Behind Mideast summit – the Iran factor
The Annapolis talks on Tuesday are shadowed by a nation not there.
from the November 26, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
Still, the meeting will draw participants anxious for anything that might stall Iran's hegemonic rise in the region, Makovsky says.
The reputation of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has risen in the Palestinian territories and the region as he has advocated violence over accommodation to address the Palestinians' plight. He has also skewered moderate Arab leaders for agreeing to work with Israel on peace.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has focused much of her attention this year on Iran containment, hopes to use the Annapolis meeting to "pull Syria out of Tehran's orbit," Makovsky says. As one Arab diplomat told Makovsky, the real purpose of Annapolis is to "take the Palestinian card out of Ahmadinejad's hand," he notes.
But not everyone is so sure the Annapolis meeting will have the desired geopolitical impact, while some even caution that it could end up playing into Tehran's hands.
"This is rigged for Iran to win," says David Wurmser, a former Middle East adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.
The objective of Tehran and in particular Mr. Ahmadinejad is to stoke a "civilizational struggle," pitting a weak and compliant Islam that is tethered to the West against an aggressive and resurgent Islam, Mr. Wurmser says. In that context, it actually serves Iran's purposes if a "humiliated" Arab world joins Israel at the conference table and doesn't receive anything concrete in return.
If the Saudis, Egyptians, and Jordanians are seen to "march off to Annapolis to surrender" before the US and Israel, Wurmser says, "that could be a greater gift to the Iranians than anything else Iran could achieve."
Others are not so categoric, but do see cracks in Secretary Rice's strategy of containing Iran with a relaunched Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
The idea that a convergence created by a fear of Iran could compel the parties to make unprecedented concessions has "elements of truth," says Dennis Ross, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and former peace-process coordinator for the Clinton administration. But that vision, he says, fails to grasp another reality: that Iran's rise is seen by many in the region through the "prism" of the Sunni-Shiite divide.
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