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In a recent interview with the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, the US secretary of defence, Ashton Carter, harshly criticised his country’s Arab Gulf allies for their eagerness to “build show-horse air forces” when they needed to be more like the Iranians who are “in the game, on the ground”.
He was obviously referring to Iran’s meddling in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. Carter said in the same interview that he rebuked the Gulf Cooperation Council states privately: “Guys, you come and complain to us but you’re not in the game. You have to get in the game.”
Had the United States listened to its Gulf allies’ advice since the beginning of the Arab uprisings there would be no sinister game that Carter could criticise the council for not playing. In fact it is Washington that should be criticised for no longer having a real game plan in the Middle East.
For the past four years, Saudi and Turkish officials have been lobbying Washington for a no-fly zone to limit Bashar al-Assad’s slaughter of his own people, and for a military intervention to topple the Iran-Russia-backed dictator. These calls went unheeded in Washington, where the administration’s policy has been disengagement rather than providing a coherent strategy to address the increasingly chaotic security architecture of the entire Middle East.
When Assad repeatedly used chemical weapons against his own people, President Obama threatened him with airstrikes. When Assad defied Obama’s threat and used chemical weapons yet one more time, Obama first hid behind Congress, and then gladly took a face-saving initiative from none other than Assad’s patron, Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.
But when it came to the flawed Iran deal, the president doggedly pursued it against the interests of America’s historic allies in the region. The inevitable aftermath was the recently witnessed intensification of Iran’s destructive interference in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon.
In the short term, the deal is expected to release billions of dollars of frozen assets which the regime in Iran will use in backing more destructive activities by Hezbollah and the Houthis. In the long term, Iran is likely to increase its undue influence over the lives of millions in Arab lands – a prospect that will have a further destabilising effect in the region.
In reproaching the Gulf Cooperation Council for not being more assertive, Carter conveniently ignores the Saudi-led military and political effort to restore Yemen’s internationally recognised government and prevent the country from turning into a completely failed state. This, after all, was an effort that came in no small part as a response to Obama’s mantra demanding that US allies in the region learn to sort out their own problems independently as “America cannot solve all of the world’s problems”.
As to the reason why Saudi and the Gulf Cooperation Council’s efforts in the fight against Isis have been perceived as not being as intense as their efforts in Yemen, the answer is twofold.
First, the international coalition’s strategy in the fight against Isis has failed as it becomes clearer that in order to remove Isis, Assad has to go. Second, with the Houthi threat at its border, Saudi Arabia has to efficiently prioritise its interventions to preserve its own security and avoid a Yemen controlled entirely by an Iranian proxy militia on its doorstep.
In addition, Saudi Arabia is faced with the challenge of fighting Isis’s terrorism on its own soil.
This type of prioritisation would have done wonders for the White House had it formulated a concrete plan to swiftly deal with Assad and set the stage for a transition in Syria well before so-called Islamic State took large swaths of Iraq and Syria, and well before other extremist groups such as Jabhat al Nusra grew to the level it is at today.
It is precisely due to US inaction in the region that Russia has placed itself as the military gatekeeper in the heart of the Middle East, undoing the main dividend of the cold war – Russian disengagement from the Middle East.
The concrete result today of this sinister turn of events is that the White House has made America’s entire Syria policy – and its allies’ regional security – hostage to the whims of Russia.
Arab states are often criticised for deflecting blame and avoiding responsibility for their actions. It seems that Mr Carter has become too acquainted with that tactic. Mr Secretary, your allies are more than willing to play, but they need a game plan. Do you have one?