What Bibi doesn't understand about the US, Iran and the Middle East

Washington: We knew before Benjamin Netanyahu arrived at the US Congress that he would have nothing new to say – after more than 20 years the Israeli prime minister has wheeled out every argument there is against a nuclear Iran.

So, why this visceral sense that the Middle East is careering towards a point of no return? Maybe because that is the kind of wild trajectory the region is on.

The Middle East is catching up with its last century – the 2015 of Obama and Netanyahu is not the 1916 of Sykes and Picot; the 1948 of the founding of Israel, the 1967 of the Six-Day War, the 1973 of the world oil shock or the 1979 of the Islamic Revolution.

Washington's place in the world – and in the region – is very different. The Cold War is gone and the grind of nuclear tension with Moscow is so yesterday. Obama wants to pivot to Asia.

US and world dependence on Arab fossil fuel is not what it was and most of the Arab regimes have become trusted allies of the West – especially in the context of the crisis brought on by the so-called Islamic State. All are allowed to get on with their human rights abuse excesses, they are sold weapons worth billions and that thing called the Middle East peace process goes precisely nowhere – and nobody seems to mind.

But defined by recent upheaval in the region, perhaps the greatest change, reluctant as it has been, is a changing US perception of Iran and its people.

The 1979 revolution was Washington's first in-your-face encounter with the fusing of religion and state power. The Shiites were confirmed as the regional troublemakers and in that, there was a failure by the US to appreciate that such a cocktail had not manifested itself in the Sunni nations because of rampant oppression – in which Washington had a hand.

The greater the oppression, the less the regimes provided for their people. So it was hardly surprising that they would turn to political Islam – spurred in part by the Iranian revolution; funded to a great extent by Saudi and Gulf largesse.

The neo-con argument as the US prepared for the invasion of Iraq was that democracy would finally be planted in the region. And when Netanyahu spoke to Congress at that time, he declared: "If you take out Saddam, Saddam's regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region."

Instead, Iran was planted in Iraq; and the impotence of the Sunni regimes was revealed, creating a vacuum in which Sunni jihadists challenged the entire nation-state model of governance, on which the West so relies in the region.

Now we've come full circle. The extent of Washington's crisis with the Sunnis repositions Iran more as part of the solution and less as part of the problem. And where Washington needs circuit-breakers right now, Iran has heft; Israel doesn't.

The threat to regional stability now is the conflict within Sunni Islam more than it is Sunni v Shiite or Islam v West.

Writing in Foreign Policy last year, analyst Trita Parsi observed: "Iraq is disintegrating. Syria is in flames. Pakistan is on the verge of becoming a failed state. The Taliban is making a comeback in Afghanistan. Libya is falling apart. The House of Saud is nervous about a potentially existential succession crisis. In this region Iran looks like an island of stability."

He makes his point – "meanwhile, the geopolitical enmity that has characterised relations between the US and Iran for more than three decades, now has been overtaken by events in Iraq and elsewhere".

This is the context in which Washington and Tehran need each other – but they will not achieve that until they get to the other side of a nuclear deal.

The language of Barack Obama and a growing army of officials and analysts now acknowledges Iran as a potential partner.

Here's the US President last year: "[The Iranians] are strategic, and they are not impulsive. They have a world view, and they see their interests, and they respond to costs and benefits . . .  they are a large, powerful country, that sees itself as an important player on the world stage and, I do not think has a suicide wish, and can respond to incentives."

There are two inferences here – any deal short of Iran getting a bomb is better than no deal; and that the world should be able to live with a limited Iranian nuclear program that is kept under close international inspection.

The Iran Project, run by former US diplomats and analysts, argues that a deal could preserve Iraq; no deal, it concludes, would push along the process of disintegration, "almost certainly lead[ing] to further conflict and ethnic cleansing, as well as disrupt the stability of other nations, including Lebanon and Jordan".

And in the event that any deal is killed off by hardliners in Washington or Tehran, former US ambassador to Riyadh Chas Freeman warns that a window of opportunity will have been closed. Analysing the rising tension in the P5+1 group of countries trying to pull off a deal, Freeman observed that time was tightening, telling a Washington conference: "Think about Russia's relations with the US and the UK and Germany . . .  think about US relations with China."

Amidst all this regional change, the reality of Israel too is changing – in itself and in its relations with the world.

Netanyahu harks back to Washington's role as the first to recognise the new state of Israel in 1948. Recalling a small country with a huge and convincing argument, The Washington Post's Richard Cohen observes: "He harkens back not only to a different America, but also to a different Israel – [in 1948] it was not yet an occupation power; it did not mistreat the Palestinians."

And in the context of what Washington needs in the region, as opposed to what the US might like or admire, Cohen adds: "The fact is that the US doesn't need Israel."