An old American saying has it that all politics is local, and the current effort of President Obama to consolidate his recent agreement on nuclear weapons with the Government of Iran appears to be confirming it. The agreement with the Iranians has come at a time when contenders for the next American presidential election are beginning to position themselves in both the Democratic and Republican parties. And now, indications from sources around Vice President Biden that he could be a contender for nomination as the Democratic candidate for the top job, will inevitably position the agreement even more directly in the centre of the political contentions for the country’s leadership.
From the President’s perspective, the general hostility of the Republicans to the solution achieved in respect of Iran’s effort to establish itself as a nuclear power, when it is known that Obama cannot himself be a contender for the presidency, is being portrayed as a Republican effort to distort, and even damage, the negotiating effort for domestic political reasons. This is particularly so to the extent that the Republican leadership in the Congress sought to import an external weapon for an intervention in the domestic political process, by inducing Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, to directly seek to influence the elected representatives of the American people.
An apparent resolution of the Iranian nuclear production effort having been arrived at, the Republicans still appear to believe that such is the fear of the American people about anything that the Israelis may claim as prejudicial to their own country’s survival, that the Israeli Prime Minister can be used, once again, for an intervention in the American decision-making process. And the Republicans and the Israeli government may well feel that if the matter is dragged on for a sufficiently long period, the overriding priorities of the presidential election will compel Obama to give those elections precedence over a solution to the Iranian nuclear issue.
We might surmise, however, that a President who considers the Iranian agreement as a major accomplishment of his administration, is unlikely to go down without a fight. Obama has already had to deal with a complaint that he has been unable, or more likely unwilling, to seek to cope with issues relating to the Middle East, a location from which he had, in his original presidential campaign, virtually vowed to stay away from. That the United States, during his tenure, has found itself back in Iraq, after the then presidential campaigner had vowed to desist from this at virtually all costs, has obviously taken Obama in an alternative direction, as he has seen the area become even more embroiled in regional contentions.
Supporters of the President have insisted that the solution arrived at with Iran is partly a result of the fact that it is the pressure, including sanctions and financial boycotts, that his administration placed on Iran, that has led a country whose leadership has been consistently hostile to the United States, to come to terms. In addition, he has insisted that the issues involved in the Middle East, in particular those initiated by the IS struggle, and the drawing of American allies like the Sunni-led Saudi Arabia into physical contentions in that area, can only be dealt with by isolating contamination from longstanding opponents like Shia-led Iran.
Clearly, the President has not pleased some of America’s longtime allies like Saudi Arabia, which considers itself to be the leader of those holding Sunni allegiances. But he has been President long enough now, after initially vowing to extricate the US completely from Iraq, to comprehend the complexities involving countries in the Middle East, virtually continually embroiled in disputes, to which have been added a military contention in Syria that has now involved a Nato ally, Turkey.
Whether, as the electoral campaign heats up in the United States, President Obama will maintain the hands-off approach to Israeli interventions in the American domestic political arena is left to be seen. He is an American president wanting to ensure the sustenance of his successful diplomatic interventions, including that of the nuclear weapons agreement with the Iranians now apparently anxious to draw on the wealth and external financial interventions of the United States, as part of the relaunching of a viable domestic economy.
Curiously enough, it appears that Saudi Arabia and Israel find themselves in the same camp of hostility to an American policy of relieving diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran. That Obama has dispatched Vice President Biden to the wider Middle East, following the agreement with Iran, suggests that he would not wish to permit hostility to the agreement to combine the historical opponents of Israel and Saudi Arabia, to his country’s rapprochement with Iran.
The stakes are high for both American diplomacy and the reintegration of Iran into the Western economic and financial system, a substantial objective of the Western powers.
