{"id":25057,"date":"2017-10-14T13:02:38","date_gmt":"2017-10-14T17:02:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joshualandis.com\/blog\/?p=25057"},"modified":"2017-10-16T04:01:27","modified_gmt":"2017-10-16T08:01:27","slug":"u-s-effort-rollback-iran-will-cause-conflict-failed-states-joshua-landis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joshualandis.com\/blog\/u-s-effort-rollback-iran-will-cause-conflict-failed-states-joshua-landis\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s Iran Policy is More about Rollback Than Nukes; It Will Cause More Failed States – by Joshua Landis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trump’s Iran Policy is More about Rollback Than Nukes; It Will Cause More Failed States<\/strong>
\nby Joshua Landis
\nSyria Comment<\/em> – Oct 14, 2017<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The renewed US offensive against Iran is not so much\u00a0about its nuclear capability or even its missile program; it is about\u00a0Iran rollback and hobbling its economy.<\/p>\n

Ever since President Obama signed the Iran agreement, howls of disapproval were heard from both Israel and a number of Gulf States,\u00a0which\u00a0were not dismayed so much at\u00a0the sunset clause on Iran’s nuclear refinement as they were at Iran’s\u00a0escape from economic sanctions. The real danger, in their eyes,\u00a0is Iran’s economic break out and potential success. The more money Iran has, the more it can consolidate the success of its Shiite allies in the region: Hezbollah, the Syrian government and the Iraqi government.<\/p>\n

President Trump’s latest announcement follows increased U.S. sanctions on both Hezbollah and Syria, as well as increased aid to Syria\u2019s Kurds in their effort to expand territorially. It is the latest in a policy of rollback that has been\u00a0developing for some time. It is a policy that both Saudi Arabia and Israel have been pushing on Trump. It is one that also suits his personality\u00a0as well as the inclinations of his military advisers because it means supporting friends and hurting enemies. It represents the opposite of Obama’s effort at balancing Sunnis and Shiites along with Saudi Arabia and Iran, not to mention his effort to distance the U.S., ever so slightly, from Israel.<\/p>\n

Although, the much ballyhooed \u201cland bridge\u201d from Iran to Lebanon through Iraq and Syria cannot be severed by the US army, a high price for building it can be exacted against Iran and its Shiite allies. They can be weakened economically, which is the point of scuttling the Iran deal. The West is also likely to boycott any reconstruction effort in Syria<\/a>. The new anti-Iran policy will have a profound and far reaching impact on the region. It will ratchet up Sunni-Shiite hostility as well as beggar more countries.<\/p>\n

1. The US can rollback Iran by increasing its military and diplomatic support for the Kurds. They will\u00a0be drafted into\u00a0a new role of fighting Iranian influence, now that their role in fighting ISIS is nearing completion. Indeed,\u00a0right wing\u00a0think tanks in Washington, such as the Institute for the Study of War, are pushing just such a Kurdish led war against the “Iranian back government of Iraq” in their latest publication: The “war after ISIS<\/a>\u00a0begins in Iraq<\/a>.”<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Kurds\u00a0can be used to push back against Iran\u2019s Shiite allies in Baghdad and Damascus. The US will line up with the Kurds in their effort to acquire territory and\u00a0fossil fuel resources over which they are competing with Arab neighbors in places such as the Euphrates valley. The US has recently warned Syrian forces not to come north of the Euphrates, even to fight ISIS. This is done to deny the Assad regime the\u00a0cluster of ISIS held gas fields north of the Euphrates<\/a> that Assad needs to fund reconstruction. The US seems determined to help the YPG (pro-US, Kurdish-led forces) capture the gas fields for itself, despite the fields’ location in Arab-majority regions. The US presence in Syria will become quasi-permanent as the US commits itself to shoring up an ever larger state for the Kurds. They do not have an air force and cannot compete against either the Turkish or Syrian armies without continued US backing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

2. An expanded US alliance with Kurdish nationalism will further alienate Turkey, driving Ankara deeper into alliance with Iran and Russia.<\/p>\n

3. Iran\u00a0is unlikely to\u00a0back away from this challenge. It will escalate. Let\u2019s explore how it might escalate.<\/p>\n

Until recently, Iran believed that it had won in the northern Middle East by securing victory for Hezbollah, the Assad regime, and the Shiites\u00a0of Iraq\u00a0against ISIS and the Sunni Arab rebels of Syria and Iraq. In fact, the US was in alliance with Iran in its fight against ISIS, until now. Nasrallah, Assad and Abadi have all been crowing about their common victory and success. They believed that they had come through the storm\u00a0to build a new security architecture in the Levant: one that links the northern tier of pro-Iranian Arab states in a common front against their Sunni, Israeli, and American rivals. (It\u00a0worth recalling\u00a0that there are more Shiite Arabs collectively in these three countries than there are Sunni Arabs, so the victory of Shia forces is neither unexpected nor solely due to the success of US and Russian air power in killing Sunni rebel forces in Iraq and Syria.) To consolidate their victory, Shiites have recently been seeking to smooth over some of the harsher sectarian animosities that had grown up in wartime. Visits were arranged between Iraqi Shiite politicians (Sadr) and Saudi Arabia as well as Iranian mullahs and Saudi clerics. But efforts at diplomacy, reconstruction, and a return to politics as usual will come to a quick stop.<\/p>\n

a. Iran will return to its sectarian cultural offensive to mobilize its allies. It will fight rollback. Saudi Arabia and its allies are mobilizing as well. We should see its spat with Qatar as part of this effort.
\nb. Iran and allies may blow up US troops in Iraq & Syria. An Oct. 12 Wapo article By Kareem Fahim and Liz Sly suggests just that:<\/p>\n

A roadside bomb that killed an American soldier in Iraq this month was of a particularly lethal design not seen in six years.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

c. The Yemen war will surely be a fruitful battleground, scuttling hope of diplomatic or political progress toward a de-escalation.
\nd. Libya too.<\/p>\n

There are few American troops in the region, so the US can get the best of Iran in most of these areas, but US success\u00a0is likely to\u00a0be Pyrrhic.<\/p>\n

New sanctions and bounties on Hezbollah leaders<\/a>, Syrian businessmen and politicians, and on the IRGC will gum the efforts of the countries of the Levant to pull out of their downward economic and political spiral.\u00a0The US-Turkish relationship\u00a0seems bound to go from bad to worse. Of course, Erdogan is to blame for much of this, but it takes two to tango. By siding with Kurdish nationalism, the US has hastened Turkey\u2019s lurch toward Russia and Iran. I believe that Syria\u2019s Kurds deserve their autonomy and eventual independence, but now that they have won against ISIS, the time is ripe for negotiations and diplomacy, not escalation. The Kurds should be trying to consolidate their victory, not expand it.\u00a0The US should be helping the\u00a0Kurds to\u00a0open negotiations with Turkey and Assad, not escalate conflict.<\/p>\n

Rollback will produce more failed states in the region. Iran is vulnerable, as are all the other states of the region. The Iranian economy grew by 6% in 2016<\/a> and is expected to grow another 5% this year, according to Iran’s Central Bank. $8 billion of foreign direct investment has been attracted to Iran since sanctions were lifted. Only $32 billion in FDI had been secured in the previous 18 years. Iranian officials estimate that they need 1 million new jobs per year to dry up the 3.4 million unemployed people. Iran has been missing its earlier targets of 350,000 new jobs per year.<\/p>\n

Renewed and increased sanctions on Iran, Lebanon, and Syria are unlikely to produce compromise and agreement. Rather, they\u00a0will produce escalation and entrenchment. The human misery of the region will increase.\u00a0For the first time in almost a century Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon are on friendly terms. This presents them with the opportunity to build common oil and gas pipelines, highway networks and trade. The US should be allowing the\u00a0countries of the region to rebuild and to produce more economic wealth, not attempting to thwart it. In the long run, such a spoiler policy will produce less democracy, less security, and more radicalization. How does\u00a0the US\u00a0define success in the region?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trump’s Iran Policy is More about Rollback Than Nukes; It Will Cause More Failed States by Joshua Landis Syria Comment – Oct 14, 2017 The renewed US offensive against Iran is not so much\u00a0about its nuclear capability or even its missile program; it is about\u00a0Iran rollback and hobbling its economy. Ever since President Obama signed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25066,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20,39,256,15,22,44,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hizbullah","category-iran","category-isis","category-israel","category-lebanon","category-turkey","category-us"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nTrump's Iran Policy is More about Rollback Than Nukes; 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