With the Iran nuclear deal behind him, Secretary of State John Kerry is off to the Middle East next week to discuss a topic many in the region and in Washington have complained is missing from the complex arrangement: a plan to deal with Tehran’s disruptive behavior.
Kerry will be in Cairo on Sunday to consult with Egyptian officials and will meet with Gulf Cooperation Council members in Qatar on Monday. He told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday that discussions would center on a “very robust initiative” to curb Iran’s bad behavior.
“We will be engaging in special forces training, counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, counter-finance — a whole series of steps in order to empower all of us to do a better job of reducing those activities,” he said.
The U.S. considers Iran’s Shiite Muslim theocracy to be the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world, and many Arab states see Iran as an existential threat for its support of mostly Shiite militants in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
Lawmakers and U.S. allies in the region have been harshly critical of the Obama administration’s narrow focus on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and unwillingness to push back against Iranian aggression for fear it might upset the talks, which ended July 14 with a deal that gives Tehran international legitimacy and sanctions relief in exchange for putting its nuclear program on ice for 10 years.
That focus is at the heart of Israeli objections to the deal, and has fueled a belief in the Middle East that President Obama is seeking a broader rapprochement that could give Iran a greater role in the region.
U.S. allies also are concerned that Iran will use at least some of the billions of dollars it will get in sanctions relief to increase support for terrorism and insurgencies in the region, and to buy advanced weapons after a U.N. arms embargo is lifted.
“My problem with the administration is not the technical part of the deal. It’s Iran’s policy in the region and the total failure of this administration to address Iran’s nefarious activities, malign activities throughout the region,” Hisham Melham, columnist for the pan-Arab news network al-Arabiya, told Voice of America.
“My problem with the administration is Iran as the regional hegemon.”
Those concerns have been bolstered by remarks from Obama himself, who has consistently expressed the hope that the nuclear deal would spur Iranians to play a more constructive role in the region.
“The truth of the matter is that Iran will be and should be a regional power. They are a big country and a sophisticated country in the region. They don’t need to invite the hostility and the opposition of their neighbors by their behavior,” Obama told New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in an interview published the day the deal was announced.
Kerry’s visit follows Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s tour through the region last week. He traveled to Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq to assure leaders that the United States would back them up against Iranian efforts to destabilize their countries.
Carter will appear before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday to discuss the deal alongside Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey.
