Thomas Juneau

Iran's policy towards the Houthis in Yemen: a limited return on a modest investment

For years, mounting instability had led many to predict the imminent collapse of Yemen. These forecasts became reality in 2014 as the country spiralled into civil war. The conflict pits an alliance of the Houthis, a northern socio-political movement that had been fighting the central government since 2004, alongside troops loyal to a former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, against supporters and allies of the government overthrown by the Houthis in early 2015. The war became regionalized in March 2015 when a Saudi Arabia-led coalition of ten mostly Arab states launched a campaign of air strikes against the Houthis. According to Saudi Arabia, the Houthis are an Iranian proxy; they therefore frame the war as an effort to counter Iranian influence. This article will argue, however, that the Houthis are not Iranian proxies; Tehrans influence in Yemen is marginal. Irans support for the Houthis has increased in recent years, but it remains low and is far from enough to significantly impact the balance of internal forces in Yemen. Looking ahead, it is unlikely that Iran will emerge as an important player in Yemeni affairs. Irans interests in Yemen are limited, while the constraints on its ability to project power in the country are unlikely to be lifted. Tehran saw with the rise of the Houthis a low cost opportunity to gain some leverage in Yemen. It is unwilling, however, to invest larger amounts of resources. There is, as a result, only limited potential for Iran to further penetrate Yemen.

Squandered Opportunity: Neoclassical Realism and Iranian Foreign Policy

The Islamic Republic of Iran faced a favorable strategic environment following the US invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. Its leadership attempted to exploit this window of opportunity by assertively seeking to expand Irans interests throughout the Middle East. It fell far short, however, of fulfilling its long-standing ambition of becoming the dominant power in the Persian Gulf and a leading regional power in the broader Middle East.In Squandered Opportunity, Thomas Juneau develops a variant of neoclassical realism, a theory of foreign policy mistakes, to explore the causes and consequences of Irans sub-optimal performance. He argues that while rising power drove Iranian assertiveness-as most variants of realism would predict-the peculiar nature of Irans power and the intervention of specific domestic factors caused Irans foreign policy to deviate, sometimes significantly, from what would be considered the potential optimal outcomes.Juneau explains that this sub-optimal foreign policy led to important and negative consequences for the country. Despite some gains, Iran failed to maximize its power, its security and its influence in three crucial areas: the Arab-Israeli conflict; Iraq; and the nuclear program. Juneau also predicts that, as the window of opportunity steadily closes for Iran, its power, security, and influence will likely continue to decline in coming years.

Costly gains: a cost–benefit assessment of Iran’s nuclear program

ABSTRACT Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been at the center of Middle Eastern politics and a global nonproliferation source of concern for almost twenty years. Much has been written on the topic, but one important question has received less attention: was it beneficial for the Islamic Republic? How have the gains and losses associated with its nuclear pursuits compared with each other? This article attempts to provide a comprehensive assessment of the costs and benefits of Iran’s nuclear program. We start with an overview of the literature on why states pursue nuclear programs. This allows us to build a list of objectives that states can hope to achieve through their nuclear ambitions. We use these as yardsticks to assess the gains Iran has reaped and the losses it has incurred. This leads to the conclusion that, although Iran has earned some benefits from its nuclear program, these have been costly; ultimately, the costs have exceeded the benefits. We conclude by reflecting on what the Iranian case tells us more broadly about the study of nuclear proliferation.

Iran’s costly intervention in Syria: A pyrrhic victory

Abstract It is a common view that Iran has emerged as a winner from the war in Syria, especially with the survival of the Assad regime likely for the foreseeable future. Yet this is a pyrrhic victory for Iran: it has been dragged into a costly quagmire with no end in sight. Iran and its allies (Assad, Russia, local and foreign Shia militias) have certainly been lining up tactical victories on the battlefield since 2015, including the recapture of Aleppo in 2016, but these do not amount to winning the war, let alone to stabilizing and rebuilding the country. The Islamic Republic has no choice but to continue pouring resources in Syria at great cost, only to preserve a hollowed out and fragmented Assad regime. This is a classic case of mission creep: Iran intervened lightly at first but got dragged into an ever costlier spiral. Iran – and Russia – in this sense are now responsible for a devastated country ripped apart along sectarian and regional fault lines and which suffers from a humanitarian disaster of epic proportions. Iran’s efforts in Syria have led, in sum, to an excessively costly victory.

A realist foreign policy for Canada in the Middle East

Canada’s policies in the Middle East receive large amounts of media attention, but there is surprisingly little scholarly work about them. Of the few studies on the topic, moreover, most focus on analyzing past or current policies. This is certainly useful, but there is virtually no academic work focused on prescription. There is, as such, a need for theoretically informed studies laying out the rationale for a sound Canadian policy framework for the region. In this context, this paper proposes to look at Canada’s Middle East policies from a realist perspective. What are Canada’s interests? How should these translate into policy? The goal here is not to make specific prescriptions regarding each conflict or bilateral relation, but rather to propose a comprehensive framework to guide Ottawa’s broad approach to the Middle East.

The Civil War in Syria and Canada's Containment Policy

The civil war in Syria has caused the deaths of more than 230,000 civilians and combatants, has led to one of the largest refugee crises in recent memory, and has destabilized the Levant. It therefore represents an extraordinarily challenging foreign policy conundrum. A wide variety of responses—ranging from the imposition of no-fly zones to doing nothing—have been considered in Ottawa and in allied capitals since 2011. Each one, however, raises potentially significant challenges. This article explores how Canada has considered those alternatives. As is systematically the case for a non-great power, Canada’s policy options were shaped more by deliberations in allied capitals—especially Washington—and only thereafter by actual developments in Syria. After laying out Canada’s interests relative to the war in Syria, the article describes four policy alternatives that Canada has faced since 2011, as seen through the lenses of liberal pacifism, liberal interventionism, isolationism, and containment. Among this menu of deeply flawed options, containment has steadily emerged as Canada’s de facto approach. That approach has been correct: it is the least bad course of action available since it best allows Ottawa to protect and promote its interests. Nevertheless, Canada could take additional steps to implement a more comprehensive containment framework.