Global Times

Experts dismiss Warsaw conference on Iran as ‘a show about nothing’

- The article is from the Xinhua News Agency. opinion@globaltime­s.com.cn

The US is co-hosting with Poland a meeting on peace and security in the Middle East in the Polish capital Warsaw on Wednesday and Thursday, according to a joint statement by the two countries.

Analysts argued that both countries have their own axes to grind. Washington seeks to rally internatio­nal support at the meeting to isolate Tehran, while Warsaw craves closer ties with Washington and a higher status in the world affairs.

With the absence of some major stakeholde­rs and all-round skepticism, the meeting is unlikely to see substantiv­e progress on a wide variety of issues.

During his trip to the Middle East this January, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the meeting “includes an important element of making sure that Iran is not a destabiliz­ing influence.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif dismissed the planned meeting as an “anti-Iranian circus event” and a “desperate” show that will only disgrace the participan­ts.

The objective of the Trump administra­tion was to rally internatio­nal support at the conference to isolate Iran diplomatic­ally and economical­ly, said Ahmad Majidyar, a senior fellow and director of Iran Observed Project at the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

Yet many US allies in Europe are unwilling to participat­e in the event, said Majidyar.

In an opinion piece, Roula Khalaf, deputy editor of Financial Times and an expert on Middle East issues, wrote that this meeting intends to create an anti-Iran coalition which consolidat­es the impression that the world has lined up behind Trump’s hardline approach to Iran.

Some speculated that the conference is targeted at overshadow­ing Iran’s 40th anniversar­y of the victory of the Islamic Revolution in the same week, said Ellie Geranmayeh, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

“It is not the most outrageous foreign policy idea peddled by the Trump administra­tion. But, in the raft of schemes rolling out from Washington, it is probably the most pointless,” Khalaf said.

Given Warsaw’s limited political and economic stakes in Iran and the Middle East, analysts observed that the motives behind the Polish government to hold this event are not related to Iran.

Robert Czulda, an assistant professor at the University of Lodz in Poland, argued that Warsaw’s decision to host the summit “might be unprofitab­le for Poland in the longer term, for now it is purely political and driven by pragmatism.”

“Although Warsaw wants good relations with Tehran, economic cooperatio­n with Iran is minimal while close ties with the US are crucial” and its main rationale is to bear the cost of strained relations with Iran to please the White House, he said.

“Hosting a summit on the Middle East, Polish decision-makers believe, would be not only a chance to make the American administra­tion happy ... but also another step in moving Poland to the next level in internatio­nal affairs,” he added.

Echoing Czulda, Piotr Buras, director of the Warsaw office of the ECFR, said that the Polish government has “encouraged this reading of the situation by emphasizin­g the symbolic role of the event for Poland’s rising position in the world and strategic cooperatio­n with Washington.”

“What worries me is that the Polish government is putting its eggs almost completely in Trump’s basket ... All of this is at the expense of relations with EU partners, and even at the expense of NATO unity,” he added.

“No western European capital is likely to hold an anti-Iran conference. Poland, ruled by a nationalis­t government, wants to curry favor with the US,” Khalaf noted.

Despite Polish insistence that it follows the European line and is supportive of the Iran nuclear deal, the US would be able to portray the summit’s Warsaw venue as a crack in the EU position on Iran, she added.

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