As the next presidential and congressional elections draw nearer, it is perhaps now inevitable that the foreign policy initiatives of President Obama and his government will be embroiled in continuing campaign rhetoric and manipulation. Most prevalent in that regard now seems to be the agreement made between the major powers of West and East, and the government of Iran, over that country’s original effort to develop an autonomous nuclear weapons production and delivery capability.
The conclusions of the negotiations between Iran and the major powers, essentially led by Secretary of State Kerry and required to be approved by the American Congress, have easily fallen into this category, coming as they do, as the campaigning for the presidency and Houses of Congress has gotten off the ground. And in addition, the leadership of the Government of Israel, cognizant of the process that is necessary for approval of the agreement by the United States, and the sensitivity of a significant section of the American voting public to Israel’s interests, has itself decided to fully join the fray by seeking to influence the debate even well before agreement was reached.
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s vociferous opposition has obviously made members of the Congress sensitive to Israeli perceptions of a negative effect on that country’s position in the Middle East. He has taken on the President himself, knowing that though Obama cannot seek re-election, he would have a responsibility as current de facto political leader of the Democratic Party, to seek to ensure that any backlash from the agreement was not strong enough to put in difficulty the prospects of candidates in the congressional elections.
And Netanyahu knows as well, that even though the President will not again be a candidate, he must maintain a certain sensitivity to the effects on whoever, from his party, runs for the presidency; and perhaps even more, a sensitivity to his party holding a position of dominance in the post-election Senate and House of Representatives.
On this occasion of an attempt to influence the Congress, the Israeli leader has been much more vociferous and interventionist in the American political process than in the past. So from that perspective, Obama has found himself fighting two political wars at the same time.
The first is obviously to persuade members of his own party that the Iran nuclear agreement is a matter not simply of major interest for the United States, but as the composition of the negotiating team indicated, for the other Western powers, and their future relationships with the Middle Eastern countries including Iran itself.
In addition, he has had, and will continue to have, to make the American people aware that the team carrying out the negotiations was not only a construct of Western powers, but also included Russia, naturally a player of significance in the Middle Eastern affairs, and China.
Clearly from Obama’s perspective, to the extent that the agreement between Iran and a multiplicity of major powers is not the traditional one of positioning the Western powers vis-à-vis Russia, the President will be concerned to demonstrate the need for sensitivity on the part of the United States on an issue that has necessarily had to have a wide global consensus.
Further the President will have been sensitive to any perception on the part of his country’s allies in the Middle East, not to talk of the non-aligned major powers like India and China, that the United States no longer has the capacity to align its partners on an issue of major global concern, and which has the support of the majority of substantial countries in various parts of the world.
In this sense, the President would seem to have to be almost bound to take the approach of insisting that the issue is one on which a persistent demonstration of partisanship at home, will indicate a general weakening of the United States’ ability to fulfil agreements made multilaterally, particularly after a prolonged period of negotiation, the stages of which have been substantially visible to countries worldwide.
In particular, he will want demonstrate to the American public that their response to the negotiations will clearly have a substantial effect on the perception of Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia which, in a sense like Israel, have had some doubts about the United States’ approach to the Iran nuclear issue – an approach which has the potential for Iran engaging in a more cooperative manner in wider Middle Eastern conflicts now persisting.
From this perspective those countries, and other regionally influential states in various parts of the world, will be carefully watching the extent to which the President can get the necessary debate in the United States away from being influenced by the partisan nature of the coming elections.
Already, Donald Trump, apparently the leading personality for nomination as the Republican presidential candidate, has sought to muddy the waters of United States-Latin American relations, by adopting what some deem to be an extremely aggressive attitude to immigration, in particular in relation to the United States’ immediate Latin American neighbour, Mexico.
The results of the congressional deliberations on the Iran nuclear deal will indicate whether the issue will have predominance in the calculations of the contenders for Congress, as well as for the presidency. But at the same time, they will certainly have an effect on global perceptions of obviously changing relations in the Middle East; and the extent to which the effort of President Obama to indicate an alternative way, that is, through international diplomacy, to cope with Middle Eastern problems deemed potentially damaging to global relations, can hold sway.
