Syria, Iran and the Balance of Power in the Middle East / STRATFOR

U.S. troops are in the process of completing their withdrawal from Iraq by the end-of-2011 deadline. We are now moving toward a reckoning with the consequences. The reckoning concerns the potential for a massive shift in the balance of power in the region, with Iran moving from a fairly marginal power to potentially a dominant power. As the process unfolds, the United States and Israel are making countermoves. We have discussed all of this extensively. Questions remain whether these countermoves will stabilize the region and whether or how far Iran will go in its response. Iran has been preparing for the U.S. withdrawal. While it is unreasonable simply to say that Iran will dominate Iraq, it is fair to say Tehran will have tremendous influence in Baghdad to the point of being able to block Iraqi initiatives Iran opposes. This influence will increase as the U.S. withdrawal concludes and it becomes clear there will be no sudden reversal in the withdrawal policy.

Syria and Iran

The situation in Syria complicates all of this. The minority Alawite sect has dominated the Syrian government since 1970, when the current president's father — who headed the Syrian air force — staged a coup. The Alawites are a heterodox Muslim sect related to a Shiite offshoot and make up about 7 percent of the country's population, which is mostly Sunni. The new Alawite government was Nasserite in nature, meaning it was secular, socialist and built around the military. When Islam rose as a political force in the Arab world, the Syrians — alienated from the Sadat regime in Egypt — saw Iran as a bulwark. The Iranian Islamist regime gave the Syrian secular regime immunity against Shiite fundamentalists in Lebanon.

The Iranians also gave Syria support in its external adventures in Lebanon, and more important, in its suppression of Syria's Sunni majority. Syria and Iran were particularly aligned in Lebanon. In the early 1980s, after the Khomeini revolution, the Iranians sought to increase their influence in the Islamic world by supporting radical Shiite forces. Hezbollah was one of these. Syria had invaded Lebanon in 1975 on behalf of the Christians and opposed the Palestine Liberation Organization, to give you a sense of the complexity. Syria regarded Lebanon as historically part of Syria, and sought to assert its influence over it. Via Iran, Hezbollah became an instrument of Syrian power in Lebanon. Iran and Syria, therefore, entered a long-term if not altogether stable alliance that has lasted to this day. In the current unrest in Syria, the Saudis and Turks in addition to the Americans all have been hostile to the regime of President Bashar al Assad.

Iran is the one country that on the whole has remained supportive of the current Syrian government. There is good reason for this. Prior to the uprising, the precise relationship between Syria and Iran was variable. Syria was able to act autonomously in its dealings with Iran and Iran's proxies in Lebanon. While an important backer of groups like Hezbollah, the al Assad regime in many ways checked Hezbollah's power in Lebanon, with the Syrians playing the dominant role there. The Syrian uprising has put the al Assad regime on the defensive, however, making it more interested in a firm, stable relationship with Iran. Damascus finds itself isolated in the Sunni world, with Turkey and the Arab League against it. Iran — and intriguingly, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki — have constituted al Assad's exterior support.

Thus far al Assad has resisted his enemies. Though some mid- to low-ranking Sunnis have defected, his military remains largely intact; this is because the Alawites control key units. Events in Libya drove home to an embattled Syrian leadership — and even to some of its adversaries within the military — the consequences of losing. The military has held together, and an unarmed or poorly armed populace, no matter how large, cannot defeat an intact military force. The key for those who would see al Assad fall is to divide the military. If al Assad survives — and at the moment, wishful thinking by outsiders aside, he is surviving — Iran will be the big winner. If Iraq falls under substantial Iranian influence, and the al Assad regime — isolated from most countries but supported by Tehran — survives in Syria, then Iran could emerge with a sphere of influence stretching from western Afghanistan to the Mediterranean (the latter via Hezbollah). Achieving this would not require deploying Iranian conventional forces — al Assad's survival alone would suffice. However, the prospect of a Syrian regime beholden to Iran would open up the possibility of the westward deployment of Iranian forces, and that possibility alone would have significant repercussions.

Consider the map were this sphere of influence to exist. The northern borders of Saudi Arabia and Jordan would abut this sphere, as would Turkey's southern border. It remains unclear, of course, just how well Iran could manage this sphere, e.g., what type of force it could project into it. Maps alone will not provide an understanding of the problem. But they do point to the problem. And the problem is the potential — not certain — creation of a block under Iranian influence that would cut through a huge swath of strategic territory. It should be remembered that in addition to Iran's covert network of militant proxies, Iran's conventional forces are substantial. While they could not confront U.S. armored divisions and survive, there are no U.S. armored divisions on the ground between Iran and Lebanon.

Iran's ability to bring sufficient force to bear in such a sphere increases the risks to the Saudis in particular. Iran's goal is to increase the risk such that Saudi Arabia would calculate that accommodation is more prudent than resistance. Changing the map can help achieve this. It follows that those frightened by this prospect — the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey — would seek to stymie it. At present, the place to block it no longer is Iraq, where Iran already has the upper hand. Instead, it is Syria. And the key move in Syria is to do everything possible to bring about al Assad's overthrow.

In the last week, the Syrian unrest appeared to take on a new dimension. Until recently, the most significant opposition activity appeared to be outside of Syria, with much of the resistance reported in the media coming from externally based opposition groups. The degree of effective opposition was never clear. Certainly, the Sunni majority opposes and hates the al Assad regime. But opposition and emotion do not bring down a regime consisting of men fighting for their lives. And it wasn't clear that the resistance was as strong as the outside propaganda claimed. Last week, however, the Free Syrian Army — a group of Sunni defectors operating out of Turkey and Lebanon — claimed defectors carried out organized attacks on government facilities, ranging from an air force intelligence facility (a particularly sensitive point given the history of the regime) to Baath Party buildings in the greater Damascus area. These were not the first attacks claimed by the FSA, but they were heavily propagandized in the past week. Most significant about the attacks is that, while small-scale and likely exaggerated, they revealed that at least some defectors were willing to fight instead of defecting and staying in Turkey or Lebanon. It is interesting that an apparent increase in activity from armed activists — or the introduction of new forces — occurred at the same time relations between Iran on one side and the United States and Israel on the other were deteriorating. The deterioration began with charges that an

Iranian covert operation to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States had been uncovered, followed by allegations by the Bahraini government of Iranian operatives organizing attacks in Bahrain. It proceeded to an International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran's progress toward a nuclear device, followed by the Nov. 19 explosion at an Iranian missile facility that the Israelis have not-so-quietly hinted was their work. Whether any of these are true, the psychological pressure on Iran is building and appears to be orchestrated. Of all the players in this game, Israel's position is the most complex. Israel has had a decent, albeit covert, working relationship with the Syrians going back to their mutual hostility toward Yasser Arafat. For Israel, Syria has been the devil they know. The idea of a Sunni government controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood on their northeastern frontier was frightening; they preferred al Assad. But given the shift in the regional balance of power, the Israeli view is also changing. The Sunni Islamist threat has weakened in the past decade relative to the Iranian Shiite threat. Playing things forward, the threat of a hostile Sunni force in Syria is less worrisome than an emboldened Iranian presence on Israel's northern frontier. This explains why the architects of Israel's foreign policy, such as Defense Minister Ehud Barak, have been saying that we are seeing an "acceleration toward the end of the regime."

Regardless of its preferred outcome, Israel cannot influence events inside Syria. Instead, Israel is adjusting to a reality where the threat of Iran reshaping the politics of the region has become paramount. Iran is, of course, used to psychological campaigns. We continue to believe that while Iran might be close to a nuclear device that could explode underground under carefully controlled conditions, its ability to create a stable, robust nuclear weapon that could function outside a laboratory setting (which is what an underground test is) is a ways off. This includes being able to load a fragile experimental system on a delivery vehicle and expecting it to explode. It might. It might not. It might even be intercepted and create a casus belli for a counterstrike. The main Iranian threat is not nuclear. It might become so, but even without nuclear weapons, Iran remains a threat. The current escalation originated in the American decision to withdraw from Iraq and was intensified by events in Syria. If Iran abandoned its nuclear program tomorrow, the situation would remain as complex. Iran has the upper hand, and the United States, Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia all are looking at how to turn the tables. At this point, they appear to be following a two-pronged strategy: Increase pressure on Iran to make it recalculate its vulnerability, and bring down the Syrian government to limit the consequences of Iranian influence in Iraq. Whether the Syrian regime can be brought down is problematic. Libya's Moammar Gadhafi would have survived if NATO hadn't intervened. NATO could intervene in Syria, but Syria is more complex than Libya. Moreover, a second NATO attack on an Arab state designed to change its government would have unintended consequences, no matter how much the Arabs fear the Iranians at the moment.

Wars are unpredictable; they are not the first option. Therefore the likely solution is covert support for the Sunni opposition funneled through Lebanon and possibly Turkey and Jordan. It will be interesting to see if the Turks participate. Far more interesting will be seeing whether this works. Syrian intelligence has penetrated its Sunni opposition effectively for decades. Mounting a secret campaign against the regime would be difficult, and its success by no means assured. Still, that is the next move. But it is not the last move. To put Iran back into its box, something must be done about the Iraqi political situation. Given the U.S. withdrawal, Washington has little influence there. All of the relationships the United States built were predicated on American power protecting the relationships. With the Americans gone, the foundation of those relationships dissolves. And even with Syria, the balance of power is shifting. The United States has three choices. Accept the evolution and try to live with what emerges. Attempt to make a deal with Iran — a very painful and costly one. Or go to war. The first assumes Washington can live with what emerges. The second depends on whether Iran is interested in dealing with the United States. The third depends on having enough power to wage a war and to absorb Iran's retaliatory strikes, particularly in the Strait of Hormuz. All are dubious, so toppling al Assad is critical. It changes the game and the momentum. But even that is enormously difficult and laden with risks. We are now in the final act of Iraq, and it is even more painful than imagined. Laying this alongside the European crisis makes the idea of a systemic crisis in the global system very real.

Will IRAN Become a Regional Hegemon in the Middle East?

https://www.unic.ac.cy/emsi/2018/03/06/will-iran-become-a-regional-hegemon-in-the-middle-east/

The recent crisis in Lebanon, with the mysterious resignation of the Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, is one more episode of the undeclared war between the two main players that take part in the contemporary power game in the Middle East: Iran and Saudi Arabia.[1] This is a Cold Warstyle conflict in the form of a struggle for influence between the two main players through their proxies. This struggle is predominantly taking place in ethnically and religiously polarized states, like Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon.[2] In that context, Saudi Arabia and its allies in the Arab Gulf, as well as Israel and Trump administration, are concerned due to the ongoing Iranian surge for increased regional influence, which has been pretty successful in Iraq and Syria.[3] Inasmuch this process is part of an Iranian agenda in pursuit of regional hegemony, namely undisputed dominance in the Middle East,[4] (and it seems that Iran’s adversaries have no doubt that this is the case) this kind of behavior could be called as hegemonism.[5] This article examines the perspectives of Iranian hegemonism and, specifically, the possibility of the development of an Iranian hegemony in the Middle East in the years to come.

Hegemonism and balancing in contemporary Middle East

As we have already noted, what is perceived as Iranian hegemonism has been expressed through the fostering of Shia proxy groups in the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Syria (with the mobilization of Lebanese Hezbollah), as well as in Yemen and in the Gulf states during the initial stages of the “Arab Spring” convulsion.[6] This surge coincided with the intensification of the US-led multilateral talks on the Iranian nuclear program, which ended to the agreement on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in July 2015. This deal signified a long-waited détente in Tehran’s relations with the West. However, both the activity of Iran’s proxy groups and the (temporary?) end of US confrontation of Iran’s nuclear program alarmed traditional US allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia who raised concerns about Iran’s hegemonic aspirations, as well as its unexpressed ambition to act as a “nuclear free rider”, thus triggering a nuclear domino in the region.[7] Iran’s regional adversaries have been attempting to balance Iran’s influence as a form of counter-hegemonic reaction. Theoretically speaking, balancing is a strategy that seeks to prevent an aspirant hegemon from securing his hegemonic position.[8] The Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen, as well as the efforts to curtail Hezbollah’s political leverage in Lebanon, seem to consist part of such a strategy. In that sense, Iran seems to hold the advantage of initiative, while the anti-Iranian coalition is trying to undermine Iran’s position in the context of a zero-sum game.

Speaking about hegemonic attempts in the Middle East, history has shown that they have been stillborn. For example, Nasser’s efforts to embrace the Arab world and create a pan-Arab movement and Erdogan’s neo-ottoman revisionism have not been fruitful. The main reason is a systemic one: these attempts emerged in the absence of the right structural prerequisites in the region. Neither Nasser or Erdogan’s revisionism, nor contemporary Iran’s “hegemonism by proxies” were/are based on a distribution of capabilities characterized by clear-cut power superiority of the potential hegemon over the rest of the system’s units. In none of these cases did/do the aspirant hegemon enjoy significant military superiority, which would provide him with a critical comparative advantage over his regional competitors.[9] Since the right distribution of power is absent hegemonic aspirations cannot enjoy legitimacy at the regional level, which is a sine qua non element for a viable hegemonic order.[10] In other words, you cannot be a regional hegemon unless your neighbors acknowledge you as such.

The “Concert of the Middle East”

The Middle East is not that kind of a regional system where the development of a hegemonic regional order is a likelihood. The existence of at least three regional peers with potential hegemonic aspirations and balancing potential (Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia), as well as the existence of several other pivotal players of considerable size and/or capabilities (i.e. Israel and Egypt) assure that none will be able to achieve undisputed regional supremacy, as counter-balancing alliances will always be a choice for the rest. Moreover, the balancing role of extra-regional great powers such as the United States and Russia suggests another factor that decisively limits the possibility of a future hegemonic order. Therefore, as stability through hegemony cannot be the case in the foreseeable future (except for the unlikely scenario of an unexpectedly rapid course of uneven growth that would favor one regional power over the rest), stability through balance is the most possible future form of regional order.[11] The ongoing regional instability which is characterized by multiple conflicts and power competitions could drive regional and interested extra-regional powers towards a modus vivendi similar to 19th-century’s “Concert of Europe” and an analogous form of a “complex balance of power”.[12] In that context, the main pillars of the balance of power will agree to the terms of stability and express their readiness for balancing action (either diplomatic or military) whenever these terms are disputed. Such balancing mechanisms are already in place (as the P5+1 model of negotiations for the nuclear program of Iran, or the Geneva and Astana processes for the Syrian crisis indicate). What we still lack is a new “Concert of the Middle East” that will seal this new regional order and legitimize the new balance of power. Regional systems like the Middle Eastern one naturally tend towards balance of power. Therefore, a future Iranian hegemony is a rather unlikely scenario.

References

[1] Bilal Y. Saab, “What Hariri’s Resignation Means for Lebanon,” Foreign Affairs, November 6, 2017.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/lebanon/2017-11-06/what-hariris-resignationmeans-lebanon/

Accessed on November 12, 2017.

[2] Michael Knights, “What Would a Saudi-Iran War Look Like? Don’t look now, but it is already here,” Foreign Policy, January 11, 2016.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/01/11/what-would-a-saudi-iran-war-look-like-dont-looknow-but-it-is-already-here/

Accessed on July 13, 2017.

[3] Jonathan Spyer, “Tehran Is Winning the War for Control of the Middle East,” Foreign Policy, November 21, 2017.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/11/21/tehran-is-winning-the-war-for-control-of-themiddle-east-saudi-arabia/

Accessed on November 22, 2017.

[4] John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001), 40.

[5] David Wilkinson, “Unipolarity without Hegemony,” International Studies Review 1 (1999): 141-171, 143-144.

[6] Reva Bhalla, “The U.S.-Saudi Dilemma: Iran’s Reshaping of Persian Gulf Politics,” Stratfor, July 19, 2011.

https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110718-us-saudi-dilemma-irans-reshaping-persiangulf-politics/

Accessed on 23 July 2011.

Jonathan Spyer, “Is it Iran’s Middle East Now?” Fathom, Automn 2015.

https://fathomjournal.org/is-it-irans-middle-east-now/

Accessed on 13 November 2015.

[7] Efraim Inbar, “Implications of US Disengagement from the Middle East,” BESA, Mideast Security and Policy Studies No. 122., 14. For alternative approaches on a potential nuclear domino and nuclear balance see Rizwan Ladha, “A Regional Arms Race? Testing the Nuclear Domino Theory in the Middle East,” al Nakhlah, Spring 2012.

https://fletcher.tufts.edu/~/media/43f8f8ef81014262ab2a119709e495e3.pdf

Accessed on 12 November 2016.

Kenneth N. Waltz, “Why Iran Should Get the Bomb. Nuclear Balancing Would Mean Stability,” Foreign Affairs 91 (2012): 1-5.

[8] Stephen G. Brooks, William C. Wohlforth, World Out of Balance. International Relations and the Challenge of American Primacy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 22-25.

[9] Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 40.

[10] Adam Watson, The Evolution of International Society (New York: Routledge, 1992), 17.

[11] Ross Harrison, “Defying Gravity: Working Toward a Regional Strategy for a Stable Middle East,” Middle East Institute, Policy Papers Series, May 2015. George Friedman, “The Middle Eastern balance of power matures”, Stratfor, March 31, 2015.

https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/middle-eastern-balance-power-matures/

Accessed on 11 April 2015.

[12] Hedley Bull, Anarchical Society. A Study of Order in World Politics (London: Macmillan Education, 1977), 97-98.

Michalis Kontos

Assistant Professor of International Relations

Department of Politics and Governance

University of Nicosia

First Published at “In Depth Volume 14, Issue 6, December 2017″