Bush's Mideast Trip: Iran Warnings Fall on Deaf Ears in the Region

It is by now almost routine. With recurring frequency, U.S. leaders tour the Middle East depicting Iran as the region's greatest threat. As such, President George W. Bush's visit to the Middle East this week has historic precedent. But while the message often fell on receptive ears in the past, regional players today have misgivings about Washington's ability -- and perhaps more importantly -- its competence in handling Iran's rise.

So while President Bush beats an old drum during his Mideast tour, repeating the claim that Tehran is pursuing nuclear weapons at a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Wednesday, regional actors are hearing a different tune. Regardless of Bush's message, the writing many see on the wall reads that Washington's Iran strategy is bound to fail.

Though the U.S. embarked on a policy of isolating Iran during the 1979 hostage crisis, the policy was significantly intensified after the end of the Cold War and the initiation of the Middle East peace process. Israel, who only a few years earlier had lobbied Washington to open up to Iran, insisted that it could not pursue peace with the Arabs unless the U.S. adopted a tougher line on Iran.

The Bill Clinton administration's commitment to the peace process gave birth to the Dual Containment policy in 1994, which was "designed to reassure Israel that the U.S. would keep Iran in check while Jerusalem embarked on the risky process of peacemaking," according to Kenneth Pollack, who served as an Iran analyst with the CIA at the time.

In the words of Martin Indyk, assistant secretary of state under Clinton, Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking and the isolation of Iran were symbiotic. "The more we succeeded in making peace, the more isolated [the Iranians] would become. The more we succeeded in containing them, the more possible it would be to make peace," Indyk said.

Consequently, Israeli and U.S. rhetoric on Iran climaxed during this period. While Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin accused Iran of "fanning all the flames in the Middle East," U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher told reporters in March 1995 that "Wherever you look, you find the evil hand of Iran in this region." Iran's own actions did little to cast much doubt on these accusations.

Similarly, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair blasted Tehran in December 2006 as he toured the region and sought to shore up Arab support against Iran. Much like Rabin and Christopher before him, Blair wanted to form an "arc of moderation" consisting of Israel and pro-Western Arab dictatorships to isolate Iran.

Yet after a decade of making Iran's isolation a central tenet of Washington's Mideast policy, the track record is clear: In spite of all the rhetoric and all the political capital invested in this approach, the policy of containing Iran has failed miserably. Though a significant cost has been imposed on Iran, the isolation policy has neither prevented Iran's rise nor has it compelled Tehran to moderate its foreign policy.

As President Bush tours the region, he will seek to give the impression that the U.S. is not deserting this policy and that increased support from regional actors can succeed in containing Iran. Yet his message will likely be met with great scepticism. Now, more than ever before, Washington seems to have little choice but make a shift on Iran.

First, Iran has continued its nuclear programme in spite of both U.N. sanctions and Washington's unilateral financial sanctions. The strategy of incrementally tightening the U.N. sanctions has been derailed by the December National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which ascertained that Iran currently does not have a nuclear weapons programme.

Consequently, the much anticipated third U.N. resolution seems nowhere in sight. Russia and China have signaled greater resistance to it in response to the NIE and the Iranian U.N. ambassador has taken a month's vacation, reflecting Tehran's lack of worry. And in a great blow to the effort of forcing Iran to face a united Security Council, Russia has begun delivering nuclear fuel to Iran's Bushehr reactor after years of procrastination.