For several days now tensions have been rising in the region on account of statements emanating from Donald Trump’s America and Iran. An American aircraft carrier strike fleet is meanwhile heading towards the Middle East. The Trump administration says this action is meant to counter ‘credible threats from Iran’. Tehran has rejected the allegation implicit in this explanation and called the US move ‘psychological warfare’. Washington has yet to share any evidence in support of its claims about the threat from Iran with the world. Much of the world, including Pakistan, is watching the development with bated breath. Is the spectacle about to turn into a new war theatre? While Iran has been taking sides in conflicts in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere, there is no proof so far that it has Iran ever planned to target US forces in Iraq or elsewhere in the region. The purpose of the imminent clash or the threat of it appears to be coercing Iran into submitting to the diktat of US allies in the region, Israel and Saudi Arabia; or failing that, an attempt at a regime change.
This is what Iranians might have thought of while entering into the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action negotiated between Iran, the US, the UK, Russia, China, Germany and France in 2015 under which Iran opened its nuclear sites for inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. In his 2016 election campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly said he would scrap the deal. Once installed in the White House, he took two years to end the Iran nuclear deal. His problem with Iran and the deal, he says, is that it does not stop Iran’s ballistic missiles programme, and is full of sunset clauses. Trump’s case has hardly a buyer among the European signatories to the agreement. However, they have also not come out with pledges to support Iran against American sanctions, which came into effect this month.
As if sanctions were not enough, the Trump administration now appears to be heading for a clash. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has asked the European signatories to protect it from the telling toll of the US sanctions and warned that if they do not Iran will be forced to walk out of some of the conditions in the agreement. While calling the US position unhelpful, the European nations have stopped short of endorsing Iran’s demand.
Should an armed clash materialise, Pakistan is likely to be affected by it. There could be escalation in tensions and violence in the whole region and beyond. Pakistan’s security, internal as well as external, is likely then to become more fragile. The prices of petroleum products could skyrocket as supplies diminish. Pakistan would do well to use diplomacy to defuse the tensions. To this end it should consult Saudi Arabia and other Middle East players. The Americans need to remind their president of his commitment to withdraw from unnecessary wars around the world, including the conflict in Afghanistan. Why is he spoiling for another endless war? *