President-elect Donald Trump’s priorities are clearly in domestic policy.  His slogan of “America First” was not meant to harken back to the Thirties and reflect a neo-isolationism, but instead to signal his focus on rebuilding the United States.

His one priority internationally is to “destroy Isil.”  That is understandable. But to do this, he needs the Sunni Arab states and tribes to help defeat it, replace it on the ground, and discredit it. Without them, defeating Isil in Mosul and removing it from Raqqa, its capital in Syria, may prove to be pyrrhic victories. Unless Sunnis are part of the reconstruction and governance in the aftermath of military victories, we may recreate the very circumstances of Sunni exclusion (and oppression) in Iraq and Syria that produced Isil in the first place.

The notion that Russia, Assad and Iran are natural partners in the fight against Isil fails to understand our need for the Sunnis.  Indeed, it ignores the sectarian, exclusionary policies that Iran backs; the atrocities that the Assad regime has committed against primarily Sunnis; and the scorched earth bombing campaign in Aleppo and other Syrian cities that Russia has carried out—all of which alienate many of the very Sunni partners who will be needed.  If that were not enough, it also misses the point that there is a struggle in the wider Middle East today that pits the Iranians and their use of Shia militia against Arab regimes—wherever those militias are present.  And, unfortunately, the Russians at this point are clearly backing the Iranians.

So if the president-elect is going to destroy Isil, he will need to find a way to convince the Sunni states to play a bigger role in the fight against the so-called Islamic State.  It is not that they fail to see the threat posed by Isil; it is that they see the Iranian threat in existential terms.  For all its claims and pretensions, Isil is not a state and has no backing of any state. Iran is a state that seeks to dominate the region and is using Shia militias to weaken the state structure in the region.

Read the full article at The Telegraph