The NYU Center for Global Affairs hosted an event recently called CGA Scenarios: Iran 2015. The goal of the event was to produce a publication that examined three different possible scenarios for the US relationship with Iran over the next 7 years in a manner cognizant of the complex nature of Middle East politics and of US policy trade-offs; clearly principles are not the only criteria that the President and his supporting staff use to make decisions about policy. The report examines three scenarios, summarized by the CGA as follows:
• U.S. Led Coalition Contains Iran: Here the US organizes a broad coalition to thwart Iranian ambitions for regional hegemony. This requires that intra-Arab and Arab-Israeli tensions be subordinated, if not resolved; that regional powers be sufficiently reassured by US security commitments to live with a higher level of tension with Iran; and that global cooperation is effective enough to deny Iran a nuclear weapons capability. Implicitly it assumes continued bluster from Iran, rather than a more "moderate' leadership pursuing nuclear weapons and regional dominance with greater skill. It assumes an Iraq with a government prepared to confront Iran, or still up for grabs and a battleground for the wider regional confrontation. And it assumes that this higher level of tension can be managed without resort to war.
• U.S. Drawdown from Iraq Triggers Regional Balancing: Here regional actors, in anticipation of a diminished US role in Iraq and a reduced on the ground presence generally, strengthen their own individual and collective abilities to defend their security, as they partially engage Iran to blunt Iranian hostility. In reducing its footprint, the US acknowledges its inability to control local events and to democratize the region, at least over the short term. In doing so, it frees up resources to address other policy priorities in Pakistan, Afghanistan and outside the region. While arguably advantageous from a US perspective, the nuclear proliferation risk in this scenario is high, as Arab states with nuclear weapons potential confront Iran with less US reassurance, and Israel operating under less US restraint.
• U.S. Engages Iran: Factors operating in both the US and Iran coincide to enable this scenario: a new US administration committed to cutting losses in Iraq, looking for a dignified retrenchment and revamped priorities; Iran in deepening economic crisis, imposed by Western sanctions and its own failures of economic policy and governance. With both states chastened by recent experience, their latent common interests become more apparent: stability in the region, increased energy production, economic modernization and growth. The result is a process of engagement (by no means a resolution of all issues) that incentivizes moderation. While the advantages for both states in this scenario are apparent, the list of spoilers is long: radical Islamists benefiting from Iranian support and the US-Iran conflict; Israel and the Arab states with deepening fears of Iranian nuclear capabilities, domestic opponents in both states.
On the one hand, it doesn't really take on the consequences of the preemptive-strike business on US credibility internationally. On the other, it treats the US taking on a diminished role in the Middle East as a possibility and not an apocalyptic one. Those two things might be the same – perhaps the simple consideration of the US taking on a diminished role and, as they phrase it, making a virtue of necessity constitutes an implicit acknowledgement of America's diminished power and influence.
Click here to download the report. Thanks to the Center on Global Affairs for bringing it to my attention.
