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Analysis: Elephants in the Conference Room

Council on Foreign Relations

November 27, 2007
Author: Greg Bruno

Hopes for a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace were pinned to a high-profile gathering of Arab and Israeli leaders in Annapolis, Maryland, on November 27. Yet those not invited offer a compelling subplot. Martin Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, sees Iran as the elephant in the conference room. “Finding a way to counter the threat from Tehran…is fueling this peace meeting more than any other factor,” he tells the Christian Science Monitor. Indeed, CFR Fellow Mohamad Bazzi sees Syria’s invitation as part of an effort to woo it from an alliance with Tehran. The speaker of Iran’s parliament, offering a counter-analysis, says the Sunni Arab states lending legitimacy to the Annapolis talks will merely discredit themselves (IRNA).

The alarm of many Arab leaders at Iran’s rising influence throughout the region is not in question. Held in check during Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party rule, Tehran now has friends in the Shiite-led government in Baghdad. Iran’s influence has grown in Lebanon, where Iranian-backed Hezbollah held its own against Israel’s military in their brief war last summer. In Syria, too, Iran has formed “a marriage of convenience.” Tehran has also forged new financial and military ties with Hamas, the militant Palestinian movement which now holds sway in the Gaza Strip. Hamas pronounced the peace talks “doomed” (al-Jazeera) even as they opened.

Coloring Tehran’s political expansions are allegations of clandestine support for Shiite militants in Iraq, and a nuclear program some Western governments—including the United States—worry is geared toward creating a bomb.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2007 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.