The Iran Deal Hasn't Changed Anything

Tom Tugendhat

Security, Middle East

A British MP—and veteran—recognizes the danger of an empowered Tehran.

Since the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, along with Germany) signed the nuclear deal with Iran in July 2015, remarkably little has changed. Instead of using the opportunity to bring itself back into the international community, Iran has continued to sow instability across the region. Syrian forces are still backed by Iran, and Iraqi militias still get their orders from Tehran. From the Gulf to the Red Sea, Tehran is using Shia groups in its quest for supremacy up to the borders of the old Persian Empire. None of this should be surprising—Iranian policy has barely changed in two thousand years.

Cyrus the Great, the only Persian king still celebrated in Jerusalem, set the tone by ruling all the way to Egypt. Since the 1979 Revolution, the rulers of the Islamic Republic have sought to dominate this region once again.

Proxy groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Sadrist militias in Iraq have taken the fight beyond the capacity of Iranian government forces. In Yemen and Bahrain today, groups funded from Tehran have been armed, funded and trained to challenge the Arab governments. Since the Iran deal was signed, peace has remained remarkably elusive.

With all the flowery language coming from Western capitals about a new era of relations with Iran—including my own in London—many of our longstanding Arab partners and Israel are asking: Whose side are we on?

Trying to duck the question is an answer in itself. Our partners for generations, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and, of course, Saudi Arabia, hear our silence echo through their palaces and feel our indifference to the growing challenge to their authority.

If the United States and the United Kingdom are to remain trusted friends for the Gulf, we will have to think hard about reassuring those who rely on us for protection. King Salman of Saudi Arabia’s trip to the Kremlin in February shows that they have other options.