Opinion

Obama’s lonely ‘Arab Summit’

Ever since he decided to chase the mirage of a “Grand Bargain” with Iran, President Obama has pretended that the only opposition comes from Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu and “hardline” Republicans in the Congress.

He was to highlight that claim by hosting a summit for “key Arab allies” at Camp David this week.

Yet the exercise has instead shown the failure of Obama to sell his narrative to “key Arab allies” even before the first round of orange juice is served at Camp David.

Of the six heads of the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, only two, the emirs of Kuwait and Qatar, will attend.

Even the offer by Obama of a separate tete-a-tete in Washington could not persuade Saudi Arabia’s King Salman to attend what Riyadh sources describe as “a photo-op” aimed at hoodwinking the American public.

Instead, the king will send his nephew Crown Prince Mohammed “to enjoy the president’s eloquence.”

Also staying away is Sultan Qabus of Oman, whose government helped Obama arrange and host secret talks with the Iranian mullahs. Oman will be represented by a deputy premier who seldom deals with foreign policy.

Even the king of Bahrain, Hamad bin Issa, has decided that he has better things to do than to hear Obama deliver one of his narcissistic lectures.

As for the president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheik Khalifah, he was the first to turn down Obama’s invitation hours after it arrived. Instead, he will send his No. 2.

All in all this would be an awkward event, perhaps the first time that so many leaders publicly shun a president of the United States.

There are two reasons for the boycott.

The first is that the “key Arab allies” already know that Obama, who genuinely believes he is always right, does not listen to anybody.

The Camp David exercise, therefore, is designed only as an occasion to admire Obama’s strategy and celebrate his “historic achievement” in accepting Iran’s position as a “threshold nuclear power.”

The second reason is that Arabs already know what Obama is going to say.

“Obama made it clear he wanted an accord with Iran under any circumstances,” a senior Arab official recently told me, on condition of anonymity.

According to the official, Obama also claimed that President Hassan Rouhani’s team Iran had “made concessions that no other government in Tehran would ever offer again.”

Finally, Obama said he would be prepared to offer a “presidential statement” warning Iran not to threaten the security and integrity of its Arab neighbors.

According to the official, Obama let it be understood that the envisaged deal would not take the form of a classical agreement between Tehran and Washington and thus there would be no need to submit it to congressional scrutiny. In other words, the recently approved Senate bill on the issue would not apply.

Under the Obama scheme, the deal with Iran would be spelled out in a draft resolution jointly submitted to the United Nations Security Council by its five permanent members plus Germany, thus ensured of unanimous approval.

The new draft would cancel sanctions imposed on Iran in six previous resolutions and make it incumbent on all UN members to also lift sanctions against Iran once it has accepted the new text.

Tehran loves the scheme. It would make it difficult for its foes to accuse it of surrendering to the “Great Satan.” At the same time, Tehran would get an immediate injection of $50 billion from its frozen assets to revive a moribund economy.

Accepting the resolution, Tehran would enter into talks with the United Nations about “modalities of implementation,” something that could be dragged on for months, if not years.

In August 1989, Iran accepted Security Council Resolution 598 on the war with Iraq. For the past 16 years, Iran has been negotiating about “modalities of implementation” while the world has forgotten the whole thing.

“Obama is banking on the assumption that giving Iran everything it wants may help change its behavior,” the Arab official told me. “He may be right. We think he is wrong.”