The Guardian (Charlottetown)

After the Iran nuclear deal

- Gwynne Dyer Gwynne Dyer is an independen­t journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

The thing to bear in mind about Tuesday’s deal between Iran and the P5+1 countries (the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China) is that without it Iran could get nuclear weapons whenever it wants in a short time. It has the technologi­es for enriching uranium, it could make the actual bombs any time it likes (every major country knows how), and the sanctions against Iran could not get much worse than they are now.

If you don’t like the current deal, and you really believe that Iran is hell-bent on getting nuclear weapons, then your only remaining option is massive air strikes on Iran. Not even the Republican Party stalwarts in the U.S. Congress are up for committing the U.S. Air Force to that folly, and Israel without American support simply couldn’t do it on its own.

Then what’s left? Nothing but the deal. It doesn’t guarantee that Iran can never get nuclear weapons. It does guarantee that Iran could not break the agreement without giving everybody else at least a year to respond before the weapons are operationa­l. Sanctions would snap back into place automatica­lly, and anybody who thinks air strikes are a cool idea would have plenty of time to carry them out.

So the deal will survive. Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu can fulminate about how it is a “an historic mistake” that will give Tehran “a sure path to nuclear weapons,” but he cannot stop it.

Netanyahu is obsessive about Iran, but even his own intelligen­ce services do not believe that Tehran has actually been working on nuclear weapons in the past decade. The Israeli prime minister has burned all his bridges with U.S. President Barack Obama, and his Republican allies in the U.S. Congress cannot stop the deal either.

John Boehner, the speaker of the House of Representa­tives, said that the deal will “hand a dangerous regime billions of dollars in sanctions relief while paving the way for a nuclear Iran," and he can probably muster a majority in Congress against it. (Congress, as Washington insiders put it, is “Israeliocc­upied territory.”) But he cannot muster the two-thirds majority that would be needed to override Obama’s inevitable veto.

There will be a 60-day delay while Congress debates the issue, but this deal will go through in the end. So far, so good – but this is not happening in a vacuum. What are the broader implicatio­ns for Middle Eastern politics?

Ever since the victory of the Islamic revolution 36 years ago, Iran and the United States have been bitter enemies. They have not suddenly become allies, but they are already on good speaking terms. Since almost all of America’s allies in the Arab world see Iran as a huge strategic threat, they are appalled by the prospect of a U.S.-Iran rapprochem­ent.

The highest U.S. priority in the Middle East now is to prevent Iraq and Syria from falling into the hands of Islamic State and its equally extreme rival, the Nusra Front. Iran is giving both the Syrian and the Iraqi government­s military support that is essential to their survival, so there is obviously the potential for closer U.S.-Iranian cooperatio­n here.

By contrast Saudi Arabia and Turkey, currently America’s two most important allies in the region, are pouring money and weapons into the Nusra Front in Syria, which is why it has been winning so many battles against the Assad regime in recent months. The prospect of an Islamist regime in power in Damascus is acceptable to Riyadh and Ankara, but it is deeply unwelcome in Washington.

So yes, a grand realignmen­t of American alliances in the Middle East is theoretica­lly possible now that the long cold war between the US and Iran is over. In practice, however, it is most unlikely to happen. The longstandi­ng military and economic ties between Washington and its current allies will probably triumph over cold strategic logic, and American policy in the Middle East will continue to be the usual muddle.

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