rich natural resources and its rise, irrespective of direct action against Saudi Arabia, would threaten the country's status as the pre-eminent Muslim country in the Middle East. Second, Saudi Arabia sees Iran as a threat to its internal security. The kingdom has long feared Shiite Iran's supposed ability to precipitate a rebellion by Saudi Shiites -- some 10 percent of the population -- in the strategically critical and oil-rich Eastern Province. Even more fundamentally, the Islamic Republic with its alternative model of an Islamic state is perceived as a threat to al-Saud's legitimacy, which rests on the family's relationship with the Wahhabi religious establishment. Third, and finally, the reintroduction of Iranian oil and gas to global markets, as described above, would depress internal energy prices and decrease Saudi export revenue, key to its expansive welfare state.

In this context, the international sanctions regime on Iran that restrained its ambitions and capacity for power projection has become a pillar of Saudi foreign policy. From this point of view, a nuclear deal would not rehabilitate, but rather free a dangerous regional rival to harass and threaten the kingdom. That the United States, the guarantor of Saudi security, could prove the enabler of its greatest enemy makes the situation all the more devastating for Saudi Arabia. Dovetailing with the sense that the United States is abandoning the Middle East as part of its pivot to Asia, Iran's return from the cold at America's behest would represent a practically cataclysmic development in Saudi eyes.

It is clear that Saudi Arabia is viscerally opposed to any nuclear deal with Iran, but why does it matter to the United States? What can the Saudis do to damage U.S. interests if their preferences are flouted? Many observers have pointed out that Saudi Arabia's share of world oil production is steadily decreasing at the same time as the United States is tapping into new energy sources, suggesting that Saudi leverage is declining. But it is not Saudi Arabia's total supplies that permit it to prevent price spikes but, rather, its spare capacity. While it is true that the United States will soon pass Saudi Arabia in oil production, it will not be able to replicate the Saudi model and hold substantial capacity in abeyance. U.S. oil companies are unlikely to forego additional profit and, more importantly, American consumers will not tolerate a government policy that, through intentionally limiting supply, sustains higher oil prices.

From the Saudi perspective, U.S. participation in a nuclear deal with Iran could be perceived as a failure to uphold its commitment to Saudi security. As such, Riyadh may abandon its side of the bilateral bargain and take no action against a potential spike in oil prices. But this misses that in the presence of an unshackled Iran, Saudi Arabia will need U.S. protection even more and, despite its likely anger, would be foolish to upset the basic terms of the bargain. No matter how angry they become, the Saudis have no other place to go for that protection.

As is often said, to govern is to choose. But the United States does not govern the Persian Gulf and does not want to. It is an outside power that seeks to secure a few hard-nosed interests, particularly regional stability, the free flow of energy, and the prevention of terrorism. This requires balance more than governance. And quite clearly, to balance is not to choose.

There are no democratic states in the Persian Gulf and no potential ideological alignments for the United States. Iran is a repressive oligarchy that provides support for Hezbollah terrorism and insurgency throughout the region and beyond. Saudi Arabia is an even more repressive autocracy that provides support for Sunni extremists and insurgency throughout the region and beyond. So there is no superior moral or geopolitical choice for the United States. Every U.S. relationship there will necessarily be transactional rather than strategic -- regardless of the rhetoric that all sides may employ about historic ties and enduring friendship. Such bonds did not prevent the Saudis from creating an oil embargo in 1973 or from threatening "a major shift" in Saudi-U.S. relations as a result of the prospective nuclear deal with Iran.

At the end of the day, the Gulf states have always cooperated with the United States because it serves their specific, usually short-term, purposes to do so. They see a value for their domestic security in counterterrorism cooperation. They recognize that they need the U.S. presence in the region to maintain regional stability and ensure the free flow of commerce on which they all heavily depend. The United States is not considering abandoning that role, despite some regional fears to the contrary. And none of the states in the Gulf, Iran and Saudi Arabia included, have any other place to turn for another power that can fulfill that role. Saudi nuclear cooperation with Pakistan will not secure the sea lanes of the Persian Gulf. Iranian investment deals with China will not encourage the People's Liberation Army Navy to venture so far from its shores.

It makes sense therefore for the United States to keep its options open as it seeks to find a balance that supports its interests in the Persian Gulf. It should not accept the demand from any Gulf partner that the United States must choose sides. That would not be a bargain worth making.

Jeremy Shapiro is a visiting fellow with the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. From 2009 to 2013, he served in the U.S. State Department on the policy planning staff and in the bureau of European and Eurasian affairs and currently consults for the policy planning staff. The opinions and characterizations in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent officials positions of the U.S. government.

Iran and the U.S.-Saudi Bargain - By Jeremy Shapiro | The Middle East Channel

 

[Homajon]

Israelis, Saudis and the Iranian Agreement
Geopolitical Weekly
Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - 04:04

By George Friedman


A deal between Iran and the P-5+1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany) was reached Saturday night. The Iranians agreed to certain limitations on their nuclear program while the P-5+1 agreed to remove certain economic sanctions. The next negotiation, scheduled for six months from now depending on both sides' adherence to the current agreement, will seek a more permanent resolution. The key players in this were the United States and Iran. The mere fact that the U.S. secretary of state would meet openly with the Iranian foreign minister would have been difficult to imagine a few months ago, and unthinkable at the beginning of the Islamic republic.

The U.S. goal is to eliminate Iran's nuclear weapons before they are built, without the United States having to take military action to eliminate them. While it is commonly assumed that the United States could eliminate the Iranian nuclear program at will with airstrikes, as with most military actions, doing so would be more difficult and riskier than it might appear at first glance. The United States in effect has now traded a risky and unpredictable air campaign for some controls over the Iranian nuclear program.

The Iranians' primary goal is regime preservation. While Tehran managed the Green Revolution in 2009 because the protesters lacked broad public support, Western sanctions have dramatically increased the economic pressure on Iran and have affected a wide swath of the Iranian public. It isn't clear that public unhappiness has reached a breaking point, but were the public to be facing years of economic dysfunction, the future would be unpredictable. The election of President Hassan Rouhani to replace Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after the latter's two terms was a sign of unhappiness. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei clearly noted this, displaying a willingness to trade a nuclear program that had not yet produced a weapon for the elimination of some sanctions.

The logic here suggests a process leading to the elimination of all sanctions in exchange for the supervision of Iran's nuclear activities to prevent it from developing a weapon. Unless this is an Iranian trick to somehow buy time to complete a weapon and test it, I would think that the deal could be done in six months. An Iranian ploy to create cover for building a weapon would also demand a reliable missile and a launch pad invisible to surveillance satellites and the CIA, National Security Agency, Mossad, MI6 and other intelligence agencies. The Iranians would likely fail at this, triggering airstrikes however risky they might be and putting Iran back where it started economically. While this is a possibility, the scenario is not likely when analyzed closely.

While the unfolding deal involves the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany, two countries intensely oppose it: Israel and Saudi Arabia. Though not powers on the order of the P-5+1, they are still significant. There is a bit of irony in Israel and Saudi Arabia being allied on this issue, but only on the surface. Both have been intense enemies of Iran, and close allies of the United States; each sees this act as a betrayal of its relationship with Washington.

The View from Saudi Arabia
In a way, this marks a deeper shift in relations with Saudi Arabia than with Israel. Saudi Arabia has been under British and later American protection since its creation after World War I. Under the leadership of the Sauds, it became a critical player in the global system for a single reason: It was a massive producer of oil. It was also the protector of Mecca and Medina, two Muslim holy cities, giving the Saudis an added influence in the Islamic world on top of their extraordinary wealth.

It was in British and American interests to protect Saudi Arabia from its enemies, most of which were part of the Muslim world. The United States protected the Saudis from radical Arab socialists who threatened to overthrow the monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula. It later protected Saudi Arabia from Saddam Hussein after he invaded Kuwait. But it also protected Saudi Arabia from Iran.

Absent the United States in the Persian Gulf, Iran would have been the most powerful regional military power. In addition, the Saudis have a substantial Shiite minority concentrated in the country's oil-rich east. The Iranians, also Shia, had a potential affinity with them, and thereby the power to cause unrest in Saudi Arabia.

Until this agreement with Iran, the United States had an unhedged commitment to protect Saudi Arabia from the Iranians. Given the recent deal, and potential follow-on deals, this commitment becomes increasingly hedged. The problem from the Saudi point of view is that while there was a wide ideological gulf between the United States and Iran, there was little in the way of substantial issues separating Washington from Tehran. The United States did not want Iran to develop nuclear weapons. The Iranians didn't want the United States hindering Iran's economic development. The fact was that getting a nuclear weapon was not a fundamental Iranian interest, and crippling Iran's economy was not a fundamental interest to the United States absent an Iranian nuclear program.

If the United States and Iran can agree on this quid pro quo, the basic issues are settled. And there is something drawing them together. The Iranians want investment in their oil sector and other parts of their economy. American oil companies would love to invest in Iran, as would other U.S. businesses. As the core issue separating the two countries dissolves, and economic relations open up -- a step that almost by definition will form part of a final agreement -- mutual interests will appear.

There are other significant political issues that can't be publicly addressed. The United States wants Iran to temper its support for Hezbollah's militancy, and guarantee it will not support terrorism. The Iranians want guarantees that Iraq will not develop an anti-Iranian government, and that the United States will work to prevent this. (Iran's memories of its war with Iraq run deep.) The Iranians will also want American guarantees that Washington will not support anti-Iranian forces based in Iraq.

From the Saudi point of view, Iranian demands regarding Iraq will be of greatest concern. Agreements or not, it does not want a pro-Iranian Shiite state on its northern border. Riyadh has been funding Sunni fighters throughout the region against Shiite fighters in a proxy war with Iran. Any agreement by the Americans to respect Iranian interests in Iraq would represent a threat to Saudi Arabia.

The View from Israel
From the Israeli point of view, there are two threats from Iran. One is the nuclear program. The other is Iranian support not only for Hezbollah but also for Hamas and other groups in the region. Iran is far from Israel and poses no conventional military threat. The Israelis would be delighted if Iran gave up its nuclear program in some verifiable way, simply because they themselves have no reliable means to destroy that program militarily. What the Israelis don't want to see is the United States and Iran making deals on their side issues, especially the political ones that really matter to Israel.

The Israelis have more room to maneuver than the Saudis do. Israel can live with a pro-Iranian Iraq. The Saudis can't; from their point of view, it is only a matter of time before Iranian power starts to encroach on their sphere of influence. The Saudis can't live with an Iranian-supported Hezbollah. The Israelis can and have, but don't want to; the issue is less fundamental to the Israelis than Iraq is to the Saudis.

But in the end, this is not the problem that the Saudis and Israelis have. Their problem is that both depend on the United States for their national security. Neither country can permanently exist in a region filled with dangers without the United States as a guarantor. Israel needs access to American military equipment that it can't build itself, like fighter aircraft. Saudi Arabia needs to have American troops available as the ultimate guarantor of their security, as they were in 1990. Israel and Saudi Arabia have been the two countries with the greatest influence in Washington. As this agreement shows, that is no longer the case. Both together weren't strong enough to block this agreement. What frightens them the most about this agreement is that fact. If the foundation of their national security is the American commitment to them, then the inability to influence Washington is a threat to their national security.

There are no other guarantors available. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went to Moscow, clearly trying to get the Russians to block the agreement. He failed. But even if he had succeeded, he would have alienated the United States, and would have gotten instead a patron incapable of supplying the type of equipment Israel might need when Israel might need it. The fact is that neither the Saudis nor the Israelis have a potential patron other than the United States.

U.S. Regional Policy
The United States is not abandoning either Israel or Saudi Arabia. A regional policy based solely on the Iranians would be irrational. What the United States wants to do is retain its relationship with Israel and Saudi Arabia, but on modified terms. The modification is that U.S. support will come in the context of a balance of power, particularly between Iran and Saudi Arabia. While the United States is prepared to support the Saudis in that context, it will not simply support them absolutely. The Saudis and Israelis will have to live with things that they have not had to live with before -- namely, an American concern for a reasonably strong and stable Iran regardless of its ideology.

The American strategy is built on experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. Washington has learned that it has interests in the region, but that the direct use of American force cannot achieve those goals, partly because imposing solutions takes more force than the United States has and partly because the more force it uses, the more resistance it generates. Therefore, the United States needs a means of minimizing its interests, and pursuing those it has without direct force.

With its interests being limited, the United States' strategy is a balance of power. The most natural balance of power is Sunni versus Shia, the Arabs against the Iranians. The goal is not war, but sufficient force on each side to paralyze the other. In that sense, a stable Iran and a more self-reliant Saudi Arabia are needed. Saudi Arabia is not abandoned, but nor is it the sole interest of the United States.

In the same sense, the United States is committed to the survival of Israel. If Iranian nuclear weapons are prevented, the United States has fulfilled that commitment, since there are no current threats that could conceivably threaten Israeli survival. Israel's other interests, such as building settlements in the West Bank, do not require American support. If the United States determines that they do not serve American interests (for example, because they radicalize the region and threaten the survival of Jordan), then the United States will force Israel to abandon the settlements by threatening to change its relationship with Israel. If the settlements do not threaten American interests, then they are Israel's problem.

Israel has outgrown its dependence on the United States. It is not clear that Israel is comfortable with its own maturation, but the United States has entered a new period where what America wants is a mature Israel that can pursue its interests without recourse to the United States. And if Israel finds it cannot have what it wants without American support, Israel may not get that support, unless Israel's survival is at stake.

In the same sense, the perpetual Saudi inability to create an armed force capable of effectively defending itself has led the United States to send troops on occasion -- and contractors always -- to deal with the problem. Under the new strategy, the expectation is that Saudi soldiers will fight Saudi Arabia's wars -- with American assistance as needed, but not as an alternative force.

With this opening to Iran, the United States will no longer be bound by its Israeli and Saudi relationships. They will not be abandoned, but the United States has broader interests than those relationships, and at the same time few interests that rise to the level of prompting it to directly involve U.S. troops. The Saudis will have to exert themselves to balance the Iranians, and Israel will have to wend its way in a world where it has no strategic threats, but only strategic problems, like everyone else has. It is not a world in which Israeli or Saudi rigidity can sustain itself.

Israelis, Saudis and the Iranian Agreement | Stratfor

 

[Homajon]

U.S. Middle East Strategy: Back to Balancing
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/11/21/us_middle_east_strategy_back_to_balancing

Posted By Stephen M. Walt

Thursday, November 21, 2013 - 12:46 PM

As I promised in my last post, today I want to offer a somewhat different view of U.S. strategy in the Middle East. I've been traveling for the past 10 days, giving talks at several venues in the United Kingdom and attending the World Economic Forum's meeting of Global Agenda Councils in Abu Dhabi. There was a lot of discussion of America's evolving role in the world at these meetings, and I intend to revisit some of those issues in subsequent posts. But for now, a few thoughts on the Middle East, which is in the news big time these days.

For me, any discussion of U.S. strategy has to begin by acknowledging America's remarkably favorable international position in the world. In the endless quest to identify and neutralize new threats -- both real and imagined -- Americans often forget just how secure the United States is, especially compared with other states. As I've noted many times before, the United States is blessed with a large population, abundant resources, fertile land, navigable rivers, and a technologically sophisticated economy that encourages innovation. These core sources of American power are highly robust, which means that U.S. security and prosperity depend more on what happens at home than on anything that might happen abroad.

Furthermore, the United States has no serious rivals in the Western Hemisphere. It is protected -- still! -- by two vast oceans. As the French ambassador to the United States said in 1910: "The United States was blessed among nations. On the north, she had a weak neighbor; on the south, another weak neighbor; on the east, fish, and on the west, fish." Today, the United States possesses the world's most capable conventional military forces and most sophisticated nuclear arsenal, giving Washington a deterrent power that others can only envy. Indeed, the main reason the United States can roam around concerning itself with other countries' business (and interfering in various ways) is because it doesn't have to worry about defending itself against foreign invasions, blockades, and the like.

One consequence of this favorable position, by the way, is that the country routinely blows minor threats out of all proportion. I mean: Iran has a defense budget of about $10 billion (less than 1/50th of what the United States spends on national security), yet we manage to convince ourselves that Iran is a Very Serious Threat to U.S. vital interests. Ditto the constant fretting about minor-league powers like Syria, North Korea, Muammar al-Qaddafi's Libya, and other so-called "rogue states."

When we talk about U.S. strategy in the Middle East, therefore, we need to start by recognizing that the United States is in very good shape, and a lot of what happens in that part of the world may not matter very much to the country in the long run. Put differently, no matter what happens there, the United States can almost certainly adjust and adapt and be just fine.

So what are U.S. interests in the Middle East? I'd say the United States has three strategic interests and two moral interests. The three strategic interests are 1) keeping oil and gas from the region flowing to world markets, to keep the global economy humming; 2) minimizing the danger of anti-American terrorism; and 3) inhibiting the spread of weapons of mass destruction. The two moral interests are 1) promotion of human rights and participatory government, and 2) helping ensure Israel's survival.

A few comments: The strategic interests haven't changed much for decades, though the vigor with which the United States has pursued them has varied depending on circumstances. As for the moral interests, there has often been a trade-off between moral aspirations and practical strategic realities, as shown by U.S. tolerance for authoritarian regimes in various countries. Similarly, the moral basis of America's commitment to Israel has weakened over time, both because Israel has become increasingly secure from external threats (it is the strongest military power in the region at this point) and because its own character and conduct (i.e., the continued campaign to colonize the West Bank and suppress Palestinian Arab rights) is increasingly at odds with core U.S. values.

The best way to pursue these five goals -- especially the first three -- is a realist, balance-of-power policy, akin to the policy that the United States followed from 1945 to 1990. During this period, the United States acted as an "offshore balancer" in the region. It had close security ties to several countries and clear strategic interests, and the central U.S. goal was to prevent any single country -- especially the Soviet Union -- from dominating the region. So long as the Greater Middle East was divided into many separate powers, no one country could halt the flow of oil and most oil producers would have obvious incentives to sell it at the world market price.

The United States didn't need to dominate the region itself; it just had to make sure no one else did. Accordingly, the country relied on local allies for the most part, and it kept its own military forces out of the region save for brief and rare moments. Even after the Iranian revolution led to the creation of the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, the United States kept those units over the horizon and only brought them into the region when the balance of power broke down. The United States tilted toward Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War and then balanced vigorously against Iraq when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990.

After 1991, the United States departed from this strategy in two steps. First, it adopted the odd strategy of "dual containment": Instead of using Iraq and Iran to check each other, Washington took on the task of containing both. This strategy required the United States to keep large military contingents in Saudi Arabia, thereby reinforcing Osama bin Laden's animus and helping produce the 9/11 attacks. Second, George W. Bush administration adopted the even more foolish strategy of "regional transformation," which led directly to the disastrous debacle in Iraq. Apart from the direct costs, extensive U.S. interference had two obvious negative effects: It helped fuel anti-American terrorism, and it gave some regional powers additional incentives to pursue weapons of mass destruction.

Given these realities and the need to devote more strategic attention to Asia, the obvious solution for the United States is to return to its earlier strategy. This is now seen in some quarters as a "retreat" or a "withdrawal," and various U.S. client states are uttering the usual dark warnings about American "credibility" being on the line. We should not make too much of these self-serving complaints, in part because U.S. credibility is mostly their problem, not ours. But more importantly, a return to offshore balancing doesn't mean the United States does not care about the region -- the country cared plenty in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s -- it just means it is defending its interests in a smarter and more cost-effective way.

The main obstacle to this step is the United States' various "special relationships" with certain regional powers. I refer, of course, to the mostly unconditional aid and support that the country gives to Israel and to a slightly lesser degree Saudi Arabia. (One might also add Mubarak-era Egypt to that list.) Over the past 25 years or so, the United States has increasingly supported these states no matter what they have done at home or abroad and has turned a blind eye to their various actions that haven't served U.S. interests (and in many cases, that weren't good for these countries either). The underlying reasons for these "special relationships" vary, but overly intimate relations with these states have robbed U.S. diplomacy of the flexibility that is essential to a sensible regional strategy.

At the same time, the United States has also been hampered by certain long-lasting enmities with Qaddafi's Libya, Syria, Iraq, and most especially Iran. To be sure: The United States has had genuine conflicts of interest and/or values with each of these regimes and good reasons to press them to change policies that it regards as threatening or immoral. But the recurring tendency to demonize every one of these governments and to exaggerate their power has also made it harder to influence their conduct and to cooperate at those moments when interests aligned. This has been most tragically evident in the case of Iran, which reached out to the United States in the 1990s, after 9/11, in 2003, and again in 2005, only to be sharply rebuffed each time.

Given U.S. interests, the country would be much better off with a more nuanced and flexible approach. To be blunt: The United States is too close to its current allies and too hostile to some of its adversaries. That is not an argument for abandoning current allies and launching a complete diplomatic reversal (though some analysts have argued cogently along these lines), but it is an argument for a less polarized, black-and-white approach. To be specific: The United States should have normal relations with Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia instead of "special relationships." This would be better for the United States and probably better for those countries too. The United States should also have a somewhat more normal relationship with Iran: not friendship, perhaps, but one where the two governments cooperate on matters of common concern (such as Afghanistan) and bargain rationally and rigorously on matters where the two countries differ. (This approach would also take advantage of the desire for contact with America and the outside world that is widespread in Iranian society, especially among the younger population, and make it harder for the clerical regime to thwart reform by blaming its problems in the "Great Satan.")

The strategy I am outlining would also strengthen the United States' ability to shape events in the region. Over the past several decades, America's allies in the Middle East have tended to take U.S. support for granted and ignore U.S. concerns whenever it suited them. Thus, Israel has continued to build settlements despite repeated but impotent U.S. protests, and Saudi Arabia has sometimes stonewalled Washington on issues of Islamic extremism and its role in encouraging anti-American terrorism in far-flung places. Broadening diplomatic connections throughout the region would give the United States some useful leverage over its current clients, thereby facilitating its ability to get them to do what it wants. Isn't that what U.S. diplomacy is supposed to be about?

The tumult unleashed by the Arab Spring provides a final rationale for the approach I have outlined here. The Greater Middle East is in the midst of a profound upheaval whose future course is still uncertain and that is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon. Conflict is now occurring across many fault lines -- Sunni vs. Shiite, Arab vs. Persian, secular vs. Islamist, democratic vs. authoritarian, etc. -- and in ways that are beginning to shake the foundations of the political order that first took shape at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.

Given this turbulent, complex, and poorly understood situation, the last thing the United States should do is try to play referee or try to imposeits preferred political formula on these events. (The country tried to do this in Egypt, for example, and for the best reasons, and it is less popular there than ever.) The good news is that the United States is going to be in pretty good shape no matter how all this turns out, and U.S. foreign-policy elites can therefore take a somewhat more detached view of these events than is their normal tendency. The United States should not disengage, but it should not be overly eager to interfere either. Remember: The preservation of a regional balance of power is still the primary interest, and direct U.S. interference fosters anti-American extremism and the desire for weapons of mass destruction. In short, the United States should conduct its Middle East policy with a light touch rather than a heavy hand

Where Is the U.S. Headed in the Middle East? | Stephen M. Walt | Stephen M. Walt