Islamic State threat shifts U.S.-Middle East alliances, enmities

WASHINGTON

One result of the rise of the Islamic State group has been how it seems to be shifting broader conceptions in the Middle East. It sometimes looks like enemies are becoming potential allies -- and even old friends are starting to look a little suspicious.

Is it possible the United States and Europe will shift how they view the players in the Middle East? It's hard to say. But things certainly look a little more confused than they did a few years ago.

Reassessing enemies . . .

Given the transnational nature of the Islamic State group, many foreign policy experts are unconvinced that fighting the group only in Iraq will prove effective. On Thursday, for instance, Gen. Martin Dempsey said that the Islamic State group could not be defeated without addressing "both sides of what is essentially at this point a nonexistent border" between Iraq and Syria.

While Dempsey would not predict that additional airstrikes would occur, others were more forceful in their language. "Since they erased the Iraq-Syria border, we should take them up on it," Ryan Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria, said Wednesday, "and go after them both in Iraq and in Syria. They don't respect the border, but neither should we."

There's an obvious problem with that: By attacking Islamic State militants in Syria, the United States could well end up weakening the Syrian rebels whose plight they once championed and strengthening Bashar Assad's Syrian regime. "I am no apologist for the Assad regime," Crocker said. " . . . But in terms of our security, ISIS is by far the largest threat."

Some have even suggested working with the Assad regime in a bid to destroy the Islamic State group. "Americans are understandably reluctant to help Assad because he is a depraved dictator who responded to the Arab Awakening by turning his military against the Syrian population," said Max Abrahms, a Northeastern University professor and terrorist analyst. "But Washington also needs to consider how best to protect the American population."

"Whereas Assad has never posed a direct threat to the U.S. homeland, ISIS is actively scheming to carry out a mass casualty attack against us," Abrahms said. "From a U.S. national security perspective, ISIS is the more immediate threat."

Such ideas are opposed by many who remember the brutal methods used by the Assad regime throughout the Syrian civil war.

Iran, another country often at odds with the United States, is also being re-evaluated. Not only is the country's Shia Islamist government clearly opposed to the Islamic State group, but it also holds vital sway among Iraq's Shia political community and provides vital military support to Assad's government and Lebanon's Hezbollah militia.

Cooperation with Iran, unimaginable in most circumstances, now seems to be on the table. When British Prime Minister David Cameron wrote in The Daily Telegraph about Iraq's crises last weekend, he singled out Tehran as a potential ally. "We must work with countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the UAE, Egypt and Turkey against these extremist forces, and perhaps even with Iran, which could choose this moment to engage with the international community against this shared threat," Cameron said.

In the United States, the idea of working with Iran has been floating around for months. In June, both Secretary of State John Kerry and President Barack Obama indicated that they were open to working with Iran to stabilize Iraq and contain the Islamic State group. The idea even got limited support from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

On Wednesday, a spokesperson for Iran's foreign ministry said that talks with foreign nations, including Britain, on how to deal with the Islamic State group had begun.

. . . and reassessing friends

On Wednesday, a German government minister made waves with an unprompted comment during an interview. "You have to ask who is arming, who is financing ISIS troops," German Development Minister Gerd Mueller said in an interview with broadcaster ZDF. "The keyword there is Qatar -- and how do we deal with these people and states politically?"

Qatar is a big player in the Middle East and an important economic partner for the United States and Europe. It's a serious charge to say that it supports the most notorious extremist group on Earth, and Mueller presented no evidence.

Qatar is just one nation that has been accused of directly or indirectly aiding Islamic State militants. In an interview with French journalists in June, former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki also pointed the finger at Saudi Arabia, a key economic and political partner of the United States in the Middle East. "I accuse them of inciting and encouraging the terrorist movements. I accuse them of supporting them politically and in the media, of supporting them with money and by buying weapons for them," Maliki said. The United States dismissed Maliki's accusations.

Kuwait, another key U.S. ally, was singled out in a December 2013 report from the Brookings Institution for allowing private funds to reach extreme Islamist groups. "There is evidence that Kuwaiti donors have backed rebels who have committed atrocities and who are either directly linked to al-Qaida or cooperate with its affiliated brigades on the ground," the report found.

Some of the states that have tacitly supported Islamic State militants now seem to be turning their back on them. Turkey, which shares a border with Syria, had allowed Islamic State fighters to use Turkish towns as way stations for arms and supplies. Turkey is now working with the United States and European governments to crack down on Islamist fighters.