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Middle Eastern Powers Consider Their RolesAgainst the Islamic StateAnalysis SEPTEMBER 14, 2014 | 13:08 GMT ! Print − Text Size +

Summary

U.S. President Barack Obama has committed the United States to the task of heading a multiyearinternational campaign to defeat the transnational jihadist movement the Islamic State. However, theU.S. contribution to this effort will be limited in that there will not be any major ground operations. Moreimportant will be the actions of regional players after the United States weakens the Islamic State.

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A video still shows Islamic State fighters with a tank. (Reuters)

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Countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar will have to take responsibility for anylong-term management of the area given their geographical and historical connections to Iraq andSyria. Their conflicting interests probably will aggravate the regional situation.

Analysis

Thirteen years after the start of the war against radical Islamism, the United States has embarkedupon the mission to "degrade and ultimately destroy" the Islamic State — a transnational jihadistmovement that has accomplished al Qaeda's goals of undermining Muslim regimes andre-establishing the caliphate. Fighting the Islamic State, which controls large swaths of territory inSyria and Iraq, will be much more difficult than combating al Qaeda's terrorism-based tactics, and thistime around, Washington has said it will restrict itself to air operations. This means that the bulk of thestruggle will fall to the actors within Syria and Iraq and, more important, to their patrons among theregional powers who will likely face a multidecade struggle in combating the Islamic State.

Put differently, the U.S. role will be minor andlimited in scope and time frame compared to that ofthe four main Middle Eastern countries — Iran,Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar. Any long-termbalance in the region, whether peaceful or violent,is going to draw in these regional powers becauseof their ability to employ direct capabilities and thedirect threat the Islamic State poses to theirsecurity and interests. Still, each country hasdifferent goals in reshaping the region with regardto the fight with the Islamic State and in the eventof the group's defeat. Given that all main players,even the three Sunni states, disagree and compete

significantly with one another, the Islamic State and other like-minded non-state actors will likely beable to endure into the foreseeable future.

Iran's Goals

For the Islamic republic, it is critical that its Shiite allies (working with the Kurds) continue to dominateIraq and that the Alawite-led government in Syria not collapse. Toward this end, the Islamic State mustbe dislodged from Iraq. Iran faces a dilemma in Syria; the Islamic State must be weakened so that itcannot project power into Iraq, but it should not be eliminated because it keeps the main Sunni rebelgroups from posing a threat to Bashar al Assad's regime in Damascus. Keeping the Islamic State inthe mix serves Iran's objectives of keeping the rebels divided and portraying the rebellion as a jihadistenterprise which, in turn, would limit U.S. support for the rebels and deny its main regional rival, SaudiArabia, the ability to use Syria as a launch pad for undermining Tehran's influence in Iraq andLebanon. For this reason, while Iran is happy to see the United States strike at the Islamic State inIraq, it is deeply concerned about any U.S. moves in Syria.

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Saudi Arabia's Interests

The Saudis are in the worst position in the region. Between the Iranian/Shiite threat, the Arab Spring,the rise of republican Islamism in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic State-led jihadistsurge, Riyadh is in a geopolitical maelstrom. Ideally, the kingdom would like to harness the power of avirulently anti-Shiite group such as the Islamic State to topple the Syrian regime and weaken the Shiain both Iraq and Lebanon, thus forcing the Iranians back into their Persian core. The problem is thatthe Saudis do not control the Islamic State. Moreover, Riyadh is competing with groups like the IslamicState and al-Qaeda for a monopoly over the concepts of Salafism and jihad. This is why the Saudishave been putting together a coalition of Syrian rebels, many of whom are Salafist-jihadists who donot share the Islamic State's ambition to establish a caliphate and are willing to go only as far as theSaudis command them to. Saudi Arabia is thus hoping that U.S. military power will help neutralize theIslamic State and allow its proxies to take over the territories currently under the jihadist group'scontrol. This way the transnational jihadist threat will be removed and the kingdom can make progresstoward ousting al Assad.

Turkey's Stakes

Turkey is the largest Muslim military power in theregion and wants to see the al Assad regimereplaced by a Sunni regime that can facilitateAnkara's ambition of regaining influence in theArab world. However, the Turks do not share thesectarian zeal of the Saudis, nor are they asvulnerable to the Iranian threat as the kingdom is.In addition, Turkey has a unique geopoliticalposition: Iran holds the upper hand in the two Arabstates it borders — Iraq and Syria — and on bothborders there are Kurdish populations thatembolden Kurdish separatism within Turkish

territory. Moreover, since the eruption of the sectarian war in Syria that allowed for the emergence ofthe Islamic State, Turkey has been coping with jihadists on both borders. Knowing that Iraq's ethno-sectarian makeup gives Iran more influence there, the Turks are more interested in U.S. military actionin Syria than in Iraq. Turkey would like to see Muslim Brotherhood-type Islamists and Syrian Sunninationalists fill the vacuum created by the U.S. military campaign against the Islamic State. However, itknows its interests will collide with those of Saudi Arabia, for whom the toppling of the al Assad regimewould be a victory in its proxy war with Iran — something the Turks have no interest in. Therefore, theTurks can be expected to work with the Qataris, given their shared outlook for the region.

Qatar's Position

Doha's strategic outlook is based on two principles: It does not want to accept Saudi hegemony of theSunni Arab world, and Qatar wants to be a regional player. Doha's main instrument to achieve these

ends has been its support for the Muslim Brotherhood groups throughout the region. Qatar and Turkeyare in agreement on this issue, and they more or less would support the same types of actors in Syria.That said, Qatar also has influence over Salafist-jihadist groups including al Qaeda's Syrian node,Jabhat al-Nusrah. While Qatar is not as opposed to the Iranians as the Saudis are, it wishes to see theUnited States destroy the Islamic State so that nationalist Islamist forces can rise in Syria andeventually enter a power-sharing arrangement with the al Assad camp.

These competing visions for a post-Islamic State Syria show the complexity of the eventual tug-of-waramong these four actors. The United States might be able to help loosen the Islamic State's grip inSyria and Iraq, but it is unlikely the regional players will simply move forward and seamlessly establisha new regional order to contain the sectarian conflict.

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