Tehran should now stop meddling

There is one argument in favor of the Iranian nuclear agreement. Picking an external fight is a classic recourse of regimes that are in trouble at home. And until this week’s inking of the agreement, domestically the Iranian government was getting into ever deeper trouble. 
The economic sanctions have been crippling. As with the UN trade limitations on Saddam’s Iraq, the pain was not spread evenly. It was of course the poor who were hurt most. The merchants, the bedrock of the support for Ayatollah Khomeini in the 1979 revolution which overthrew the Shah, have been in despair. The corruption and ineptitude of the government was bad enough. To it was added severe shortages of goods to sell except at black market prices which most people could not afford. 
Iran’s economic distress could have been the driving factor behind its external meddling. It has given unwavering support to Basher Assad’s government in Syria. It has overseen the collapse of a united Iraq. It has fostered dissent in Bahrain and Eastern Province. It has brought about the catastrophic Houthi rebellion in Yemen which aims to restore deposed President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Yet it is notable that none of this meddling has inspired most ordinary Iranians with any violent nationalist feelings. After 36 years of rule by the religious establishment, the overwhelming public desire is to get on with a quiet and prosperous life. And that is just what a decade of increasing sanctions has impeded.
There is an opportunity now for the Iranian government to turn a new page in its relations with its Arab neighbors. It is doubtless something most Iranians desire. 
But only a fool would feel certain that the Iranian leopard is sure to change its spots. All the evidence points in the opposite direction. With the removal of sanctions, tens of billions of frozen assets will be released. The return of the oil industry to world markets will boost the government’s coffers. Initially, a significant part of these funds will have to be used to rehabilitate the rundown hydrocarbon infrastructure. Money will also be channeled to social projects. A quarter of the population is under the age of 18 and almost 30 percent of young people of working age are unemployed. The median age in the country is 27 years.
It remains to be seen if a sufficient number of real, productive jobs can be created in an economy that is dominated by cronyism and bribery. 
The Kingdom has made it clear that it believes that the priority for the Iranian government must be domestic development. It must abandon policies which have been designed to create chaos in the region. Failure to cease its aggressive behavior will produce determined resistance from its neighbors. 
In short Tehran has a lot to prove. The inspection regime of its nuclear facilities is, according to the Americans, highly rigorous. This remains to be seen. President Obama has warned that if there is the slightest sign of non-compliance with international inspectors, sanctions are back on. But is this realistic? Establishing sanctions in the first place was a gradual process, not dissimilar to turning a supertanker. Reimposing them will be equally slow and difficult. And the Tehran government will have money to enhance the mechanisms it has already established to bypass years of sanctions.
There has to be a suspicion that the White House has made a dangerous calculation. It thinks that a rapprochement with Iran will help it in its campaign against Daesh in Iraq and Syria. This of course is being denied. But it is surely likely that some in Washington believe that working more closely with Tehran will help ensure that the nuclear deal sticks. Nor can it be doubted that the Iranians have been encouraging this view. At the very least this could damage the close relations that the Americans have had with their loyal friends and allies in the Gulf. This could of course play to a continuing strategy of seeking to destabilize and dominate Arab countries. 
Washington should never forget that from the day Khomeini returned, Tehran government’s declared ambition has been to export its revolution. That strategy has never been renounced. 
It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that at some point, a few months down the line, the Iranians will protest that the sanctions are not being lifted as agreed. They will therefore obstruct nuclear inspections. But this will not put matters back to where they were before the Vienna deal was signed this week. The Iranians will only risk cutting up rough, only when they have got their hands securely on most of their frozen assets.

Source : Arab News