Iranian demonstrators shout slogans during a rally marking the 34th anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. Embassy outside the former U.S. embassy in downtown Tehran, capital of Iran, on Nov. 4, 2013. (Xinhua File photo)
BAGHDAD, Feb. 14 (Xinhua) -- Poland hosted a two-day international conference sponsored by the United States over peace and security in the Middle East region, to discuss the political situation and the role of Iran in regional development.
However, Iraqi analysts believe the meeting is nothing but an attempt to rally international support to isolate Iran diplomatically and economically.
Ibrahim al-Ameri, a political analyst, told Xinhua "although the United States invited dozens of world states to the conference, but many states, including of its allies, have declined to attend or send low-level representation."
"Originally, the United States was planning that such rally would close the ranks of countries who oppose Iran's negative role in the region, but the limited participation pushed Washington to change the conference agenda saying it will not only focus on Iran but would tackle wider range of issues in the Middle East region," Ameri said.
Despite retitling the agenda to focus on peace and security in the Middle East, many, including European diplomats, still believe that U.S. officials will derail the goal of the conference to adopt the U.S. anti-Iran rhetoric.
"Many countries are not interested in building up anti-Iran coalition that would make them appear like lining up behind Trump's hardline approach to Iran issue," Ameri said.
The absence of some effective regional and international players in the Middle East, such as Russia, the European Union (EU), Palestine, Turkey, Qatar, Lebanon, reflects the growing anger over unilateral U.S. policymaking with regard to Iran and Syria, Ameri concluded.
The EU remains strongly opposed to the withdrawal of the United States from Iran's 2015 nuclear deal and resisted second batch of U.S. sanctions and continued trade with Iran.
"The trade of EU countries with Iraq continued despite the second batch of U.S. sanctions late last year, because the ongoing trade made Iran committed to the nuclear deal, and EU believes that they should not push Iran to abandon the nuclear deal," Ameri added.
Late last year, the United States has restored sanctions on Iran's oil industry as well as its banking and transport industry.
Washington withdrew from Iran's landmark 2015 nuclear deal in May and imposed second batch of sanctions against Tehran in November, targeting Iran's shipping, financial and energy sectors.
For his part, Nadhum Abdullah, an Iraqi expert in Iranian affairs, told Xinhua that the United States is seeking to form an anti-Iran coalition from some of the Gulf countries in addition to Jordan and Egypt to protect its interests in the Middle East and allied regional states from what said to be Iranian threat.
The proposed U.S.-sponsored coalition against Iran came as fears raised in the region by the increase of Iran's influence in the region after the rise of Iranian-backed Shiite Islam in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and parts of the Gulf countries.
"If formed, such anti-Iran coalition would have bad impact on Iraq because of the strong Iranian influence in the country. Iran is expected to use its allied Shiite-led government, parliament, parties and militias in Iraq to breach the sanctions, in order to embarrass Washington by pressing to withdraw its forces," Abdullah said.
"Iran will face great economic and political hurdles by the continuing sanctions and that would affect its allies in Iraq and Lebanon and other areas," he added.
For his part, Abdul Aziz al-Jubouri, professor at Media College in Iraqiya University, told Xinhua that he believes the conference would fail, because many countries refused to be driven by U.S. anti-Iran rhetoric.
"Many of the world countries realize that the conference is only designed to adopt hostile steps toward Iran, just like Trump would like to do, and not to discuss peace and stability of the Middle East region," al-Jubouri said.
"The world has experiences from the past and present time; that every place the U.S. forces intervene would turn into a hotbed of tension, strife and devastation, as we have seen in Iraq and other places," al-Jubouri added.
Al-Jubouri predicted that the result of the conference "would either reflect the division about anti-Iran measures, or at best would show weak tendency to form a coalition against Iran."
