Signs of that nervousness range from the attack on the Iranian Embassy in Beirut last week that killed 23 people to a recent essay by one of the Arab Gulf’s leading journalists, Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed, who wrote: “From a theoretical, political and military perspective, Saudi Arabia will have to protect itself from the Iranian regime’s nuclear program, either with a nuclear weapon or via agreements that will maintain the regional balance of power and protect Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.” Yikes.
There are so many layers to this: Iran is big — 85 million people; Saudi Arabia is small — 20 million people. Saudi Arabia has the largest oil and gas reserves in the Middle East — and Iran is right behind. If sanctions are fully eased one day, will Iran take market share away from Gulf Arabs? The Arab Gulf is primarily Sunni; Iran is Shiite. Iranians are developing indigenous nuclear technology; Sunni Arabs have none.
The Geneva talks are exposing the different interests America and its regional allies have vis-à-vis Iran, which the sanctions had been masking. All the years of sanctions allowed diverse parties with diverse interests — the U.S., Israel, Saudi Arabia, the other Gulf Arabs, Europe, Russia and China — to “pretend to be having the same discussion about Iran strategy, while disagreeing about the ultimate goal of negotiations and the role that sanctions could play in getting us there or not,” notes Daniel Brumberg, a Georgetown University professor and Middle East expert.
If the U.S. is to maintain its relationships out here, and ensure that the Iran nuclear agreement doesn’t fuel more instability, the interim and final deals have to be good ones. Sanctions should only be finally removed if we can impose on Iran a rollback of its enriched fuels and enrichment technologies, along with sufficient intrusive inspections, to make an undetectable Iranian breakout to a nuclear bomb impossible.
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