Husain Haqqani, whose byline always emphasises that he was Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US, recently wrote an article for The Huffington Post where he sounded the alarm against what he calls the “Pax Iranica” or the Iranian Empire, playing deliberately on ancient prejudices of both the Arabs and the west. He chose to do so at a time when the Iran deal promises to change the very nature of US-Muslim engagement. One does not defend the theocratic regime in the Islamic Republic of Iran to recognise that the comparison that Haqqani draws between Iran and “ISIS” or Islamic State (IS) or Daesh is factually incorrect. Iran may have a theocratic regime but the much-maligned country also has the trappings of a modern republic. There is a civil society and a constitution. Signs of change are evident in the increasing numbers of women in the workforce in that country and the fact that there is a reformist elected government, albeit one with clipped wings because of Villayet-e-Faqih and the Revolutionary Guard. Comparing the Islamic Republic of Iran to IS is therefore not true. The fact of the matter is that the US got it all wrong with the Arab Spring, which in a real sense was a broken spring. Every country with the possible exception of Tunisia, which experienced that spontaneous revolutionary fervour, is today a mess. The so-called democratic government in Libya is being run by another strongman called General Hifter. Egypt is under virtual military dictatorship. Syria is in ruins, leading to the present refugee crisis. What adds to the ignorance with which the west lauded the Arab Spring is the hypocrisy that while you are willing to countenance radicals of every shade in the name of the Arab Spring, you are unable to accept that Iran went through a genuine uprising of the people in 1979. Either both are wrong or both are right. You cannot pick and choose revolutionary fervour based on sect or ethnicity. In my opinion, the west mishandled the Arab Spring the same way it mishandled the Iranian Revolution in 1979, leaving the door wide open for strongmen to establish their dictatorial regimes. The west should have, in 1979, worked with the Shah of Iran to meet the genuine demands and concerns of the people of Iran. In 2011, it should have worked with Mubarak, Assad and Gaddafi to put their countries on the path to an open and more democratic future, which would have given these dictators an exit. In both cases, the world would have avoided the catastrophic aftermath. Still, what is done is done. So what should be the policy going forward? Should it be to pit Arabs against Iranians and Sunnis against Shias? Such a policy will be a disaster for the world at large, leading possibly to another world war with deadly weapons with Russia and China squaring off against the US. This is why the US’s reconciliation with Iran in the form of the Iran deal is such a stabilising coup de grace. US engagement with the Muslim world should not be based on bad advice. It should not be based on exploitation of prejudices between Shias and Sunnis on the one hand and the Iranians and Arabs on the other. Finally, it should be based on principle and that principle should be greater security and peace in the world. Right now, the Muslim world faces a grave internal threat, i.e. IS. The US needs to work in tandem with Russia and China to ensure that the forces of reason and sanity are not overwhelmed in Syria and Iraq. A broad based alliance between these three great powers is the need of the hour to overcome this gravest of threats. The question of Assad’s fate should only be a secondary consideration, which should come after the immediate menace of IS has been firmly dealt with. There will always be time to take up the aspirations of all stakeholders to the conflict, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, but that time is not now. The bogey of Pax Iranica should not divert US attention from what needs to be done now. The writer is a lawyer based in Lahore and the author of the book Mr Jinnah: Myth and Reality. He can be contacted via twitter @therealylh and through his email address yasser.hamdani@gmail.com