Don't Let Iran Dominate

London -- Middle Easterners may long for the stability of Ottoman days, but that doesn't mean they want a new Persian empire. Iranian regional domination would be dangerous in the extreme.

The Middle East, it is true, has had long periods when domination by one regional power brought stability for all and safety for some, notably the 650-year-long Ottoman empire. But does this mean that today's Middle Easterners would love a new Persian empire, to emulate the Ottomans? It does not. A rise of Iran to regional domination would be dangerous in the extreme.

This is so both for reasons of nationalism and of ideology. Islam is as bitterly divided within itself, between the Shias, mainly of Iran and Iraq, and the more mainstream Sunnis, centred on Saudi Arabia, as it sometimes seems bitterly opposed to the West. But nationalism, and national power politics, trump even religious ideology. An Iran on the path to dominance would prompt an arms race, led by the other big regional powers, Egypt and Saudi Arabia; it would cause great and justified existential anxiety in Israel, the only nuclear power of the region; and it would leave America little option but to seek to strengthen Iran's opponents, in order to maintain regional balance, just as it did during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.

No, the prospect of a dominant Iran would be a terribly destabilising one. But is this the right question? Perhaps a better question is whether a nuclear-armed Iran automatically means a dominant Iran. In the Middle East (outside Israel), the prospect of a nuclear Iran produces a surprising amount of indifference, even from senior Saudis.

Bill Emmott is the former editor of The Economist magazine, a leading international current affairs publication from England. He is now an independent writer, speaker, and consultant on international affairs.