MIDDLE EAST POWER SHIFTING TO TURKEY AND IRAN
by Alastair Crooke
Christian Science Monitor
November 25, 2009, Wednesday
While the United States and Europe have been struggling to find a path
forward in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Afghanistan, and Iran,
the strategic ground upon which their assumptions about the region
rest has begun to shift dramatically.
Most significantly, Turkey has finally shrugged off the straitjacket
of a tight American alliance, grown virtually indifferent to beckoning
European Union (EU) membership, and turned its focus toward its former
Ottoman neighbors in Asia and the Middle East.
Though not primarily meant as a snub to the West, this shift does
nonetheless reflect growing discomfort and frustration with US and
EU policy, from the support of Israel’s action in Gaza to Iran and
the frustrated impasse of the European accession process. It also
resonates more closely with the Islamic renaissance that has been
taking place within Turkey.
If Turkey continues successfully down this path, it will be as
strategically significant for the balance of power in the region as
the emergence of Iran as a preeminent power thanks to the collapse
of the Soviet Union and the later destruction of Sunni dominance in
Iraq by the US invasion.
In recent months, a spate of new agreements have been signed by
Turkey with Iraq, Iran, and Syria that suggest a nascent commonality
of political vision. A new treaty with Armenia further signals how
seriously Ankara means its "zero problem" good-neighbor policy.
More important, however, the agreements with Iraq, Iran, and Syria
reflect a joint economic interest. The "northern tier" of Middle
Eastern states are poised to become the principal supplier of natural
gas to central Europe once the Nabucco pipeline is completed – thus not
only displacing Russia in that role but gradually eclipsing the primacy
of Saudi Arabia as a geostrategic kingpin due to its oil reserves.
Taken together with the economic stagnation and succession crisis
that has incapacitated Egypt, it is clear that the so-called moderate
"southern tier" Middle Eastern states that have been so central to
American policies in the region are becoming a weak and unreliable
link indeed.
Political players in the region can’t but notice the drift of power
from erstwhile US allies Egypt and Saudi Arabia toward the northern
tier states, and, as is the way in the Middle East, are starting to
readjust to the new power reality. This can be most clearly seen
in Lebanon today, where a growing procession of former US allies
and critics of the Syrian government, including Prime Minister Saad
Hariri, Walid Jumblat, and, reportedly, some of the March 14 movement’s
Christian leaders, are making their pilgrimage to Damascus.
That message is not lost on others in the region.
If the Obama administration is not fully cognizant of these
developments, its awareness will surely be raised as it attempts to
mobilize the world for a new round of punitive sanctions against Iran.
These sanctions are likely to fail not only because Russia and China
won’t go along in any serious way, but precisely because the much
touted "alliance of moderate pro-Western Arab states" is turning out
to be a paper tiger.
Given the shifting balance of power I’ve discussed, the "moderates"
are in no position to seriously confront Iran and its allies. Hopes
that the recent Saudi bombing of the Houthi rebels in Yemen would
incite sectarian Sunni hostility toward Shiite Iran have not been
realized. On the contrary, the Saudis’ action has been clearly seen
in the region as a partisan and tribal intervention in another state’s
internal conflict.
In Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has not only embraced
the legitimacy of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election, but has insisted
as well on the right of Iran as a sovereign nation to enrich uranium.
Unlike Western leaders, he doesn’t at all seem inordinately worried
about Iran’s course.
The US and Europe are going to have to grapple with the pending
replacement of its southern tier allies in the Middle East by the
rising clout of the northern tier states. It would be best to make
this adjustment sooner rather than later. None of the issues that
matter to the West – the nuclearization of Iran, Israel’s security,
the future of energy supplies – can be solved by ignoring the emergent
reality of a new Middle East.
Alastair Crooke, a former MI6 British intelligence agent in the
Middle East, is author of "Resistance: The Essence of the Islamist
Revolution."