Stopping Iran’s destabilizing behavior is the next priority in the Mideast

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iran octopusBy: David Ignatius

The shrill Republican attacks on the Iran nuclear deal are an embar-rassment. Most global leaders share President Obama’s view that the agreement is prefer-able to any realistic alternative. It’s a diplomatic achievement that reinforces U.S. leader-ship, rather than undermining it. The damage to America would come from knee-jerk congressional rejection of the pact.

The GOP noise machine blasting the deal obscures the real question ahead, which is how to contain Iran’s meddling in the region. The right strategy is to present Tehran with a sharp choice: Either join serious negotiations to end the regional wars in Syria and Yemen, or face the prospect of much stiffer, U.S.-led resistance.

Stopping Iran’s destabilizing behavior is the priority in the Middle East, as senior Israeli, Saudi and Emirati officials agree privately, whatever the public commotion about the nu-clear deal. This essential task of confronting Tehran should be easier now that the Iranian nuclear program is capped for at least a decade. But Obama has to follow through on the regional front. Otherwise, Iran could extend its hegemony, which would harm the U.S and its allies.

“The technical side [of the nuclear agreement] is solid, but that was always our secondary concern,” one senior Gulf Arab official told me. “Our primary concern,” he said, is aggressive behavior in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, financed by an Iran that will be freed from sanctions.

What’s the best way to confront Tehran on these regional issues? As with the nuclear problem, the right strategy is a combination of pressure (including possible military force) and diplomacy.

Let’s start with military containment. This was the real theme of the Camp David meeting with Gulf Arab leaders in May. Though pooh-poohed by commentators, the gathering produced a plan to improve arms transfers, special-forces training, joint military exercises and other measures to check Iran.

Building resistance to Tehran isn’t a money problem, but one of strategy and will. The Gulf Arab countries are already outspending Iran on defense by more than $100 billion annually. They just aren’t getting much bang for their buck. That should change, with closer cooperation.

Obama has had the “slows” in Syria, in part because he didn’t want to confront Iran’s proxy force there, the Lebanese Hezbollah militia, and risk blowing up the nuclear talks. But that excuse is now gone.

The U.S. should squeeze President Bashar al-Assad harder. His hold is weakening. In southern Syria, moderate fighters trained by CIA and Jordanian intelligence officers have gained ground. The Jordanians talk of building a safe zone there, with a 21st-century version of “strategic hamlets.” In northern Syria, U.S. airstrikes have allowed Kurdish fighters to seize a strip along the Turkish border, and the Turks are deliberating whether to impose their own border-security zone.

As the U.S. has seen in the nuclear talks, such pressure tactics are valuable if they push Tehran and its friends toward diplomacy. This tipping point may be near in Syria.

Moscow finally seems willing to discuss a brokered transition. Obama told New York Times columnist Tom Friedman that after talking recently with President Vladimir Putin, “I think they [the Russians] get a sense that the Assad regime is losing a grip over greater and greater swaths of territory inside of Syria and that the prospects for a takeover or rout of the Syrian regime is not imminent but becomes a greater and greater threat by the day.”

Obama spoke in his news conference last week about including Iran in a diplomatic settlement in Syria. “We’re not going to solve the problems in Syria unless there’s buy-in from the Russians, the Iranians, the Turks, our Gulf partners. It’s too chaotic. … Iran is one of those players, and I think that it’s important for them to be part of that conversation.”

Will pressure convince Iran that its interests are served by diplomatic negotiations on Syria and Yemen? Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said in April that he would wel-come such talks. And Zarif has told Secretary of State John Kerry that Iran wants to play a different and less menacing role in the region.

But here’s the heart of the problem: Zarif doesn’t control Iran’s covert-action campaigns. They’re run by Gen. Qassem Suleimani, head of the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force.

What will convince the hardliners that it’s time to talk? Pressure, pressure, pressure … and then diplomacy. This crucial process will be much easier with the nuclear file closed.

WASHINGTON POST

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20 responses to “Stopping Iran’s destabilizing behavior is the next priority in the Mideast”

  1. 5thDrawer Avatar
    5thDrawer

    Up against a ‘Belief System’ engrained in the genes by this time … that a God says they should promote their religion to the detriment of ANY peoples who do not think the same way and follow the ‘rules’ invented by hordes of ‘Prophetic Speakers’ over centuries.

  2. William Petro Avatar
    William Petro

    the saudis are the bad guys!

    1. Michaelinlondon1234 Avatar
      Michaelinlondon1234

      The saudi’s have an evil spirit whispering in their ear called the USA.

  3. Rascal Avatar

    Iran will have to understand that future Syria will not be a free for all Hezbullah weapon transport route.

    1. Adonis Avatar

      genocidal zionist rat hallucinate about future syria

      1. Rascal Avatar

        Hey I missed you. You are very entertaining, continue please.

        1. Adonis Avatar

          genocidal zionist trash pretends that he missed the truth

          1. Comtessa Abyad Avatar
            Comtessa Abyad

            stfu shizoid

          2. Adonis Avatar

            Genocidal zionist rat hallucinate that others have mental problem like he/she whatever that thing is

          3. Adonis2 Avatar

            fuck you iranian or isis spy-idiot

          4. genocidal zionist trash squeals in raving lunacy

  4. 5thDrawer Avatar
    5thDrawer

    And How Cameron is thinking he can fix things … is Michael still in London??
    http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/07/cameron-jihadists-didn-start-911-150723081827341.html

    1. Michaelinlondon1234 Avatar
      Michaelinlondon1234

      Do you know what they left out in this?
      In 1992, adherents bombed a hotel in Aden, Yemen. In 1998, they killed
      200 by bombing US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In 2000, militants
      bombed the USS Cole, killing 17 sailors, and a day later.
      In 1992 the US was flying over Yemen bombing tribes and has been ever since.
      I had a friend that went from London in 91 as a teacher so have been aware to a certain extent of what has been going on…

      1. 5thDrawer Avatar
        5thDrawer

        When everyone thinks their books say: ‘Go forth and Multiply’ so that you can beat the ass off the other bad guys, stopping them from having more than the 2.3 kids they should be down to in the mechanized ‘health-concious’ world becomes impossible.
        ISIS-guys boink everything female to increase the eventual brainwashed warriors, but they are not much different than the general crowd with one to 4 wives having 10 or more kids. And hookers (or those raped by thugs) having babies, because the male refuses to put on the rubber boots, just dump them near places like the overflowing Tripoli Orphanage, because they can’t feed themselves let alone a baby. (other run them as a begging-business)

        And In ‘the west’ where farmers no longer need lots of sons, they say: “Import them, to have a growing economy. It’s necessary.” … because ‘Business’ demands now-computerized out-of-work house-buyers to keep increasing the profits. (Business always feels if ‘profits’ are not going up, then it’s a ‘LOSS’. That’s thanks to tax-structures, basically, that allow ‘deductions’ if ‘projected profit’ isn’t met, and ‘Market Boys’ who think it should be.) (Banks are the worst for ‘failing’ in the market when they made billions. So much BS)

        You need to change a whole mentality of illogic to stop it now. China passed the point on a ‘life/death’ scale even when Mao killed millions and they eventually went to only allowing one, because they also allowed medical care and the ‘purchase’ of food elsewhere.
        (Factory ships like the Russians have suck the Grand Banks fish stocks, while ‘Saved Seals’ eat them in huge increases of Seal populations and Canadian fishermen go west to drill for oil instead because they are ‘regulated’, but also can’t compete with floating un-taxed factories.)
        It’s always about ‘more, more, more’ Michael, and that includes the rats who keep eating themselves so they can have it all. No-one seems to ever say: ‘I have enough’.

        1. Michaelinlondon1234 Avatar
          Michaelinlondon1234

          I have raised the issue in the UK about women being treated like baby farms. You should have herd the howls of protest.
          Bottom line is I am not going to sponsor some one else’s baby farm. Response from here has been civil..Though it is going to cause indigestion for a long time. Government has changed some of its policies…..
          I was in china in ’89 for a short while. the best thing they did was the one child policy….I wish the rest of the world had followed suit. Hatred of china and the various religions who hate abortion precluded western societies from pushing family planning.
          Add in to that the idiots from the medical profession who try to save pre born children which is rapidly descending in to saving them pre conception.
          Family planning should have been done from the 70’s.
          It is why I push universal education….
          It might not be to late….

  5. Adonis Avatar

    this zionist website and its propagsndists can only dream about stopping iran and other anti imperial forces in the region

  6. OneWoman Avatar
    OneWoman

    With Obama so far up Khamenei’s backside he’s in danger of disappearing and everyone in the world screeching neocon/zionist-style “Sunnis R Evil” babble (even Greece’s Syriza’s now teamed up with Israel, citing “terrorism concerns”), the idea that anyone, least of all the clueless prat Obama, is going to stop Iran, Israel or Daesh is wishful thinking at best.
    Dick Cheney and Samuel Huntingdon must be laughing themselves silly – everyone’s now repeating their ‘Clash of Civilisations’ drivel as though it were gospel in order to justify carpet-bombing, totalitarianism and dictatorship across the Middle East – with many leftists doing so in the name of ‘anti-imperialism’ no less…

  7. Musa Abu Marzouk (Hamas) admitted that his organization was faced with serious financial
    difficulties after Iran stopped almost completely financing “Islamic
    Resistance Movement”
    According to Abu Marzouk, Iran stopped not only financial but also military support. The lack of funds from Tehran “affected the pace of recovery of the Gaza Strip”
    The
    reason for the withdrawal of support (suggested)
    was not a “nuclear agreement” but the divergence of positions on Syria. Iran and “Hezbollah”, in contrast to Hamas, supporting the government of Bashar al-Assad, but not the rebels

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