{"id":41896,"date":"2019-12-11T07:22:08","date_gmt":"2019-12-11T07:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=41896"},"modified":"2019-12-11T07:22:08","modified_gmt":"2019-12-11T07:22:08","slug":"irans-threat-to-destroy-tel-aviv-from-lebanon-condemned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=41896","title":{"rendered":"Iran\u2019s threat to destroy Tel Aviv from Lebanon condemned"},"content":{"rendered":"

SALT conference: Saudi Arabia, UAE \u2018promoting US engagement\u2019 in the Middle East<\/h2>\n
\n

\nABU DHABI: The transformations taking place in Saudi Arabia and the model adopted by the UAE will be crucial to moving US-Arab relations forward.<\/p>\n

\nThis was one of the many insights offered by Norman T. Roule, chief executive officer at Pharos Strategic Consulting LLC, a GCC- and Iran-focused company, during a panel discussion at the first SALT Conference in Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n

\nHe said what Saudi Arabia is doing, and given what the UAE has done so well, will promote engagement between entrepreneurs and academics, adding that the people who actually move societies \u201care more efficient, in many ways, than governments.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nRoule was one of three speakers in the discussion on the \u201cFuture of US-Arab relations\u201d, moderated by Editor-in-chief of Arab News Faisal J. Abbas. The other two were Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Dania Koleilat, affiliated scholar at the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cGovernments will deal with the big, heavy, perhaps unsolvable issues, but I have great hopes for this region,\u201d Roule said, referring to the Gulf countries.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThere has never been so much education. (It is) a young region aspiring beyond sectarianism, corruption and the old ways of thinking – and we should be part of that evolution.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nAccording to him, entrepreneurs will be the future of engagement between the US and the Middle East. To this end, he suggested, bringing more Americans to the Middle East \u2013 something the three-day SALT Conference has done – will prove vital.<\/p>\n

\nRoule said \u201cthere has never been so much people-to-people engagement between the US and the region as we have today.\u201d Additionally, there is social media, which \u201cties together the US and the region in a way that has not happened before.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nIn the context of Saudi-US relations, Roule said there has been a shift in US public opinion due to Jamal Khashoggi\u2019s murder. At the same time, he said, \u201cformer or current policymakers say,\u2018We have a strategic relationship with Saudi Arabia.\u2019 But they will never explain what that means, or where we should take it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nRoule thinks Saudi Arabia has an enormous role to play in such areas as moderating Islam worldwide, enhancing the role of women throughout the region, improving the economies of the Middle East, including Jordan and Israel, as well as rebuilding broken states, including Libya and Yemen.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cAmerica needs to be behind that,\u201d Roule said. \u201cIt\u2019s unfortunate that policymakers don\u2019t spend a lot of time talking about where we should go with the Kingdom, but I agree that the Kingdom doesn\u2019t have a great reputation right now in the election.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nNevertheless, he said he has seen US policymakers make requests to the Saudi leadership to support a number of regional initiatives.<\/p>\n

\n\"\"
\nLeft to right: Faisal J. Abbas, Dania Koleilat Khatib, Richard Haass and Norman T. Roule discuss the relationship between the Middle East and the US at the first SALT conference in Abu Dhabi. (AN photo by Huda Bashatah)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\nOverall the Iraq war and the Afghan conflict were \u201canomalies\u201d in how America has handled the Middle East since 1945. \u201cAnd in many ways, America\u2019s position in the Middle East is generally to try to avoid another conflict, to try to empower our allies to defend themselves, and to work to resolve regional problems,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\nFluctuating Middle East oil prices are still felt in such places as Ohio, Roule noted, but added: \u201cThere is fatigue in the US over endless peace process efforts that seem to go nowhere, endless wars in the Middle East, which consume budgets, armies, calendars and reputations and which never seem to end for anybody. There\u2019s not a lot of interest in doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nIn a similar vein, Dr. Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, one of Washington\u2019s most influential foreign-policy think tanks, said that when the Cold War ended 30 years ago, nobody would have predicted that such a large percentage of American foreign policy would be consumed in the Middle East, beginning with the Gulf War, which was \u201cthrust\u201d on the US by \u201cSaddam (Hussein\u2019s) aggression\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cBut then we ultimately had what I would call wars of choice, in places like Iraq in 2003, and some other issues that we\u2019re dealing with now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThere\u2019s a general sense that the Middle East absorbed too high a percentage of America\u2019s national security resources. Our energy interests in the Middle East and our direct interests are down.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nHaass said there is disillusionment among Americans who think that the return on investment of the resources the US devoted to the Middle East has not been particularly good. \u201cWe have a domestic society that is more divided,\u201d he said, \u201cand, internationally, there are several big developments, one of which is the rise of US-Chinese competition.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nHe said what is emerging for many as the defining feature of US foreign policy is a much worse relationship with Russia, a much less certain Europe, problems in Asia, including China\u2019s rise and North Korea\u2019s nuclear weapons, and global issues such as climate change.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe Middle East has to compete with other regions of the world, other relationships and other challenges at the global level,\u201d Haass said. \u201cSo it\u2019s not surprising that there\u2019s a dialing down, or a re-evaluation, of how much we are involved in the region and how we are involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nThis regional \u201cdialing down\u201d by the US was called out by Koleilat, particularly in the context of the ongoing protests in Iraq and Lebanon. She said “the two countries have reached a boiling point” as an opinion poll shows strong majorities supporting a separation of politics and religion.<\/p>\n

\nAs a Lebanese who specializes in US-Arab relations, Koleilat spoke of a personal feeling of betrayal over the US administration\u2019s position.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cLebanese people have realized that sectarianism has led to clientelism, which has led to corruption, which in turn, had led to state failure,\u201d she said. \u201cToday, we have gone from 30 to 50 percent of Lebanese below the poverty level and the state is unable to provide services.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nAlthough she said the US could not be expected to engage with protesters, it could still put pressure on the Lebanese government to reform and change, adding that such pressure could include withholding of support unless such reforms were implemented.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe demands of the Lebanese people are very clear,\u201d she said. \u201cWe want a non-political government of technocrats.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nAccording to Koleilat, the US is less interested in the Middle East these days because of three factors, one of which is American isolationism.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cIt started after the Iraq war. People in the US want to disengage from the region,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe second factor you have to look at is Trump\u2019s way of conducting foreign policy in a transactional manner, so you don\u2019t see engagement for the long haul.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nThe third factor is the strategic value of oil, she said. \u201cI don\u2019t see the doctrine where the US would say it is ready to use military force to keep the security of the Gulf,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cSo, if you take these three factors into consideration, there is less American interest and less engagement, and this (approach) will continue in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nFor his part, Haass cited Iran as a case where the present US administration has succeeded in exerting tremendous pressure – more than what analysts had predicted was possible – through unilateral sanctions.<\/p>\n

\nThe question is to what end, he said.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cSanctions are a means, they\u2019re a foreign policy instrument,\u201d he said. \u201cThe question then is what our definition of success and our goal are here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nHaass said it is unlikely the government in Tehran can be brought down as the system has proved resilient for four decades now. Rather, the US needs to signal to Iran and have a conversation about its requirements in the realms of nuclear technology and missiles, as well as regional and local issues, in order to have a degree of sanctions removed.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThat, to me is what we used to call diplomacy,\u201d Haass said. \u201cThe question is whether there is a place for diplomacy.<\/p>\n

\nThe answer is \u201cpotentially yes. If not, the danger is we drift towards war because Iran has shown it is simply not going to absorb economic pressure or warfare from us. We need to have a diplomatic initiative.\u201d
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SALT conference: Saudi Arabia, UAE \u2018promoting US engagement\u2019 in the Middle East ABU DHABI: The transformations taking place in Saudi Arabia and the model adopted by the UAE will be crucial to moving US-Arab relations forward. This was one of the many insights offered by Norman T. Roule, chief executive officer at Pharos Strategic Consulting…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":41897,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}