MIDEAST'S UNDECLARED WAR

From Arab News April 22, 2006, by Amir Taheri ...

Every decade produces a word or a phrase that is sure to provoke commotion whenever it is pronounced....the current favorite phrase has been "regime change."

...The average citizen has been persuaded that even talking of "regime change" must be regarded as the eighth deadly sin.

...The Middle East today is passing through what historians describe as "disequilibrium". This happens when the status quo is shattered while a new one has not yet been formed.
So, who is going to create a new equilibrium and shape a new status quo in the Greater Middle East? he Arab states, still recovering from the shock of Iraq, plagued by internecine feuds, and preoccupied with Israel, offer no project. Turkey, one of the region's leading powers, has turned its face away from it in the hope of joining Europe. For obvious reasons, Israel is also out of this game.

That leaves only the United States and the Islamic republic to make rival bids for reshaping the region.

The real question, therefore, is simple: Will the new Middle East, which is bound to emerge sooner or later, be an American one, an Iranian one or an Irano-American one?

The United States, at least as long as President George W. Bush is in charge, regards the shaping of a friendly Middle East not only as a good thing in itself but also as vital for American security. The Bush Doctrine is based on the axiom that democracies do not export terrorism or start wars against other democracies. The strategic interests of the US, therefore, dictate that hostile regimes be replaced by friendly ones.

... the Islamic republic is determined not to allow the US to succeed in the region.
In every single country of the region — from Pakistan to Morocco — the US and the Islamic republic are engaged in almost daily political, diplomatic and, at times, even proxy military, combat, with varying degrees of intensity. The Islamic republic is actively engaged in sabotaging US plans for Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and has revived its dormant networks in more than a dozen Arab countries. It has to do so because the emergence of a pro-American Middle East would mean the death of the Khomeinist ideology and its global ambitions.

There are only two ways to end this undeclared war between US and the Islamic republic.
The first is a Yalta-like agreement between Washington and Tehran to divide the Middle East into zones of influence, to set out the rules of the game, and to establish red lines. That would allow a new status quo to be shaped on the basis of a new balance of power. The model for such an arrangement is that of the Cold War between the West and the now defunct USSR that ensured Europe's stability for almost half a century.

But even then there is no guarantee that the two ideological adversaries, the Western democracies on the one hand and the Islamic republic on the other, will not pursue a global, low-intensity conflict just as was the case between the Soviet camp and the West throughout the Cold War. Another problem, of course, is that the other countries of the region — the Arab states, Pakistan, Turkey, the Caspian Basin nations, and Israel — might not be jubilant about an Irano-American condominium, and may try to undermine it.

The second way to end the undeclared war between the US and the Islamic republic is, you guessed it, regime change.

...Is regime change possible in either Tehran or Washington? The answer is: Yes.

One could imagine a new Jimmy Carter in the White House who would decide that it was no business of the United States to reshape the Middle East and that it would be better to allow "the natives" in the region to concoct their own witches' brew.

To achieve regime change in Washington, Tehran should do all it can to discredit the Bush Doctrine and to portray Afghanistan and Iraq not as successes, but as total failures. On that score the Islamic republic has many actual or potential allies inside and outside the US who, for different reasons, want Bush to fail and the US to be humiliated. This is why President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has based his foreign policy on a simple stratagem: Waiting Bush out in the hope that his successor will run away from the Middle East.

At the other end of the spectrum, the US, were it to adopt a policy of regime change toward the Islamic republic, something it has not done yet, would find many allies inside and outside Iran.
But even then regime change need not mean military invasion. The way change happened in Kabul was different from the way it happened in Baghdad. And, were it to happen in Tehran, it would again be different. Nor should we assume that a policy of regime change should be put into immediate effect. For a range of reasons that might not be possible, or even desirable, at this particular moment in time.

The important thing is to realize that the Middle East will not be out of crisis until one side gives in.