Hopes and Fears of Future in the New Iranian Year

By: Ahmad Kazemzadeh

In order to understand developments the Middle East underwent in the Persian solar calendar year 1394, it can be helpful to contrast the year with the one preceding it. From such a vantage point, one can say many of the regional developments in the year just finished were continuations of the same procedures already started in previous years. Accordingly, most ME developments should be evaluated in the context of previous procedures. Iran’s nuclear talks resumed in 2013 culminated last year when the JCPOA was signed. The Syrian crisis, after a long series of overthrowing scenarios, also entered a phase of political negotiations to gather all the internal, regional and international players in Vienna and Geneva talks to seek an agreement to end the civil war, separate opposition groups with Takfiri terrorists, and prepare an 18-month roadmap to exit the crisis. In Iraq too, the government continued the fight against the ISIS and liberated a large part of occupied lands in Sunni-dwelling provinces. It also initiated a new fight, supported by religious leaders, with the country’s wanton corruption; a fight that can be named the Greater Jihad. In Palestine, on the one hand, the Obama administration ceased the serious pursuit of the two-state solution to resolve the Palestinian crisis and the White House officially suspended its relevant efforts. On the other hand, European countries continued their support and even imposed, for the first time, an embargo on commodities produced in Jewish towns located in territories occupied by the Zionist regime during the Six-Day War of 1967. The sanction created frictions among the sides’ positions. More importantly, disappointed with Arab and Islamic countries, Palestinians renewed their efforts to fight back the constant aggressions of the Zionists to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and their settlements in the West Bank, launching a new Intifada with characteristic participation of young Palestinians most of whom were born after the 1993 peace agreement. Use of cold weapons such as knives and scissors together with the surprising and spontaneous nature of their measures has deepened the Zionists’ concerns.

However, the most recent development that occurred in the past year and could distinguish it from its preceding years was the Saudi Arabia’s military invasion of Yemen on March 25, 2015 that grew into a full-fledged war, continuing well into the rest of the year. The invasion came after the Yemeni Revolutionary Council led by Ansarullah rejected a plan to divide Yemen into six regions in a federal system. The borders set in the plan were designed in a way that eliminated the Houthis’ access to the sea and the country’s oil fields, depriving them of the resources therein. One Saudi objective in imposing the war on Yemen was to establish a mechanism in order to continue to exert its dominance over the country. Moreover, the Saudis wanted to limit and cripple the Houthis in areas they dominated in the Saada Governorate and terminate their role in the country’s revolution process. To their surprise however, the war solidified people in support of Ansarullah, rising in defense of the country to further reinforce the movement’s role and popular position more than ever. On the other hand, while the Saudi Arabia announced a 34-state coalition at the beginning of the war pretending global support, the number of real backers of the Saudis did not exceed a handful in practice. Even if we accept the Saudis’ declared regional and global support, it will not reduce either the depth or range of its defeat in the Yemeni war. Just the opposite, it adds power to the image of Ansarullah that has been able to survive for more than a year against an international and regional coalition despite its lack of experience in statecraft. While the Saudi Arabia expected to win the war in at most two weeks, none of its (un)declared objectives has been realized by the end of the year. In fact, the war has also provided the ground for the influence and advances of the popular Yemeni resistance forces led by Ansarullah in governorates of ’Asir, Jizan and Najran. Of course, these regions belonged to Yemen before the declaration of the Saudi Kingdom but were annexed for 60 years to the latter following a war. Despite the expiry of the agreement in early 1990s, the Saudi Kingdom bribed the then Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh as well as tribe leaders to maintain its mandate over the territory up until now. Nonetheless, the Saudis’ military invasion of Yemen has even raised the residents’ voices in protest, making them consider return to their motherland or autonomy -- another indicator of the Saudis’ defeat. In the hope to change the military equilibrium in field and operational scenes, the Saudis resorted to time killing in the political arena, launching extensive sabotage. In doing so, the kingdom pressed the United Nations to replace its special envoy on Yemen and pushed talks moderated by the UN’s new Yemen envoy, Ismail Valad Sheikh, held in Geneva, toward failure. Near the end of the past year, a relative shift in the kingdom’s military approach in Yemen did occur but seemed to have come rather unwillingly. An effective factor in this regard was the Saudi’s successive defeats in ground battles. Other developments and regional issues were also among significant reasons. One such development was the finalization of the JCPOA, which sparked hopes among the engaged international players to resolve other regional crises ranging from Syria to Yemen through diplomacy. It seems that the United States engagement in a presidential race has made the settlement of Middle East crises a necessity for the Obama administration and the ruling party so that they could put the results into good use in the election. These have made US officials to pressure the Saudi Arabia to become engaged in political solution for regional crises.

The Obama administration’s electoral needs can also be observed in its relative change of approach to the fight against the ISIS and use of the Syrian government’s capabilities in doing so. When the so-called Islamic State emerged and established its self-proclaimed state in occupied Iraqi and Syrian territories, the US officials said the fight would be time-consuming and might take several years. Later, the Iraqi government, helped by the People's Mobilization forces and Iran’s military consultation, liberated many regions in provinces populated by Shiites and Kurds from ISIS control and entered Sunni provinces, while Russia began a direct military involvement with ISIS in Syria. Then, the US followed suit to avoid staying behind, putting an end to its previous time-killing policy and on agenda a swift fight with the ISIS so as to benefit from its electoral results. To do so, the US withdrew from its insistence on Assad’s resignation and exclusion of Syria in the fight against ISIS and eventually accepted Russia’s logic on the matter. The increasing victories of the Syrian army against Takfiri forces, security threats caused by the Takfiris’ return to western countries (particularly in the terrorist Paris attacks), and repercussions of the Syrian war in the EU in the form of refugees’ return were other significant factors in the shift in the West’s approach that helped pave the way for Geneva and Vienna talks to find a political solution for the crisis. Therefore, the coalition formed to overthrow the establishment in Syria completely collapsed last year with members confronting each other. The Persian calendar year1394 was one of the collapse of certain coalitions and formation of new ones. While the quadripartite coalition of Arabs, the West, Turkey and Israel broke up, the alliance between the Saudi Arabia and Israel become more and more obvious. A clear example was the naming of Hezbollah as a terrorist group by the KSA and its puppets in the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Arab League; what Israel had long longed for.

To sum up, with the developments the Middle East underwent last year, an outlook with hopes and fears can be anticipated for the region’s developments in the new year while the scales could gradually go tipped down in favor of opportunities and hopes. However, there is a possibility that the Zionist regime resorts to crisis-making in regions already hit or creating parallel crises in order to prevent the Palestinian crisis from coming under the spotlight once again.