Entangled Alliances

photo credit: Stewf

It really shouldn’t come as a surprise that Iran has its own agenda in Afghanistan, but U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates seems to be cross about it anyway. From the Guardian:

It must have felt very uncomfortable for President Hamid Karzai to have his guest and “brother”, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, use a press conference in Kabul to attack Afghanistan’s main donor and ally, the United States. “They themselves created terrorists and now they’re saying that they are fighting terrorists,” said Ahmadinejad, accusing the US of playing a “double game” in Afghanistan.

Ahmadinejad was in fact returning a compliment by the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, who only hours earlier had accused Tehran of “playing a double game” of offering friendship to the Afghan government while at the same time giving “low-level support” and money to the Taliban.

Of course Iran is playing a double game, though as the article points out it’s not actually the Taliban that Iran are likely to be funding but instead anti-Taliban warlords. But in any event Iran shares a border with Afghanistan – a fact that someone should remind Robert Gates of – so obviously Iran are going to want to fund the various factions that might at some point take  control of the country, so that whatever the future holds for its government Iran has some influence over it. An even more obvious point is  that Iran are hardly going to ignore the fact that there are American soldiers prowling round the Iran-Afghahnistan border and since the relationship between Iran and America is not exactly tip-top, they’re probably going to want to make sure they have some connections in that area.

One lesson from this is that U.S. Defence Secretaries say silly things. The more  important point though is that so many of the clashes the U.S. has with Iran are a result of the deep fear and suspicion of what America has in store for it in terms of military intervention. If you’re going to sort out the relationship between the two countries, you’ve got to do something about that.

photo credit: premasagar

In a few hours time, American President Barack Obama will welcome Israel’s Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu to the White House for talks that may well signal the start of a series of negotiations that will result in that most elusive of political outcomes: an independent Palestinian state.

Of course, we’ve been here before. The history of the Middle East over the past twenty years is a series of stuttering half-chances for peace; the promise of a solution just round the corner inevitably giving way to mixed progress and disappointment. But this time the signs are really there that the time has come for a peaceful resolution. In Barack Obama, America has a president who seems to be committed to getting his hands dirty and to doing more than just utter platitudes about the peace process. Around the Middle East, leaders are beginning to show signs of being ready and willing to play a meaningful role in a negotiated settlement between Israel and Palestine. Moreover, there seems to be a growing sense amongst most of the parties involved that the current situation is no longer sustainable; that the region has run out of second chances and that there will never be a better time for an agreement that results in two states – the only solution where everybody wins.

But hanging over today’s meeting is a series of questions that that we don’t yet know the answer to: How willing is America to really apply pressure on Israel? Does Netanyahu believe in two states and if so how far is he willing to go? And the question that haunts everyone: how does Iran figure in all this? The answers to such questions may well determine whether today is the beginning of a new era, or just another false dawn.

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