Preventing an Israeli-Iran War

tags: Middle East, Israel, Iran, war, international relations

Alon Ben-Meir (PhD, Oxford University) is Professor and Senior Fellow at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs, and Senior Fellow and Middle Eastern Studies Project Director at the World Policy Institute. He has authored seven books related to the Middle East, and is currently working on a new book about countering violent extremism.

The EU is in a unique position to prevent the outbreak of a war between Israel and Iran that could engulf the Middle East in a war that no one can win.


Evaluating US-Iran historic relations

The toppling of the democratically-elected Mosaddeq government in 1953 and the installing of the corrupt Shah as king of the country, coupled with the US’ treatment of Iran since the 1979 revolution, constitute a series of errors in judgment of successive American administrations over the past 40 years.

In the wake of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988, Iran’s President Rafsanjani made several attempts to improve relations with the US. He offered the American oil company Conoco a contract to develop one of Iran’s largest oil fields, but a deal was blocked by the US. Also, efforts made by moderates within the Shiite regime searching for common ground with the US after September 11 were rebuffed by the US, even though Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, known to be a reformer, was in power.

In 2002, President Bush shut down what was left of any opening with Iran by characterizing it, along with Iraq and North Korea, as the “axis of evil,” accusing them of being allied with terrorists “arming to threaten the peace of the world.”[i] Thus, instead of exploiting any opening to initiate a new dialogue, successive American administrations remained focused on containing Iran and never precluded the use of force to that end. Naturally, this played into the hands of radical Iranian officials, who viewed the US as the “Great Satan”, bent on undermining the regime and not to be trusted.

Read entire article at American Diplomacy

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