The Obama administration seems to be moving towards a more rigid stance in its attitude to Iran, induced by at least four factors that would not have seemed so intractable when he assumed office a little over a year ago. The first has been the development of a certain sentiment strengthened by strong attacks from the Republican Party that the President appears to have lost his way in his management of the economy. Obama, having appeared to have halted the slide to financial disintegration that seemed to be overshadowing the country’s economy in 2009, now finds himself the object of a strong Republican assault. He is now charged with an inability to halt the decline in employment trends, and of creating a system of “big government” more characteristic of European socialist and social democratic systems. In the face of these attacks, his holding back of his health plan, coupled with his attacks on bankers and their bonuses, has made him look as if he is on the psychological defensive and in retreat. The loss of Senator Edward Kennedy’s Massachusetts seat in the recent election will not have helped the President’s situation.
Secondly, in foreign relations, what are seen as his original entreaties to Iran to accede to proposals he made soon after his assumption of power, are now perceived as having been rebuffed by the Iranian government. This rebuff relates both to his proposal that a new “open hand” by the American administration should be met by a more positive response by Iran as far as its relations in the Middle East and particularly Iraq are concerned; and, further, that the US and the United Nations’ proposals on the ways in which Iran should give clear indications that it is also positively desisting from putting itself in a position to produce nuclear weapons, should be clearly adhered to. Iran’s announcement last week that it has made a further step in its development of new methods for nuclear fission for peaceful purposes has clearly been rejected by US opinion, and the President is being pressured to be more forceful in this matter.
Thirdly, and related to this, is the continual diplomatic pressure being exercised, directly and through certain sections of US public opinion, by the Israeli government, to the effect that it is more and more convinced that Iran is rapidly proceeding to develop a nuclear capability. The administration seems to feel that it must publicly counter this Israeli allegation, particularly as it is being parlayed by the Republicans, up to former Vice President Dick Cheney, as supporting their view of Iran and its potential for nuclear aggression. It must feel also that the necessity to maintain a balance in domestic political relations vis-à-vis Israel, means that it must now show itself tougher against the Iranians. And indeed this reflects the strategy which candidate Obama demonstrated, particularly during his pre-election visit to Israel. His failure to influence Israeli Premier Netanyahu during the latter’s post-election visit to the United States, will have been reinforcing this stance at this time of Republican pressure.
Fourthly, there are America’s relations with China influencing the electorate in attitudes to both domestic and external relations. The People’s Republic has steadfastly refused to consider any immediate changes in its stance on the exchange rate between the renminbi and the dollar. It has taken a hostile attitude to what has really been a norm of American weapons sales to Taiwan, even when the President has withheld certain weaponry requested by Taiwan. It has been protesting the decision of the President to meet with the Dalai Lama on his forthcoming visit to the United States. And it has steadfastly refused to accede to the President’s wish that China put pressure on the Iranian government to come into line with the United Nations on the nuclear issue.
This week, as the Iranians continued to congratulate themselves on their new nuclear fission initiatives in the course of celebrating the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution, the frustration of the United States administration would seem to be beginning to boil over, and therefore to indicate to American public opinion that it is no pushover. Indications of this would seem to have come in statements from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on her visit to the Middle East. Insisting that nuclear fission developments in Iran now pose a direct threat to the states of the Middle East, she asserted that they had three options: “They can just give in to the threat; or they can seek their own capabilities, including nuclear; or they can ally themselves with a country like the United states that is willing to defend them.”
Students of the Middle East in the post-World War II period of the Cold War will recall that the real lack of success which United States diplomacy had during that era, when it sought to establish a number of alliances in different regions of the world directed at curbing Soviet influence, was the then Truman administration’s attempt to establish a Middle East Defence Organisation to parallel what came to be known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the South East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO), the Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO), and the United States’ ANZUS Treaty with Australia and New Zealand. The proposal for a MEDO was steadfastly resisted by President Nasser, then fanning the flames of Arab nationalism, though the US subsequently brought the more limited Baghad Pact into effect. But the more suspicious among the populations of the Middle East will certainly see the current Clinton alternatives as a desire to bring back the old days.
The Secretary of State has also made another link, not unfamiliar to long-time observers, with respect to the tendency of authoritarian regimes to be inclined to be aggressive and to obtain and use whatever weapons are useful in pursuing such a course. On this basis, she argued over the weekend, enforcing United Nations’ sanctions has become ever more necessary, since Iran has been “drifting towards a military dictatorship, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards seizing control of large swaths of Iran’s political, military and economic establishment,” and that “the Government in Iran, the Supreme Leader, the President, the Parliament, is being supplanted and … Iran is moving towards a military dictatorship.”
No doubt to assure various states, even allies like Saudi Arabia, that the US is not giving any encouragement to the hawks in the Israeli cabinet who certainly hold this view, Secretary Clinton also asserted that the United States has no plans to carry out a military strike against Iran, but has at the same time insisted on the link between military dictatorship and the potential for its use of nuclear weapons in order to seek to persuade unwilling members of the UN, and no doubt China in particular, that the strongest UN-backed sanctions are now necessary in order to ensure that the Iranians “align themselves with international norms and rules and re-enter as full members of the international community.”
No doubt, however, the Chinese, and lukewarm Middle Eastern states will be saying that they have only not too long ago heard such sentiments expressed about themselves. The sentiment among such states is that the domestic arrangements of a state are to be left to the populations of the states themselves to settle, as China now seems to be saying about the Sudan government and the situation in Darfur.
