Last week, the United States and Poland hosted a Middle East conference to address a broad range of security challenges in the region. According to administration officials, the meeting was arranged as a platform to discuss “regional crises and their effects on civilians in the Middle East; missile development and proliferation; cyber security and emerging threats to the energy sector; and countering extremism and illicit finance.”
While all those issues are pretty generic, the actual conference was dominated by the subject of Iran. Even before the meeting commenced, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set the tone saying the conference gives Arab countries and Israel a chance to meet openly “to advance the common interest of war with Iran.” After the attendees had assembled, Vice President Mike Pence delivered a speech lambasting the Tehran regime as the primary cause of instability in the Middle East, calling it a “murderous revolutionary regime.”
Unfortunately, the administration fell short of its goal of achieving consensus on Iran. The failure could be boiled down to this: while the U.S. and its European allies are in agreement that Iran is a problem, there is still substantial controversy on how to address that. Major points of contention include the future of the Obama-era nuclear deal, which Trump pulled out of last year. Another is the intensity of economic sanctions imposed on Iran. Several European nations have recently created a back-channel system designed to circumvent U.S. sanctions. Instead of taking the opportunity to find points of consensus on Iran, the administration spent the recent conference attempting to push its more hardline agenda.
While the the U.S. may be right on its stringent stance regarding the Islamic Republic, in geopolitics, like in most situations, it takes two to tango. To pick up more international partners in dealing with Iran, the administration may be forced to compromise.
