The Outcome of the Warsaw Conference; Tehran Should Not Be Overly Optimistic

Aside from the closer ties between some Gulf Arab states and Israel, the Warsaw conference did not yield any tangible and immediate results. However, this should not lead Tehran to an unrealistic assessment of international conditions and ignore the challenges in its approaches. It is still unclear what discussions and agreements took place in closed-door meetings and informal negotiations at the Warsaw conference, but what is evident is that the conference did not have a concrete and specific outcome, whether in terms of proposing new initiatives to increase pressure on Tehran, which is the main goal of the U.S. and Israel, or in terms of attracting more allies in this regard, or in exacerbating the rift within the European Union to isolate Germany, France, Spain, Italy, etc. (supporters of the JCPOA), or regarding the announcement of even partial success of the 'Deal of the Century' to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The conference was held on the same day that the foreign ministers of France and Germany (perhaps deliberately and as a snub to the Warsaw conference) published a joint strategic article ahead of the Munich Security Conference, putting U.S. unilateralism on trial and discussing their intensified joint efforts to preserve multilateralism and international institutions and safeguard international agreements that prevent the rise of aggressive and self-centered nationalism. Beyond the fact that these positions may find limited practical backing given that the EU itself is facing the problem of divergence and the rise of right-wing populism, their implicit contradiction with the discussions of the Warsaw conference was not invisible. The Sochi conference, held on the same Thursday with the presence of the presidents of Russia, Iran, and Turkey, effectively took on a different meaning in the shadow of the announcement of the U.S. withdrawal from Syria and did not necessarily indicate an increase in Washington's maneuverability to intensify pressure on Iran in Syria, unless a gradually evident distance between Moscow and Tehran (with or without encouragement from Israel and the U.S.) increases in the Syrian arena, combined with Israeli military pressure, further limits Iran's maneuverability in that country. Pompeo stated: 'The Iranian threat has brought Israel and Arab countries closer together.' Regarding the rapprochement between Arabs and Israel based on a shared understanding of the threat posed by Iran, it may indeed benefit the Israeli government and further isolate Iran, but the fact that a country like Egypt participated at a low level in the conference, and that Qatar, Lebanon, Iraq, Algeria, and Tunisia were absent, was not insignificant. The lack of any final statement at the conference also did not signal its success. The Palestinian Authority did not hesitate to state that the rapprochement between Arabs and Israel and facilitating the international presence of this country would only make its occupation more urgent and sustainable. However, this does not negate the reality that whether Netanyahu's efforts to get closer to Arab countries succeed, whether he continues as prime minister in Israel, or whether he succeeds in sidelining the Palestinian issue, is related in part to Tehran's provocative policies in regional issues, including the slogan of destroying Israel and its prominent ramifications. On the other hand, the day the U.S. wanted to attack Iraq, it was satisfied with the alliance of some Eastern European countries, and Donald Rumsfeld, the then U.S. Secretary of Defense, laughed at Germany and France, saying that if they did not want to cooperate, they did not need to. At the Warsaw conference, however, Mike Pence, the U.S. Vice President, complained about why European allies do not stop supporting the JCPOA to better isolate Iran. Poland could neither prove its claim that the conference would not have an anti-Iranian orientation nor bring this claim to fruition, as it did not play a significant role in guiding and setting the agenda of the conference compared to the U.S. and Israel, taking on more of a catering role and managing the guests, hoping to make the presence of U.S. forces in its territory permanent to counter the threat it perceives from Russia and to take on a central role in supplying energy to Europe, to the detriment of Russia and Germany, with U.S. assistance. The failure of the Security Council meeting in New York last September, which was supposed to strengthen and unify the front against the Islamic Republic under Donald Trump's presidency and centered on the issue of Iran, played a significant role in the removal of Ms. Haley, the U.S. representative to the UN who initiated this meeting. There is no indication that the inconclusive success of the Warsaw conference will lead to a separation of Trump's team from any of the conference organizers, but it is certainly not out of the question. The limited or moderate outcomes of the Warsaw conference should not lead anyone in Tehran to a belief in the validity of their path and methods, nor should it lead them to understand that Europe, even with efforts to preserve the JCPOA, will not cooperate in some other areas, including countering Iran's perspective on the issue of Israel. The very presence, even at a low level, of Europeans at the conference indicates some existing commonalities between both sides of the Atlantic. Ultimately, it is Tehran that must come to understand that the policy of looking east or the approach based on countering sanctions at any cost, with the reasoning that perhaps with Trump's potential departure in the next two years and without needing to change its regional and international positions, a fundamental improvement will occur, will not work. Given Ayatollah Khamenei's recent statement on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the 1979 revolution, the Islamic Republic still has a long way to go to reach this understanding and realization; a distance that comes at the cost of the country's regression and stagnation in development, which is already significantly lagging behind its necessary and desirable trajectory.