// SANAM VAKIL Sanam Vakil is the director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House. Her expertise spans geopolitics, Iranian and Gulf politics, regional security dynamics, and US foreign policy, with a particular focus on the evolving strategic landscape of the Middle East and its global connectivity. She also holds the James Anderson Professorial Lectureship in Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna, Italy. She is the author of Action and Reaction: Women and Politics in Iran.
“These conflicts in the Middle East are intertwined. They bring together states and nonstate actors, including western allies and also China, Russia and Iran. Unravelling them requires sustained diplomatic attention”
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sanctions relief. There’s an opportunity with an ambitious, motivated US president. But there are many roadblocks, including Israel, which is looking to set back Iran’s programme in a military way. There’s also very little trust between Tehran and Washington since President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the agreement in 2018. Indeed, there has been no meaningful diplomatic engagement between them for 46 years. So the pathway is a multilateral one, and it requires determined engagement from Germany, France and the UK – alongside Gulf states equally invested in a de-escalation rather than a military solution. Otherwise, what lies ahead is military conflict, led by Israel, or the weaponisation of Iran’s nuclear programme, or both. How could today’s Syria become a multi-ethnic, peaceful, prosperous state? The newly formed Syrian government has tried to pull together a representative Syrian government. However, the timeline to write and build consensus on a new constitution and an electoral process appears to be a lengthy five years. The recent US announcement to lift sanctions against the Syrian government will alleviate the country’s economic
problems and make it easier to hold this government accountable. However, there needs to be a milestone plan for sanctions relief tied to political steps that are more immediate. Economic relief is urgently needed alongside engagement with the Syrian people, the empowerment of Syrian civil society, and a multilateral regional process supported by Europe, the US and the G7 to protect inclusive government, which is the ultimate aim of everyone involved. What are the prospects for ending Lebanon’s deadly conflicts? Lebanon is the most optimistic of the situations in the Middle East. A pragmatic presidential candidate and prime minister have emerged who are committed to using the weakening of Hezbollah and the military conflict to rewrite the balance of power within the country. What is needed is a combination of diplomatic pressure and a new agreement among political actors and parties in the Lebanese system to be more accountable and to support good governance. The demilitarisation of Hezbollah must be built into the process; it cannot come just from pressure. There also needs to be incentives for Hezbollah to support such developments. A complicated, very delicate process of
negotiation must ensue. But there is an appetite within Lebanon and from key regional actors in the Middle East. The west can play a necessary scaffolding and shepherding role. How can G7 leaders best help in the Middle East? First, these conflicts in the Middle East are intertwined. They bring together states and nonstate actors, including western allies and also China, Russia and Iran. Unravelling them requires sustained diplomatic attention – hard to deliver given global fragmentation and bilateral and multilateral challenges. It also requires sustained support from an entity such as the G7 whose members can work together to support these governance and accountability processes. Second, these conflicts can no longer be bandaged over. They require political settlements attached to processes that need pressure and incentives to achieve proper resolution. Third, the spillover of conflict from the Middle East has global and geoeconomic complications, so the G7 has a responsibility to support conflict resolution in the region for economic and security reasons and because these conflicts have led to domestic tensions in almost all the G7 members.
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