Nothing is more complicated than distressing neighbors. If they live near your home, you have no choice but to leave, moving to take up residence elsewhere, whatever the cost.
However, what would you do if you lived next to an aggressive country, given that moving your country elsewhere isn’t an option? If you reside in Eastern Europe, for example, you would have countries like Russia and Belarus nearby - countries led by leaders like Putin and Lukashenko, who are obsessively pursuing to export ideologies, revolutions and old delusions of grandeur. Maybe you reside in the Middle East. Next to you is Iran, a country spreading its missiles, the missiles of its “vassals,” and fighters across the region. It is proud of seeking to export its “revolution” to various places of the region.
How could you plan for the future of your country safely? How could you use your economic and scientific capacities to improve the living conditions of your people and not divert your resources to enhance your ability to face this daily threat on your border?
On the surface, it seems far-fetched to compare Russia’s project in Ukraine, Crimea and Donbas with the Iranian project in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. On the surface, it could also be said that one would have to be over the top to find similarities between what Western countries seek to achieve through their attempts to contain Vladimir Putin’s muscle-flexing and what these same countries seek from containing Khamenei and his entourage’s nuclear dreams through the negotiations in Vienna.
Nonetheless, a realistic assessment of these comparisons would inevitably reach the same conclusion, that the West faces the same difficulty with Putin as it does with Iran’s leaders. Western countries seek to avoid confrontation and are pushing in the direction of negotiations, while its rivals on both camps (Iranian and Russian) view as an indication of the West’s weakness, and they build delusions of victory on this assumption.
Putin is following the Western delegations coming to Moscow and desperately trying to invoke sympathy for the Ukrainians, asking him to kindly not invade their territory and satisfy himself with the share he had already taken during his previous invasion. And Ebrahim Raisi and Hossein Amir-Abdollahian are following the efforts Joe Biden, Antony Blinken, and Robert Malley are making to conclude an agreement with the Iranians, aiming to persuade them to contain their nuclear activity.
Commenting on that activity, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi said it had reached a critical point: describing it with these words: “There’s no other country other than those making nuclear weapons reaching those high levels [of uranium enrichment]!”
Putin knows that Biden, under the pretext that it is not a NATO member, is not prepared to deploy forces to defend Ukraine. Putin also knows that Macron cannot take any useful military steps while drowning in his economic concerns and electoral preparations. Putin knows as well that Boris Johnson is overwhelmed with scandals, having to deal with a new accusation as soon as he addresses a previous one. Meanwhile, the German Chancellor is concerned about his country’s supply of gas, which, if interrupted, would make things colder and frostier in the Alpine villages and the Black Forest.
In short, Ukraine may be a concern for those running television stations because transmitting images of military preparations lures viewers and improves ratings, and it may be an opportunity for politicians to appear like leaders. However, it is not a concern for everyday Europeans, who could hardly locate Ukraine on the map.
As for the ongoing negotiations with Iran, Tehran’s leaders are also aware that the Biden administration has made a return to the nuclear deal its top priority in the region, leaving no other options on the table. Thus, we find that the Iranians are the ones setting the terms, as they understand the sense of urgency with which the Biden administration is seeking to conclude an agreement. Among their latest conditions is that Washington ensure that any future administration would abide by the agreement and not reimpose sanctions on Iran as the Trump administration had done (terms no administration has the ability to impose on its successors).
The Americans admit that the negotiations have reached a critical point and that failure to reach an agreement that halts the Iranian nuclear program’s development before the end of February would be futile and render this agreement worthless. The US lead negotiator, Robert Malley, has not shied away from saying that concluding an agreement with Iran is “in Washington’s interest,” without clarifying how Washington and its allies in the region have an interest in Iran maintaining its current capacities.
Since it resumed uranium enrichment three years ago, it has increased purity to 60 percent, which is the purity needed, according to experts, to develop a nuclear bomb. Moreover, the agreement being promised does not address Iran’s missiles and the threats they pose to its neighbors. Even at this stage of the negotiations, Iran has announced the development of surface-to-surface missiles with a 1,450 km range.
Faced with such a state of affairs and such neighbors, countries have no choice but to depend on themselves and their capacities.
The Ukrainians had realized this and began developing their military capabilities after 2014 when Russian forces managed to annex Crimea and invade parts of Eastern Ukraine through their local agents. And the countries of the region neighboring Iran find themselves faced with no choice but to prepare to confront its aggression while simultaneously affirming their desire to establish good relations based on neighborliness and respect for borders. That desire, however, is conditioned on Iran avoiding interference and expressing that same desire for good relations.
