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**Editor's note: **Hamzah Rifaat Hussain is a former visiting fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington, and currently serves as assistant researcher at the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI) in Pakistan. The article reflects the author's opinions, not necessarily the views of CGTN.
At the Munich Security Conference 2020, Iran and Saudi Arabia were at loggerheads over conflicting narratives and geostrategic goals which overshadowed calls for sustainable peace in the region. Heightened tensions between the arch rivals and Iran's faltering economy mandated strategic wisdom which came from Iran's foreign minister, Javad Zarif, who while castigating the Trump Administration, reiterated his country's commitment towards cessation of hostilities by offering a regional security architecture.
The "
Regional Security Architect"
proposal is based on dialogue with neighboring Arab states and confidence building measures. Previously, a proposal titled "Iran, New Iraq and the Persian Gulf Political Security Architecture
" was written by Professor Keyhan Barzegar who hypothesized that Iran's goals of supporting Shiite's in Iraq was less to do with its ideological inclinations and more to do with lessening the impact of existing security arrangements of foreign powers.
The architecture proposed in Munich, however, negates the above hypothesis and deals with reaching out to Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia, for the resolution of disputes. This proposal came at a time when the security conference saw assertions made by the German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, who called for the failing Libyan political solution to be rekindled and the U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo considering China to be a global threat. The latter assertion is the Trump Administration's binary approach towards the Middle East which jeopardizes prospects for peace.
The timing of the proposal is significant as it comes days after the controversial Trump peace plan for Palestine was unveiled, which was subsequently rejected by the Arab League. While Iran has a tumultuous relationship with Saudi Arabia, the denunciation of the Trump plan by the Arab League allows Iran to increase its diplomatic relevance in the region, especially in the aftermath of the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, a near dead JCPOA deal, and increased economic difficulties domestically.
Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (1st L) meets with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic (3rd R) in Munich, Germany, February 15, 2020. /Xinhua
Yet, Iran's calls for peace fail to resonate. The Trump administration considers Iran to be the sole exporter of terrorism in the Middle East and a direct threat to the state of Israel. These calls are echoed by Riyadh, which considers any overture from Iran towards peace to be conditional on withdrawal of support for Alpha elements in the region. The debilitating conflicts in the Middle East as per the Trump Administration trace solely towards Iran as the responsible player.
But the trends of conflict escalation in the region suggest otherwise. According to the 2019 report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Saudi Arabia was the single largest importer of major arms constituting 12 percent of the global share of military spending with the United States standing as the largest exporter, constituting 34 percent of global military spending.
In the top 10 states listed, Iran was not mentioned, although Israel and the UAE definitely were. Adding to these trends is the support for Sunni militias by Saudi Arabia in countries with a significant Shia population, such as Yemen and Syria which runs contrary to Iranian desires for peace and dialogue. Hence, the castigation directed towards Iran by Washington D.C. and Riyadh are factually incorrect, and parallels can be drawn with similar arguments made by India, where its repudiation of Pakistan and conditioning the resolution of the Kashmir dispute with clamping down on terrorism from Pakistan in South Asia blatantly disregards human rights violations in the disputed territory by New Delhi itself.
While few can doubt that Iran has had a controversial history with regard to supporting elements, which have threatened the security of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United States, the calls for a peace agreement in the Middle East being made conditional to Iran altering its behavior stalls any prospects for peace. The entire concept of regional peace requires peace proposals to be accepted in its entirety and resolving issues through dialogue and deliberation, the absence of which, will only embolden Iran to adopt a hawkish approach towards Washington D.C.
Calls from fellow Americans at the Munich Security Conference, also consider this binary approach as myopic. U.S. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy expressed his reservations over the Trump administration's approach towards Iran at the round table debate. This approach clearly lacks strategic wisdom if compared with other peace initiatives, such as the Belt and Road Initiative launched by China, which considers the sovereignty of states to be inviolable and is based on the common goal of economic prosperity without squarely blaming one actor at the expense of another for disrupting peace.
With an economically crippled Iran riddled by sanctions, a dire humanitarian crisis in Yemen brewing by the day, and heightened tensions between regional powers in Syria, it can be safely assumed that any regional security architecture outside the priorities of the Trump Administration would be refuted. As states continue to strive towards viable solutions for sustainable peace, such a binary approach by the sole superpower in the world is a damning indictment.
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