Journal of International Studies

It is no secret that the Arab Gulf States have a problem with the style and substance of the US diplomatic approach toward Iran (or rapprochement, as viewed from Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and other Arab Gulf capitals). As allies, they feel they should have been consulted prior to Washington “opening up” to a historical foe such as Tehran, and their primary concern is that talks could amount to a nuclear deal that would threaten their security and sanction the emergence of Iran as power broker and policeman of the region. But Arab Gulf concerns are not limited to the Iran issue, they are rooted in the belief that the Obama administration “simply doesn’t get it and is jeopardizing the alliance,” as one senior Saudi diplomat recently told me. A profound lack of trust currently characterizes relations between the United States and its regional allies. “The gulf is there, whether we like it or not,” one UAE former senior official said to me last summer. Many in the US policymaking communit...

Moroccan King Mohammed VI will meet with President Barack Obama in Washington on November 22, amid cascading conflict in the Arab world and new challenges in Arab-American relations. The possibility of US-Iranian detente has stirred hopes among many in the West that a peaceful resolution of the nuclear standoff is possible—but Gulf states and others in the region have voiced concerns about the new initiative. The same may be said of Washington’s UN-brokered accord with Moscow and Damascus calling for the peaceful destruction of the Syrian regime’s chemical-weapons stockpiles: Americans weary of war are relieved by the avoidance of a new military entanglement, whereas the Saudi government has dubbed the agreement “blatantly perfidious”—a sentiment shared by others in the region. Midway into the cloistered US-backed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, fears abound that the process will come to naught and lead to a new Intifada. Meanwhile, Iraqi streets bleed. Tunisians polarize and ra...

Put in context, the simultaneous raids in Libya and Somalia last month, targeting an alleged al-Qaeda fugitive and an alleged kingpin of the al-Shabab Islamist movement, were less a sign of America's awesome might than two minor exceptions that proved an emerging rule: namely, that the power, prestige, and influence of the United States in the broader Middle East and its ability to shape events there is in a death spiral.  Twelve years after the US invaded Afghanistan to topple the Taliban and a decade after the misguided invasion of Iraq - both designed to consolidate and expand America's regional clout by removing adversaries - Washington's actual standing in country  after country, including its chief allies in the region, has never been weaker.   Though President Obama can order raids virtually anywhere using Special Operations forces, and though he can strike willy-nilly in targeted killing actions by calling in the Predator and Reaper drones, he has become the Rodn...

GENEVA - Against a backdrop of cautious optimism, Iran and six world powers known as the P5+1 are reconvening here for talks today and tomorrow over Tehran's nuclear program. The P5+1 comprises the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - United States, Britain, France, Russia and China - plus Germany.  "This government [of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani] has a lot riding on the resolution of the nuclear issue because it made it a campaign promise and priority," Farideh Farhi, an Iran expert at the University of Hawaii, told IPS.  She stressed that even if the Iranians were desperate for a deal, Iran won't give up certain bottom lines. "The acceptance of a bad deal is politically even more dangerous for Rouhani than not reaching an agreement," she said from Tehran in a phone interview.  One of Iran's bottom lines includes what it considers its right to peacefully enrich uranium as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Pr...

The U.S. Plan to Build a Libyan Army

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (AP) DAMASCUS  —  Additional easing of Syrian sanctions is expected by mid-November, according to staff at the US Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Asset Control (OFAC). Pressure on Obama from Putin is part of the ‘price tag’ for Russia’s role in bailing out the American president, whose chemical weapons ‘red line’ became something of an albatross. But another reason for the relaxation is that the White House believes it needs to communicate to Damascus that prospects for better relations, and possibly even some cooperation, are not completely dead, despite the 32-month crisis still raging in the Syrian Arab Republic. This second easing of sanctions will show more balance and neutrality than those of last June, which were perceived as supporting Saudi and Gulf aid to the rebels while weakening the Assad government just as the Syrian Army had begun gaining back ground from the rebels. At that time, licenses for exports of certa...