over the past week, the Asia Times Online tells a totally different story of the strategy that may lie behind the scenes of the planned negotiation between the US and Iran over the fate of Iraq. Perhaps the Bush Administration has a hidden motivation to come to some sort of agreement with Iran because of the Russian-US drift towards another cold war.
The US has been losing ground in virturally every foreign policy agenda. It's about time the Bush Administration can pursue a mutually beneficial course with a potential enemy.
"Iran's foreign policy is moving in the direction of constructive engagement on all fronts," a member of Iran's parliament, the Majlis, announced, adding that the resumption of relations with Egypt will have "positive effects on the whole region".
It is now up to Egypt to bury the hatchet and respond to Ahmadinejad's significant policy announcement. According to some Tehran political analysts, however, there are some voices within the Egyptian government who prefer the status quo, whereby Egypt can capitalize on foreign assistance as a result of its role as a counterweight to Iran, given the growing reliance of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) on "out of area" Egypt.
On the other hand, Iran's GCC policy, of pushing the arch of the common or collective security arrangement by all the Gulf states based on the principle of self-reliance, undermines Egypt's attempt to insert itself in the region's security calculus. Similarly, the US is disquieted by official GCC pronouncements that echo Iran's call for the withdrawal of foreign forces from the region.
Should Iran remain consistent on the present pattern of regional policy and succeed in helping with the security nightmare in Iraq, then the US/Israeli policy of creating a Sunni-led anti-Iran alliance in the Arab world would vanish into thin air. The process of confidence-building between Iran and the GCC states, which are in dispute with Iran over the three islands of Abu Moussa and Little and Big Tunb, is a long one, however, and Tehran must be careful not send any "mixed signals" that would eradicate the present gains. The GCC comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
[..]A shrewd "geo-economic" master stroke by Moscow, this and other energy-based initiatives aimed at making Europe rather helplessly dependent on Russia as a main energy provider undermine the United States' post-Cold War global strategy, and this is precisely where the resolution of the Iraq crisis and possibility of a detente between Iran and the US play a key role.
It is, in fact, instructive that not everyone in Moscow is thrilled about that possibility, and that may explain why Russia may be inclined to stall on a nuclear compromise, in light of alarmist commentaries by various Russian experts about the threat of a nuclear Iran. The question, then, becomes: Who has more to fear of a nuclear-armed Iran, Washington or Moscow? The answer depends to some extent on developments on the US-Russia front - will they take a turn for the better or worse?
Lest we forget, Moscow is designing a new Middle East policy and has been trying to get closer to the GCC states, and this is not necessarily in harmony with Iran's foreign policy either. From Tehran's vantage point, Russia's refusal to deliver nuclear fuel to Iran and to complete the Bushehr power plant, or to enter Iran's bidding for new power plants, has left a bitter taste with the Iranians for a long time to come, and the damage cannot be undone overnight.
The trick for Tehran is how to exploit the Washington-Moscow rift to its maximum advantage and pursue its own regional security objectives, eg, by building timely bridges with the Arab world, without sacrificing anything.
Given the UN sanctions and the continuing nuclear standoff, the answer to this question is not simple or straightforward, and the absence of the slightest balance or delicate nuance might backfire on the whole edifice of Iran's foreign policy. Iran must move all its chips on the multiple tables of diplomacy - with Arab and non-Arab neighbors, Russia, Europe and the US, in tandem with one another.
This is an exceedingly difficult task, akin to playing multiple games of chess simultaneously, with each move impacting the picture on the other chessboards. For now, there is a growing consensus that Tehran has overcome some of the basic deficiencies of a "one-dimensional" foreign policy under former president Mohammad Khatami, which pushed the arch of cooperation without adequate resort to Iran's hard power and attendant tough diplomacy.
The challenge for Ahmadinejad as he re-embraces some of the wisdom of the Khatami era by putting the accent on peaceful co-existence and dialogue is how not to recycle either that past or the more recent past of his incipient months in office, when unreconstructed sloganism appeared to have gained the upper hand.
The dictates of Iran's survival in the tough international milieu have imposed a new realism that is beginning to generate a new harvest of foreign-policy pluses for the country.
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