Most analysts have focused on Israeli and American, rather than Arab, reactions to the Iran nuclear framework agreement announced last week. Yet there were significant and highly divergent reactions across the Arab region — not just in the Gulf but also among Iran’s friends and adversaries in Syria, Lebanon, and beyond. On April 9, for instance, leading Gulf-affiliated media headlined Iran’s new statements “reneging” on key aspects of the deal, while Assad regime and Hezbollah media spun those statements as Iran’s “rightful” response to continued Western pressure.

One common denominator has stood out: Arab commentators and officials have paid remarkably little attention to the framework’s technical details (at least before President Obama’s latest statement that Iran’s breakout time may shrink “almost down to zero” in little over a decade). Instead, Arab reactions evince a single-minded focus on a nuclear deal’s potentially broader implications for Iran’s conventional intervention in regional conflicts. In addition, survey research demonstrates that most Arab publics share their governments’ highly negative views of Iranian policies — even if some of those publics, as Obama mused publicly this week, are probably concerned about various domestic problems as well.

HEZBOLLAH WELCOMES THE DEAL, OTHER LEBANESE RETICENT

Lebanon’s Shiite politicians, beginning with Speaker of the Parliament Nabih Berri, lost little time in congratulating Iran on its “achievement” or “victory” in the nuclear negotiations. The chairman of the pro-Hezbollah daily al-Akhbarimmediately published an op-ed titled “The West Has Capitulated!” Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah soon elaborated on this theme in a lengthy April 6 interview broadcast on the Syrian pro-regime television network al-Ikhbaria and transcribed on the website of his party’s mouthpiece, al-Manar. He emphasized that the lifting of sanctions would make Iran more powerful and influential in the region, and that this in turn would buttress Tehran’s Lebanese and Syrian allies while enabling Iran to support the Palestinian “resistance” more than ever. These points were duly reiterated by a Hezbollah spokesman on al-Mayadeen television April 8.

At the opposite Lebanese political pole, most Sunni politicians and affiliated media reported only tersely on the framework and refrained from endorsing it. Some concentrated their comments on opposition to Iran’s conventional military interventions around the region. A few Christian political figures, such as Samir Geagea, publicly questioned the framework’s implications, while others remained silent on the issue.

These polarized reactions are in line with the sectarian cleavages in Lebanese popular attitudes toward Iran. A reliable public opinion poll last October showed that an astonishing 96 percent of Lebanon’s Shiites had a positive view of Iran, but that figure plummeted to just 12 percent among Sunnis. Lebanon’s Christian community, like its political leaders, was more divided on this question, with 35 percent voicing a favorable view of Iran and the remainder either noncommittal or negative.

Read the article in full at the Washington Institute.