Thomas Buonomo

Many American policymakers attempting to respond to the conflicts embroiling the Middle East tend to have a ruefully ahistorical perspective on the region, particularly on the Republican side of the aisle, which has traditionally been less introspective on policy matters in general. It is nevertheless accurate to say that the perpetuation of these conflicts is due in no small part to the unwise decisions of the region’s leaders themselves.These can be summarized as a stubborn persistence in concentrating wealth and power in the hands of too few as well as the pursuit of hegemonic ambitions using absolutist religious ideologies as weapons of mass destruction.

One can only hope that the leaders and people of the region will learn from the mistakes of Europe, which at several points in its history found itself engulfed in equal and worse barbarism for essentially the same reasons, whether the ideologies in question were religious or secular in nature.

What must change in order to prevent these conflicts from growing worse? On Syria, the first priority ought to be elimination of the most extreme Islamist groups considering that they would be even worse than Syrian President Bashar Assad if they had his military capabilities. That should not mean partnering with Russia, Iran or Assad in pursuit of this objective, as U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump has proposed, considering that the conduct of the Syrian and Russian militaries have been utterly unconscionable.

It is also questionable whether ostensibly moderate rebels operating in coalition with the Islamist extremists should be supported considering that they are effectively furthering the extremists’ cause. A better option would be to require the moderates to disengage and reform with NATO support as a viable fighting force independent of the extremists as a condition of continued military aid.

Parallel to this, the U.S. ought to be engaging with Iran on the Israeli-Palestinian issue if it is not already doing so in secret, considering that this is the primary reason why Iran is so vested in Assad’s survival. It is also one of the reasons why Syria probably would not remain stable for long even if Assad did manage to take back most of the country: Eventually but inevitably, Iran would resume its proxy campaign against Israel, perhaps even with direct participation in the next round between Israel and Hezbollah.

Therefore, unless the U.S. wishes to gamble on forcible regime change in Tehran, U.S.-Iran engagement on the Israeli-Palestinian issue is inevitable – however vociferously the Israeli settler lobby in the U.S. will protest against it.

Progress on this issue is admittedly doubtful; however, this is no reason not to engage with Iran on the matter in hopes of persuading Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his Supreme National Security Council of the wisdom of the two-state framework. The U.S. will first have to reinvigorate its own resolve on the two-state solution before seeking to convince these obstinate but ultimately pragmatic decision-makers. As the nuclear agreement demonstrated, one never knows what can be accomplished until one tries.

The Gulf Cooperation Council should push this rather than falling into the trap of allying with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration against Iran in exchange for what will prove to be more clever, noncommittal diplomacy as the West Bank settlements continue to expand.

Russia might be more easily persuaded to find an alternative to Assad, particularly if the Islamist extremist threat was eliminated and as long as Russia’s interests in Syria were guaranteed, given that it does not share Iran’s ideological animus against Israel.

On Iraq, although progress continues against Daesh (ISIS), the political situation in Baghdad will remain up to the Iraqis to solve – perhaps led by the ostensibly reformed secular nationalist Moqtada al-Sadr if the contemptible Iraqi parliament remains unwilling to hold itself accountable to the Iraqi public.

Some degree of rapprochement between the U.S. and Iran – again, dependent in part on deeper dialogue on issues of mutual importance including the Israeli-Palestinian issue – would improve the chances of Iraqi reunification. This would require reconsolidation of security institutions operating independently of the official chains of command and reformation of a more secularized rather than partisan Shiite-dominated state.

On Yemen, observers vary on the degree of Houthi ideological alignment with Iran versus payment of lip service to Iranian rhetoric as a means of attracting military aid from it in pursuit of its own objectives. This is the classic dilemma of insurgent groups in need of foreign patronage and the question needs to be carefully examined. It appears, however, that the Houthis are pragmatic political actors whose ideology is shaped both by evolving internal influences and external alliances.

The GCC should communicate a willingness to make peace with the Houthis on condition that they cease propagating such rhetoric and terminate their alliance with former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who proved to be hopelessly corrupt and a serious obstacle to the counterterrorism campaign against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. This will require a more equitable and federalized distribution of resources in Yemen. It should be made a priority before Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Daesh become an even greater security threat to Saudi Arabia.

The GCC’s best defense against Iranian attempts at subversion is domestic economic and political reform. The more GCC citizens feel they are on a progressive trajectory, the less Iranian rhetoric is likely to resonate with them and the less Iranian leaders will have any substantive pretext for indulging in it in the first place. They are more likely to find themselves preoccupied with competing with the GCC in terms of their own domestic performance in this case. That is not to say that Iranian provocations will necessarily end entirely but they will certainly have less potential to be effective.

If the tens of billions of dollars currently being wasted on military expenditures were instead allocated toward renewable energy and other investments aimed at job growth, economic diversification and climate security, the Middle East would be a different place entirely. May the leaders and people of the region learn to embrace such a positive-sum vision and work across sect and ethnicity in pursuit of it.