Whose side is the US on in the Mid-East?

MISS the good old days when it was clear what the United States was doing in the Middle East? When the American role was to protect Western interests in the region, including maintaining the access to its oil resources - first, against the strategic and ideological challenge posed by Soviet Union during the Cold War, and later, against the evolving threat of Muslim terrorism?

And there was also the US moral commitment to assist the state of Israel that had fought several wars with its Arab neighbours who refused to recognise it and seemed intent on destroying it.

Indeed, for most of the post-World War II era there was a clear consensus in Washington and among Americans that the United States needed to use its diplomatic and military power - by allying itself with the moderate Arab governments, like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, and with Israel - to secure its interests and commitments in the Middle East.

The conventional wisdom in Washington and other world capitals was that the United States would and should "do something" in response to a crisis in the Middle East - such as aggressive moves by regional and global adversaries and confrontations between Arabs and Israelis - including by deploying US troops to the area and by pursuing activist diplomacy in the form of so-called "peace process".

But the foundations of what could be described as the US Middle East Paradigm seemed to be shaking in recent years, as Americans are beginning to ask themselves: What are we actually doing in the Middle East these days? What exactly are our strategic interests in that part of the world? And who are our allies and enemies there?

Things have been getting really quite confusing since the end of the US occupation of Iraq and its failure to remake the region along democratic-liberal lines - the political instability, including the breakdown of states like Syria and Yemen, that followed the so-called Arab Spring; and the inability on the part of Washington to deliver on its pledges to revive the "peace process" between Israelis and Palestinians.

More recently, even veteran Middle East experts are finding it difficult to explain what is going on in the region, in places like Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Libya. Who is fighting who there and who are the pro-American, moderate, good guys? And why should Americans care about all this mess, not to mention agreeing to send troops to the region and be drawn into new military quagmires? And, hey, what happened to that promise to "pivot" US policy to East Asia?

Take Iraq, for example. The country that the Americans had "liberated" once upon a time is now ruled by a government representing the majority Shiite sect and maintains close ties to Iran. Also know as the Islamic Republic, it is a Shiite theocracy that is trying to cement its ties to other Shiite forces in the Middle East and has benefited from the ousting by the United States of Saddam Hussein and his Sunni allies.

But let's not forget that Iran is still considered one of America's leading adversaries in the region and is a sworn enemy of America's ally, Israel, and the leader of a regional Shiite bloc that is challenging the power of Arab-Sunni governments like the Saudi monarchy and the Egyptian military regime, two traditional strategic partners of the United States.

Yet at the same time, the Iranians and the Iraqi Shiites are also fighting against the murderous Arab-Sunni Islamic State (IS) that is now controlling parts of Iraq and Syria and that the Americans have vowed to defeat. That reality seems to be turning Washington and Teheran into allies. Well, sort of.

And if you aren't already confused, consider also that the United States is also leading diplomatic negotiations with Iran aimed at ensuring that the Islamic Republic doesn't acquire nuclear military capabilities in exchange for lifting economic sanctions against that country.

But the Israelis and the Saudis, backed by the Republican Party and some members of the Democratic Party, are warning that US President Barack Obama is negotiating a deal with Iran that would only provide it time to develop a nuclear bomb and emerge as the region's hegemonic power.

FIGHTING THE ISLAMIC STATE

If all of that makes sense to you, perhaps you could figure out why some critics of the Obama administration at home and abroad are worried over what is seen as the evolving cooperation between the United States and Iran in fighting the IS in Iraq.

Indeed, while American advisers are training the Iraqi military, Iranian advisers are providing support to Shiite militias, as part of a combined effort to defeat the IS, and more specifically, to liberate Tikrit, an Iraqi city that is under IS occupation.

In recent days, American warplanes began airstrikes against IS positions in Tikrit, after the US-trained Iraqi military and the pro-Iranian Shiite militias have launched an unsuccessful ground offensive against the IS.

So what happens if and when the IS get ousted from Tikrit? Obama administration officials insist that when that happens, the United States would continue to exert power in the area through its ties to the Iraqi military. But the Republican detractors warn that the military campaign would end with an Iranian victory and allow Teheran to turn Iraq into a regional satellite. The only way to prevent that scenario, they argue, is to deploy US ground troops into Iraq and to strengthen military cooperation with the Kurdish forces that represent the third player in Iraq, in addition to the Sunnis and the Shiites.

Another indication that the Iranians are strengthening their power in the region is the military victory of rebel forces in Yemen that allied with Teheran and that succeeded in ousting a regime with close ties to Saudi Arabia that had cooperated with the Americans in fighting Al Qaeda terrorists in that country.

The rebel forces are led by members of the Shiite Houtis, a tribe that for a while was actually fighting against the anti-American forces of Al Qaeda. But America's allies, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, regard the Houtis as a proxy of Shiite Iran and believe that if Yemen falls into their hands, it would become also a satellite of Teheran and threaten the pro-American Arab oil producers in the Persian Gulf.

Indeed, the Saudis and the Egyptians, and to some extent, the Israelis, have been horrified by the Obama administration's failure to hold on to Yemen and its decision to withdraw all American personnel from the country in the face of the victory by the Houtis.

That explains why Saudi Arabia, backed by troops from Egypt, decided to launch last Wednesday a military campaign into Yemen, as part of an offensive to restore the Yemeni government that was allied with it.

The Egyptians have also been complaining about lack of support from Washington in the military campaign it is conducting against radical Islamist groups in neighbouring Libya, while the Israelis, in addition to their criticism of the negotiations with Iran, are concerned that the United States may have given the green light to Syria's leader Bashar Assad, a member of a Shiite-leaning Alawite sect and an ally of Iran, to use his military against the IS forces in Syria.

ISRAELI NIGHTMARE

So if the Saudis and their allies are worried that neighbouring Iraq and Yemen may fall into Iranian hands, the Israeli nightmare scenario is that neighbouring Syria and Lebanon would become part of an emerging Iranian empire.

And both these allies of the United States are complaining that Washington is not doing enough to contain Iran. If anything, the suspicion in Riyadh and Jerusalem is that a possible nuclear deal between the United States and Iran could open the road to a new strategic realignment in the region in the form of an American-Iranian axis that would marginalise the influence of Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Which begs the question: If the Israelis, Saudis and Egyptians don't trust Washington to contain Iran, why don't they band together and do the job themselves?