Showdown with Iran (UAE)

President Barack Obama’s administration has lost little time in announcing that it will seek direct talks with the Iranian government.

This means, at the very least, a tough confrontation over Iran’s quest for a regional strategic advantage in the form of a nuclear weapon. There is more at stake here than coming up with the right set of incentives and threats to change the Iranians’ minds. Rather, the time has come to approach the nuclear question in its full regional context rather than piecemeal and operationally.

The entire world knows the risk posed by a nuclear Iran: a drastically altered balance of power in the Middle East and Central Asia, with Iran able to exert far more regional leverage – both overt and implicit — than it now possesses in pursuit of its interests.

Moreover, nearby states are likely to launch or further their own nuclear programmes in response, leading to a protracted nuclear arms race in one of world’s most volatile regions. It is not in the interest of the US or Europe for any of the states at the head of the list – Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Algeria — to have its own nuclear weapons capability.

While neither outcome is certain, each remains likely. There is considerable domestic pressure in each of these countries — as there has been in Israel and Pakistan, currently the region’s only nuclear states — to secure the presumed benefits in power and prestige of possessing nuclear weapons.

Such pressure is magnified when rivals and neighbours are perceived to have any kind of strategic advantage.

Yet each of the region’s states has important security concerns and vulnerabilities. Iran, a multiethnic state whose rulers have struggled to advance national cohesion, is no different.

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