Assessments of the deal are less optimistic in the Middle East than in the West.
Whether
Iran complies with its promises or not, the deal reached by world
powers over its nuclear program will alter the Middle East dramatically,
observers and analysts say.
"I am afraid Iran will give up
something to get something else from the big powers in terms of regional
politics — and I'm worrying about giving Iran more space or a freer
hand in the region," Abdullah al-Askar, chairman of Saudi Arabia's
appointed Shoura Council, a quasi-parliament that advises the government
on policy, told the Daily Star in Lebanon. "The government of
Iran, month after month, has proven that it has an ugly agenda in the
region, and in this regard no one in the region will sleep and assume
things are going smoothly."
Western governments and the allies of
Iran praised the deal as walking the world back from a possible military
confrontation with the Islamic republic over its decades-long nuclear
program suspected of trying to build an atomic bomb.
There was
silence, however, from the capitals of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United
Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Egypt and Jordan — Arab countries whose
rulers belong to the Sunni Muslim sect.
BREAKDOWN: How the Iran deal was done
ANALYSTS: Israel has means to act against Iran
GULF STATES: Arabs not allied with Iran quiet over nuclear deal
Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was blunt on his opinion. "What was
reached in Geneva is not a historic agreement, it is a historic
mistake," Netanyahu told his Cabinet on Sunday.
President Obama
called Netanyahu later Sunday to underscore "that the United States will
remain firm in our commitment to Israel, which has good reason to be
skeptical about Iran's intentions," according to a White House
statement.
Less than a day after the deal was made in Geneva on
Sunday, there were differences over the two sides' understanding of the
deal.
Iran
President Hassan Rouhani crowed Sunday that the deal recognizes
Tehran's "right" to enrich uranium; Secretary of State John Kerry said
it does not. Members of Congress on Sunday — such as Robert Menendez,
D-N.J. who had been pushing to strengthen economic sanction against Iran
over its program — said they would hold off for now to see how things
go.
FEARS OF U.S. RETREAT
Critics say the six-month
deal does not freeze or force a rollback of Iran's production of nuclear
fuel, as several United Nations Security Council resolutions have
demanded, such as when the council called for suspension of all
enrichment. Iran can continue to enrich uranium, a process that can
make material for an atomic bomb.
Secretary of State John Kerry
told reporters this is the first stage. The next stage "will also be
even more consequential," Kerry said.
Iran agreed to put a cap on
its nuclear program and give international inspectors greater access to
currently inspected and new sites. Iran also agreed to stop producing
medium-enriched uranium, which represents 90% of the effort required to
produce weapons-grade material, and to dilute or convert that stockpile
to a different form that is harder to process to fuel a bomb.
In
return, the West agreed to provide Iran about $7 billion in relief on
sanctions on oil and banking that were meant to get Iran to suspend
production of nuclear material until international inspectors could
ascertain the program has peaceful aims, as Iran claims.
The deal
"looks clearly like the beginning of the end of the Iranian nuclear
weapons program," said Thomas Pickering, a U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations under President George H.W. Bush, and undersecretary of State
under President Clinton. "What you see in this first agreement is a
clear effort to make it harder for Iran to break out" and quickly
produce enough uranium for a bomb.
Other Middle East analysts say
that despite the U.S. role in the talks in Geneva that led to the deal,
there is concern across the Middle East that the most worrying result is
that it looks as if the United States is retreating from its
traditional role as the guarantor of security in the region.
They
say leaving Iran a threshold nuclear nation that can race across the
weapons line in a matter of weeks or months means Israel and the Sunni
nations must look more to each other to defend against Iran.
"Obama
has now announced that the United States cannot be relied upon to stand
up to Iran," says Michael Doran, who served as a Middle East adviser to
President George W. Bush. "Therefore, Israel and our Arab allies will
be forced to live by their wits."
Countries across the Middle East
are now more likely to invest in nuclear programs of their own, form
new alliances and reorient their policies to accommodate Iranian rather
than American interests, Doran and other analysts say.
And Iranian
aims in the region are not limited to having a nuclear program it
insists is for peaceful purposes even as its ruling unelected mullahs
call openly for the elimination of the "rabid-dog" Zionists of Israel.
"Iran's
bottom line is that it will trade its nuclear capability with the
recognition of its hegemony over the region, which is what has just
happened. Saudi-Iranian tensions and (tensions in) the broader Gulf
region will increase," said Nadim Shehadeh of the Royal Institute of
International Affairs, a Middle East research think tank in London.
Marwan
Bishara, senior political analyst at Al Jazeera, which is owned by the
government of the Persian Gulf state of Qatar, said the Saudis are most
alarmed by the potential U.S.-Iran detente and the rise of an
unrestrained Iran on the Middle East stage.
"Further Saudi-Iranian antagonism will lead to major sectarian escalation with incalculable price for the region," he said.
Iran
arms Hezbollah, a powerful militant group along Israel's northern
border in southern Lebanon that has fought wars with Israel. Both Iran
and Hezbollah are sending fighters to Syria to save Iran ally Bashar
Assad from Sunni Muslims who have risen against his dictatorship.
Hezbollah has thousands of missiles from Iran, according to the United
States.
Iran also has been caught sending sophisticated weaponry
to Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that controls Gaza Strip and
has fired thousands of rockets at Israel. Egypt has accused Iran of
supporting the militancy of the Muslim Brotherhood within its borders.
And Gulf States such as Bahrain say it is promoting uprisings among
their Shiite populations.
"Iran is not a threat only to Israel; it
is a threat to the whole world and especially to the Middle East," says
Prof. Avraham Diskin, a political scientist at Hebrew University in
Jerusalem.
"Iran is a Shiite country and very much interested in
dominating the area while most of the region is dominated by Sunni
regimes that are relatively open to the West," although not progressive
toward human rights.
"These regimes feel threatened and, like
Israel, have a very strong interest in blocking Iran's potential nuclear
military capabilities," he said.
And if they can't block it,
Iran's Arab neighbors in the Gulf and Egypt "may not sit and wait" to
see if Iran abides by the agreement during the next six months, he said.
Jordan,
Israel and the Sunni monarchies in the Persian Gulf see the deal as the
world letting Iran continue its nuclear work while pursuing its
ambition of becoming the region's dominant power, says Danielle Pletka, a
Middle East analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.
"The
Saudis, Kuwaitis, emiratis, Jordanians all are looking at the United
States, which has been their security umbrella, and they have a dawning
understanding like the Israelis that America no longer has their back,"
Pletka said.
The Saudis have said they will seek nuclear
capability for themselves, and "it's not ridiculous to assume" there may
be a domino effect across the region of countries seeking nuclear
weapons, she said. "I think that applies for Turkey as well."
But
Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies, said such worries are overblown.
"The
agreement reflects the Iranian desire to change their relationship with
the rest of the world, and that desire makes the Middle East safer,"
Alterman said.
Saudi King Abdullah has invited Rouhani to Saudi
Arabia for the annual hajj pilgrimage. "You can foresee an effort to
bring them closer."
There are signs that the United States is
pulling back from the Middle East. Obama did an about-turn on military
action against Syria even though he said a strike was necessary after
Syrian forces crossed Obama's "red line" by using chemical weapons. He
has welcomed a major role for Russia in negotiations in the Middle East.
Obama
has cooled the once-strong relationship that the United States had with
Egypt, the most populous Arab state in the Middle East, over the
Egyptian military's ousting of an elected Muslim Brotherhood
government. Obama canceled aid and joint military exercises with Egypt,
which has openly rejected U.S. demands for quick elections, despite
shared interests in fighting terrorism and maintaining Egypt's peace
with Israel.
However, the United States maintains strong relations
with Israel and Gulf Arab states: The U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet is based in
Bahrain and Saudi Arabia earlier this year inked a $60 billion deal for
high-tech U.S. weaponry.
MIXED RECORD ON NUCLEAR DIPLOMACY
Aaron
David Miller, a former U.S. Middle East peace negotiator and adviser to
Republican and Democratic secretaries of State, says "it's way too
early" to say the agreement will transform power relationships in the
region.
It has brought comparisons, however, to one of the singular achievements, and failures, of U.S. nuclear diplomacy.
The
administration of George W. Bush persuaded Libya to eliminate its
nuclear program entirely in the aftermath of the 2003 U.S. invasion of
Iraq. Libya surrendered all of its nuclear weapons equipment to
international inspectors, and 500 tons worth of centrifuges for uranium
enrichment and other technology was shipped to the U.S. nuclear weapons
plant at Oak Ridge, Tenn., for destruction.
But in trying to end
North Korea's nuclear program in 2008, Bush inked a deal similar to
Obama's in Iran that depended on the North Koreans to allow greater
inspections, suspend some uranium enrichment and cease work on a
plutonium plant.
Bush removed North Korea from the U.S. list of
state sponsors of terrorism in return for its agreement. Just a few
months later, North Korea surprised the world when it tested its second
nuclear device, in violation of the pact. In February 2013, it exploded a
third one.
Contributing: Michele Chabin in Jerusalem, Mona Alami in Beirut and Jabeen Bhatti in Berlin
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