March 17, 2011
By HELENE COOPER and MARK LANDLER
WASHINGTON — The brutal crackdown in Bahrain poses the greatest Middle East democracy dilemma yet to the Obama administration, deepening a rift with its most important Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, while potentially strengthening the influence of its biggest nemesis, Iran.
Relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia have chilled to their coldest since the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. Saudi officials, still angry that President Obama abandoned President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt in the face of demonstrations, ignored American requests not to send troops into Bahrain to help crush Shiite-led protests there. A tense telephone call between Mr. Obama and King Abdullah on Wednesday, Arab officials said, failed to ease the tensions.
“King Abdullah has been clear that Saudi Arabia will never allow Shia rule in Bahrain — never,” an Arab official who was briefed on the talks said. He said King Abdullah’s willingness to listen to the Obama administration had “evaporated” since Mr. Mubarak was forced from office.
The Saudi position is rooted in the royal family’s belief that a Shiite uprising next door in Bahrain could spread and embolden Saudi Arabia’s own minority Shiite population and increase Iranian influence in the kingdom, a fear that American officials share. But where Mr. Obama and King Abdullah have parted ways, administration officials say, is on how to handle the crisis.
American officials want Saudi Arabia and Bahrain to allow political reforms that could lead to more representation for Shiites under Sunni rule. During his telephone conversation with the Saudi king, Mr. Obama called for an end to the violence that has accelerated in Bahrain over the last few days.
He asked for a “political process as the only way to peacefully address the legitimate grievances of Bahrainis and to lead to a Bahrain that is stable, just, more unified and responsive to its people,” according to Jay Carney, the White House press secretary.
But “there’s not too much listening going on,” a senior administration official said, noting that Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton were forced to cancel visits to Saudi Arabia in recent days because the king was not willing to host them. (The official reason given was that he was ill.) “There appears to be a great deal of annoyance still,” added the official, speaking only on condition of anonymity.
A senior administration official noted Thursday that some Shiite opposition leaders had vowed not to respond in kind to the violent crackdown by the government, and to remain peaceful, raising hopes among members of the Obama administration that the Shiite opposition has not become radicalized and might still be amenable to political dialogue. “It suggests to me that the radicalization on the part of the moderate Shia has not yet occurred,” the official said.
But, he added, “Without question, there are people on the extreme end of the opposition who have been in touch with Iran.” He said that the Obama administration had tried to convey to its allies in the Persian Gulf that the governments were most at risk if they approached the unrest only from a standpoint of their own government security.
For the administration, the stakes are higher in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia than in any other Arab country facing unrest now.
“In terms of concrete American national security interests, Bahrain-Saudi Arabia is the place,” said Robert Malley, the Middle East and North Africa program director with the International Crisis Group. Saudi Arabia is the second largest foreign supplier of oil to the United States, and Bahrain is home to the United States Navy’s Fifth Fleet.
Even if the United States could wean itself from dependency on Saudi oil, the kingdom, home to the world’s largest petroleum reserves, still can rock global markets and slow economic recovery in the United States and around the world.
Beyond that, the United States has long viewed Saudi Arabia as a last bulwark against an ascendant Iran in a crucial region, and does not want Tehran stepping in to back Shiites in Bahrain or Saudi Arabia.
But where the United States and the Saudis split is over how to prevent Iran from gaining traction. While American officials say the Saudi and Bahraini governments can head off trouble by making political reforms, the Saudis believe that political reforms would only open the door to greater instability.
“Our message to Saudi Arabia is that if you want to avoid the fate of Mubarak, you need to move toward genuine and gradual reform,” said Mr. Malley of the Crisis Group. “But what the Saudis are hearing instead is that reform is actually the path to Mubarak’s fate.”
In many ways, Mr. Malley and other Middle East experts say, the crisis in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia makes dealing with Egypt and Tunisia look easy. While Egypt is another crucial American ally, Mr. Obama could publicly side with the protesters in Tahrir Square without roiling global oil markets or inviting in Iran.
The Obama administration has vested a lot of its hopes of resolving the conflict in Bahrain with the crown prince, Sheik Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa, who is leading government efforts to start a dialogue with the protesters.
The prince, a 1992 graduate of American University in Washington, was described in a 2009 diplomatic cable made public by WikiLeaks as “very Western in his approach.”
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20/12 NYT - The Captive Arab Mind
Op-Ed Columnist
By ROGER COHEN
Published: December 20, 2010
LONDON — At this point it is clear enough who invaded Iraq. Contrary to general opinion, it was Iran. After all, applying the Roman principle of cui bono — “to whose benefit?” — there can be no question that Iran, the greatest beneficiary of the ousting of its enemy Saddam Hussein and the rise to power of Shiites in Baghdad, must have done it.
I know it appears that the United States was behind the invasion. What about “shock and awe” and all that? Hah! It is true that the deception was elaborate. But consider the facts: The invasion of Iraq has weakened the United States, Iran’s old enemy, and so it can only be — quod erat demonstrandum — that Tehran was the devious mastermind.
This mocking “analysis” is often deployed deadpan by my colleague, Robert Worth, the New York Times correspondent in Beirut. After three years living in Lebanon and crisscrossing the Arab world, he uses this “theory” to express his frustration with the epidemic of cui bono thinking in the region.
I say “thinking,” but that’s generous. What we are dealing with here is the paltry harvest of captive minds. Such minds resort to conspiracy theory because it is the ultimate refuge of the powerless. If you cannot change your own life, it must be that some greater force controls the world.
While I was in Beirut this month, the conspiratorial world view was in overdrive, driven by WikiLeaks and by the imminence of an indictment from an international tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of the former prime minister Rafik Hariri: more on that later.
The notion was actually doing the rounds that recent shark attacks at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheik were the work of Mossad, the Israeli secret service. Hadn’t someone seen an electronic device attached to a shark being directed from Tel Aviv, video-game style, to devour a Russian tourist’s leg?
One Egyptian government official suggested the theory was plausible enough. After all, damage to the Egyptian tourist industry could only please Israel. Cui bono ?
In his seminal collection of essays, “The Captive Mind,” Czeslaw Milosz described the intellectual’s relationship to Stalinist totalitarianism: “His chief characteristic is his fear of thinking for himself.”
Lebanon is a freewheeling delight on the surface — as far from Soviet gloom as can be imagined — but it betrays the servile mind-set of powerless people convinced that they are ultimately but puppets. This playground of sectarian interests, where each community has its external backer, may be the perfect incubator of conspiracy theories.
But Lebanon is only an extreme case in an Arab world, where the Internet and new media outlets have not prised open minds conditioned by decades of repression and weakness.
Hariri, who was pro-Western and anti-Syrian, was assassinated in downtown Beirut. Suspicion fell on Syrian agents. A United Nations tribunal was set up to investigate — itself a reflection of Lebanon’s weakness in that the country’s own institutions were deemed inadequate.
Five years later, I found the investigation irrevocably infected by cui bono fever. “Who took advantage of the killing?” Talal Atrissi, a political analyst, asked me. “Not the Syrians, they left Lebanon afterward. It was the United States that benefited.” Hah!
Ali Fayyad, a Hezbollah member of Parliament, told me: “The tribunal is entirely politicized, an illegal entity used by the United States as one of the tools of regional conflict against Syria and the resistance.”
Theories abound that Israel penetrated the Lebanese cellphone system to coordinate an assassination portrayed as providing the pretext for a failed anti-Syrian putsch by the West (much as 9/11 is grotesquely perceived in the Arab world as a self-inflicted pretext for the United States to wage war against Muslims).
Why, it is asked, was an international tribunal set up for Hariri but not for Benazir Bhutto’s killing? Why has the C.I.A. not been interrogated? Such questions now have such a hold on Lebanon that I have reluctantly concluded that justice and truth in the Hariri case are impossible, victims of the captive Arab mind.
In the cui bono universe there can be no closure because events stream on endlessly, opening up boundless possibilities for ex post facto theorizing.
Of course, the saga of WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange and the leak of a quarter million secret U.S. diplomatic cables are also viewed as part of some grand conspiracy. They reflect the decline of America and the revolt of its vast federal bureaucracy! No, they demonstrate America’s enduring power, recruiting female Swedish agents to accuse Assange of sex crimes!
The truth is more banal. The WikiLeaks cables reveal autocratic but powerless Sunni Arab governments calling on the United States to do everything they are unable to do themselves — from decapitating Iran to coordinating a Sunni attack on an ascendant Hezbollah in Lebanon. Such fecklessness, and the endless conspiracy theories that go with it, suggest an Arab world still gripped by illusion.
Milosz wrote powerfully of the “solace of reverie” in worlds of oppression. I found much solace in Lebanon but little evidence that the Middle East is ready to exchange conspiratorial victimhood for self-empowerment — and so move forward.
By ROGER COHEN
Published: December 20, 2010
LONDON — At this point it is clear enough who invaded Iraq. Contrary to general opinion, it was Iran. After all, applying the Roman principle of cui bono — “to whose benefit?” — there can be no question that Iran, the greatest beneficiary of the ousting of its enemy Saddam Hussein and the rise to power of Shiites in Baghdad, must have done it.
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Roger Cohen
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I know it appears that the United States was behind the invasion. What about “shock and awe” and all that? Hah! It is true that the deception was elaborate. But consider the facts: The invasion of Iraq has weakened the United States, Iran’s old enemy, and so it can only be — quod erat demonstrandum — that Tehran was the devious mastermind.
This mocking “analysis” is often deployed deadpan by my colleague, Robert Worth, the New York Times correspondent in Beirut. After three years living in Lebanon and crisscrossing the Arab world, he uses this “theory” to express his frustration with the epidemic of cui bono thinking in the region.
I say “thinking,” but that’s generous. What we are dealing with here is the paltry harvest of captive minds. Such minds resort to conspiracy theory because it is the ultimate refuge of the powerless. If you cannot change your own life, it must be that some greater force controls the world.
While I was in Beirut this month, the conspiratorial world view was in overdrive, driven by WikiLeaks and by the imminence of an indictment from an international tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of the former prime minister Rafik Hariri: more on that later.
The notion was actually doing the rounds that recent shark attacks at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheik were the work of Mossad, the Israeli secret service. Hadn’t someone seen an electronic device attached to a shark being directed from Tel Aviv, video-game style, to devour a Russian tourist’s leg?
One Egyptian government official suggested the theory was plausible enough. After all, damage to the Egyptian tourist industry could only please Israel. Cui bono ?
In his seminal collection of essays, “The Captive Mind,” Czeslaw Milosz described the intellectual’s relationship to Stalinist totalitarianism: “His chief characteristic is his fear of thinking for himself.”
Lebanon is a freewheeling delight on the surface — as far from Soviet gloom as can be imagined — but it betrays the servile mind-set of powerless people convinced that they are ultimately but puppets. This playground of sectarian interests, where each community has its external backer, may be the perfect incubator of conspiracy theories.
But Lebanon is only an extreme case in an Arab world, where the Internet and new media outlets have not prised open minds conditioned by decades of repression and weakness.
Hariri, who was pro-Western and anti-Syrian, was assassinated in downtown Beirut. Suspicion fell on Syrian agents. A United Nations tribunal was set up to investigate — itself a reflection of Lebanon’s weakness in that the country’s own institutions were deemed inadequate.
Five years later, I found the investigation irrevocably infected by cui bono fever. “Who took advantage of the killing?” Talal Atrissi, a political analyst, asked me. “Not the Syrians, they left Lebanon afterward. It was the United States that benefited.” Hah!
Ali Fayyad, a Hezbollah member of Parliament, told me: “The tribunal is entirely politicized, an illegal entity used by the United States as one of the tools of regional conflict against Syria and the resistance.”
Theories abound that Israel penetrated the Lebanese cellphone system to coordinate an assassination portrayed as providing the pretext for a failed anti-Syrian putsch by the West (much as 9/11 is grotesquely perceived in the Arab world as a self-inflicted pretext for the United States to wage war against Muslims).
Why, it is asked, was an international tribunal set up for Hariri but not for Benazir Bhutto’s killing? Why has the C.I.A. not been interrogated? Such questions now have such a hold on Lebanon that I have reluctantly concluded that justice and truth in the Hariri case are impossible, victims of the captive Arab mind.
In the cui bono universe there can be no closure because events stream on endlessly, opening up boundless possibilities for ex post facto theorizing.
Of course, the saga of WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange and the leak of a quarter million secret U.S. diplomatic cables are also viewed as part of some grand conspiracy. They reflect the decline of America and the revolt of its vast federal bureaucracy! No, they demonstrate America’s enduring power, recruiting female Swedish agents to accuse Assange of sex crimes!
The truth is more banal. The WikiLeaks cables reveal autocratic but powerless Sunni Arab governments calling on the United States to do everything they are unable to do themselves — from decapitating Iran to coordinating a Sunni attack on an ascendant Hezbollah in Lebanon. Such fecklessness, and the endless conspiracy theories that go with it, suggest an Arab world still gripped by illusion.
Milosz wrote powerfully of the “solace of reverie” in worlds of oppression. I found much solace in Lebanon but little evidence that the Middle East is ready to exchange conspiratorial victimhood for self-empowerment — and so move forward.
22/12 Mỹ mở rộng diện trừng phạt đối với Iran
18:28 22/12/2010
(ĐCSVN) – Mỹ vừa quyết định áp đặt các biện pháp trừng phạt đơn phương mới với mục tiêu nhằm vào Lực lượng Vệ binh cách mạng Iran (IRGC) và các ngành dịch vụ năng lượng và vận tải biển của nước này trước thềm các cuộc đối thoại giữa Iran và nhóm P5+1 (gồm Anh, Trung Quốc, Mỹ, Pháp, Nga và Đức) tại Thổ Nhĩ Kỳ vào tháng 1/2011.
Bộ Tài chính Mỹ vừa áp đặt các lệnh trừng phạt bổ sung đối với Iran(Ảnh: PressTV)
Bộ Tài chính Mỹ ngày 21/12 đã đưa thêm 5 doanh nghiệp của Iran, bao gồm 2 ngân hàng, một công ty bảo hiểm, 1 công ty giao nhận hàng hóa và 1 công ty vận tải biển quốc doanh của nước Cộng hòa Hồi giáo Iran (IRISL) vào "danh sách đen" tài chính của nước này do có liên hệ với IRGC. Lệnh trừng phạt cấm các công ty trên tiếp cận hệ thống tài chính Mỹ và phong tỏa mọi tài sản có thể thuộc quyền thực thi pháp lý của Washington.
Theo kênh truyền hình vệ tinh PressTV thì các biện pháp trừng phạt mới của Mỹ cũng nhằm mục tiêu vào cựu Bộ trưởng năng lượng Parviz Fattah.
Thứ trưởng Tài chính Mỹ phụ trách các vấn đề về tình báo tài chính và khủng bố Stuart Levey nhấn mạnh IRGC và IRISL là "những thể chế tham gia chính vào các hoạt động bất hợp pháp của Iran và nỗ lực trốn tránh các biện pháp trừng phạt. Vì vậy, chúng tôi sẽ tiếp tục gây sức ép và vạch trần mạng lưới này".
Ngoài ra, Bộ Tài chính Mỹ cũng xác định Công ty dầu mỏ và khí đốt Pars, do Chính phủ Iran sở hữu và kiểm soát, phải chịu các biện pháp trừng phạt tài chính theo một dự luật mới.
Liên hợp quốc, Mỹ và Liên minh châu Âu (EU) gần đây đã áp dụng các biện pháp trừng phạt mới đối với Tehran nhằm ngăn chặn chương trình làm giàu urani của nước này, trong đó chú trọng biện pháp ngăn chặn nguồn cung cấp tài chính, đầu tư về năng lượng....
Quyết định mở rộng diện trừng phạt đối với Iran được Mỹ đưa ra không lâu sau khi kết thúc vòng đối thoại giữa Iran và nhóm P5+1 tại Geneva (Thụy Sỹ) hồi đầu tháng 12/2010. Trong các cuộc đối thoại trên, Iran và nhóm P5+1 đã nhất trí nối lại đàm phán vào tháng 1/2011 tại Thổ Nhĩ Kỳ.
Trong bài phát biểu trên truyền hình hôm 18/12, Tổng thống Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cho biết, sau các cuộc đối thoại tại Thổ Nhĩ Kỳ, Tehran có kế hoạch tiếp tục tiến hành đàm phán tại Brazil và ngay trên lãnh thổ Iran.
Mỹ và các nước đồng minh phương Tây vẫn cáo buộc Iran đang theo đuổi chương trình phát triển vũ khí hạt nhân. Trong khi đó, Tehran lại bác bỏ quan điểm trên và khẳng định, chương trình hạt nhân của mình chỉ nhằm phục vụ cho các mục tiêu hòa bình và tuyên bố sẽ không thảo luận về quyền phát triển hạt nhân trong khuôn khổ các vòng đối thoại với nhóm P5+1./.
T.L (Theo TTXVN, PressTV, Reuters)
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(ĐCSVN) – Mỹ vừa quyết định áp đặt các biện pháp trừng phạt đơn phương mới với mục tiêu nhằm vào Lực lượng Vệ binh cách mạng Iran (IRGC) và các ngành dịch vụ năng lượng và vận tải biển của nước này trước thềm các cuộc đối thoại giữa Iran và nhóm P5+1 (gồm Anh, Trung Quốc, Mỹ, Pháp, Nga và Đức) tại Thổ Nhĩ Kỳ vào tháng 1/2011.
Bộ Tài chính Mỹ vừa áp đặt các lệnh trừng phạt bổ sung đối với Iran(Ảnh: PressTV)
Bộ Tài chính Mỹ ngày 21/12 đã đưa thêm 5 doanh nghiệp của Iran, bao gồm 2 ngân hàng, một công ty bảo hiểm, 1 công ty giao nhận hàng hóa và 1 công ty vận tải biển quốc doanh của nước Cộng hòa Hồi giáo Iran (IRISL) vào "danh sách đen" tài chính của nước này do có liên hệ với IRGC. Lệnh trừng phạt cấm các công ty trên tiếp cận hệ thống tài chính Mỹ và phong tỏa mọi tài sản có thể thuộc quyền thực thi pháp lý của Washington.
Theo kênh truyền hình vệ tinh PressTV thì các biện pháp trừng phạt mới của Mỹ cũng nhằm mục tiêu vào cựu Bộ trưởng năng lượng Parviz Fattah.
Thứ trưởng Tài chính Mỹ phụ trách các vấn đề về tình báo tài chính và khủng bố Stuart Levey nhấn mạnh IRGC và IRISL là "những thể chế tham gia chính vào các hoạt động bất hợp pháp của Iran và nỗ lực trốn tránh các biện pháp trừng phạt. Vì vậy, chúng tôi sẽ tiếp tục gây sức ép và vạch trần mạng lưới này".
Ngoài ra, Bộ Tài chính Mỹ cũng xác định Công ty dầu mỏ và khí đốt Pars, do Chính phủ Iran sở hữu và kiểm soát, phải chịu các biện pháp trừng phạt tài chính theo một dự luật mới.
Liên hợp quốc, Mỹ và Liên minh châu Âu (EU) gần đây đã áp dụng các biện pháp trừng phạt mới đối với Tehran nhằm ngăn chặn chương trình làm giàu urani của nước này, trong đó chú trọng biện pháp ngăn chặn nguồn cung cấp tài chính, đầu tư về năng lượng....
Quyết định mở rộng diện trừng phạt đối với Iran được Mỹ đưa ra không lâu sau khi kết thúc vòng đối thoại giữa Iran và nhóm P5+1 tại Geneva (Thụy Sỹ) hồi đầu tháng 12/2010. Trong các cuộc đối thoại trên, Iran và nhóm P5+1 đã nhất trí nối lại đàm phán vào tháng 1/2011 tại Thổ Nhĩ Kỳ.
Trong bài phát biểu trên truyền hình hôm 18/12, Tổng thống Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cho biết, sau các cuộc đối thoại tại Thổ Nhĩ Kỳ, Tehran có kế hoạch tiếp tục tiến hành đàm phán tại Brazil và ngay trên lãnh thổ Iran.
Mỹ và các nước đồng minh phương Tây vẫn cáo buộc Iran đang theo đuổi chương trình phát triển vũ khí hạt nhân. Trong khi đó, Tehran lại bác bỏ quan điểm trên và khẳng định, chương trình hạt nhân của mình chỉ nhằm phục vụ cho các mục tiêu hòa bình và tuyên bố sẽ không thảo luận về quyền phát triển hạt nhân trong khuôn khổ các vòng đối thoại với nhóm P5+1./.
T.L (Theo TTXVN, PressTV, Reuters)
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01/12 Why Can't Arabs and Iranians Just Get Along?
The 14 centuries of bad blood behind the WikiLeaks cables.
BY JOHN LIMBERT | DECEMBER 1, 2010
If we believe the recently leaked U.S. State Department messages, some leaders of Arab states harbor unkind thoughts about their Iranian neighbors. In addition to describing them in terms like "liar" and "snake," they have expressed a wish to American visitors that this troublesome neighbor would somehow go away. For his part, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, stung by these harsh epithets, claims that the entire WikiLeaks affair is a foreign conspiracy to sow discord between Iranians and Arabs and to strengthen the Americans' claim that Iran has become a diplomatic polecat in its own region.
Arab-Iranian hostility is not uniform. Iranians enjoy correct if not warm relations with their Qatari and Omani neighbors. Relations with Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are icy, with the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait falling somewhere in the middle. When pushed to the wall, both sides have been capable of putting aside old prejudices and grievances (real and imagined) and can act in their own interest and maintain cordial state-to-state ties. Nevertheless, the big picture is negative, as the cables dramatically show.
What is going on here? What is behind this intra-Islamic and intraregional strife? Are those Arabs denouncing the Iranians speaking just for themselves or for a broader segment of public opinion? Why do Iranians beat their chests for Palestine, an Arab cause? And despite what they say, do the Saudis and others really want the Americans -- and perhaps the Israelis by extension -- to attack Iran?
Much Contact, Little Understanding
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More... It belabors the obvious to say Arab-Iranian relations are complicated. Whatever their relations, these two peoples do not suffer from a lack of contact. Where the Iranian and Arab worlds meet -- along both shores of the Persian Gulf, in southwestern Iran, and in Iraq -- there is frequent intermarriage, migration, bilingualism, and commerce. A majority of Arab Bahrainis and Iraqis share the Shiite Islam of the Iranians; millions of Khuzestani Iranians speak Arabic as a mother tongue; an Iranian people (the Kurds) comprise about 20 percent of Iraq's population; and many prominent families of the Arab Gulf states trace their origins to southern Iran.
All this contact, however, has not brought understanding. On both sides, there is mistrust and little appreciation for the "others" and how they view the world. Some of this suspicion comes from religious differences. On the Arab side, the ruling Sunni families (in Bahrain, for example) are wary of their own Shiite communities. Extreme religious ideologues on both sides view the others as heretics and outside the community of believers. Both sides continue to fight the sectarian battles of the seventh century. An Arab visitor to Iran once complained to me that he was frequently asked, "Sir, are you a Muslim or a Sunni?"
Also in the mix is extreme ethnic and national pride. Iranians are justly proud of their imperial history and of maintaining a distinct identity for more than 2,500 years through an often tragic history of invasions and defeats. Iranians are proud of their national language, their literature, and their achievements in science, scholarship, and the arts. Arabs have a similar pride in their ancient civilization, their traditions, and, in particular, their remarkable language.
Too often, however, this pride has become chauvinism and has made each side look down on the other and denigrate its achievements and civilization. To many Arabs, the Iranians were arrogant, luxury-loving fire-worshippers and pagans until the Arabs brought them the enlightened message of Islam. To many Iranians, the Arabs were uncultured nomads who destroyed the great Iranian civilization of the ancient Near East. Such stereotypes fly in the face of reality, but they persist and continue to exercise their power.
Mutual ignorance compounds the hostility. Despite centuries of interaction and contact, neither side knows much about the other. What do Arabs and Iranians know of each other's art, literature, history, politics, and traditions? Very little. Perhaps a close parallel is the relations between Mexicans and Americans. As Americans we appreciate Mexican food (or a variety of it) and Mexican music. But what do most of us know of Mexico's culture and history? Very little indeed. So in this mutual ignorance it is easier to dismiss the others as "liars," "snakes," and "heretics" than make the effort required for understanding.
Arab Monarchs: Endangered Species
Topping all these layers of religious and ethnic difference lie harsh political realities. The Arab states of the Persian Gulf are traditional monarchies dominated by ruling families; the Islamic Republic of Iran is a revolutionary, populist state with republican forms resting on a theocratic base. And the last 60 years have not been kind to monarchies. The score card of crashed thrones is dramatic: Egypt (1952), Iraq (1958), Libya (1969), Ethiopia (1974), Afghanistan (1973), and Iran (1979). Who is next? Who can blame Persian Gulf rulers for feeling like an endangered species when their large non-Arab neighbor to the north -- born in a revolution that overthrew an Iranian king of kings -- not only follows what they see as heresy in religion, but espouses a political ideology that rejects the very idea of monarchy? Although the Islamic Republic has never been very good at diplomatic niceties, even those niceties it does practice cannot hide the fact that it rejects monarchs as illegitimate.
Adding to this venomous blend is Iran's own diplomatic ineptitude, which has long fed its neighbors' suspicions. For 30 years the Islamic Republic has shown an ability to make gratuitous enemies both near (e.g., Kuwait) and far (e.g., Argentina). Tehran's charm offensives have been shortlived and too often have degenerated into crude threats and old territorial claims. Deep-seated Iranian prejudices against Arabs may be too strong to suppress for very long.
Iran No Friend of Ours
Perhaps to distract its population from obvious economic and political failures at home, the Islamic Republic has beaten the drum for Arab causes and shown itself more Arab than the Arabs in shouting for oppressed Palestinians at, for example, "Quds Day," which the Iranians tacked into Ramadan. Such action -- seen as an attempt to alienate neighboring governments from their populations -- has not won Iran many friends in Arab capitals. These campaigns from Tehran have raised suspicions that the Iranians' true motive is not to help oppressed Arabs, but to embarrass Arab governments -- which might be more amenable to working with the Israelis than their publics -- and ultimately to re-create the Islamic Revolution on neighboring soil. Under these conditions, it should come as no surprise that rulers in Riyadh and elsewhere might hope someone will "do something" about their troublesome neighbor.
Do the Arabs really want a war with Iran? Probably not, given the potentially disastrous economic and political consequences of such a conflict. But with all their pent-up grievances, both ancient and recent, they are not above sharing frustration, particularly with those American visitors who might -- for very different reasons -- share their feelings of hostility.
BY JOHN LIMBERT | DECEMBER 1, 2010
If we believe the recently leaked U.S. State Department messages, some leaders of Arab states harbor unkind thoughts about their Iranian neighbors. In addition to describing them in terms like "liar" and "snake," they have expressed a wish to American visitors that this troublesome neighbor would somehow go away. For his part, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, stung by these harsh epithets, claims that the entire WikiLeaks affair is a foreign conspiracy to sow discord between Iranians and Arabs and to strengthen the Americans' claim that Iran has become a diplomatic polecat in its own region.
Arab-Iranian hostility is not uniform. Iranians enjoy correct if not warm relations with their Qatari and Omani neighbors. Relations with Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are icy, with the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait falling somewhere in the middle. When pushed to the wall, both sides have been capable of putting aside old prejudices and grievances (real and imagined) and can act in their own interest and maintain cordial state-to-state ties. Nevertheless, the big picture is negative, as the cables dramatically show.
What is going on here? What is behind this intra-Islamic and intraregional strife? Are those Arabs denouncing the Iranians speaking just for themselves or for a broader segment of public opinion? Why do Iranians beat their chests for Palestine, an Arab cause? And despite what they say, do the Saudis and others really want the Americans -- and perhaps the Israelis by extension -- to attack Iran?
Much Contact, Little Understanding
COMMENTS (16)
SHARE:
Buzz
More... It belabors the obvious to say Arab-Iranian relations are complicated. Whatever their relations, these two peoples do not suffer from a lack of contact. Where the Iranian and Arab worlds meet -- along both shores of the Persian Gulf, in southwestern Iran, and in Iraq -- there is frequent intermarriage, migration, bilingualism, and commerce. A majority of Arab Bahrainis and Iraqis share the Shiite Islam of the Iranians; millions of Khuzestani Iranians speak Arabic as a mother tongue; an Iranian people (the Kurds) comprise about 20 percent of Iraq's population; and many prominent families of the Arab Gulf states trace their origins to southern Iran.
All this contact, however, has not brought understanding. On both sides, there is mistrust and little appreciation for the "others" and how they view the world. Some of this suspicion comes from religious differences. On the Arab side, the ruling Sunni families (in Bahrain, for example) are wary of their own Shiite communities. Extreme religious ideologues on both sides view the others as heretics and outside the community of believers. Both sides continue to fight the sectarian battles of the seventh century. An Arab visitor to Iran once complained to me that he was frequently asked, "Sir, are you a Muslim or a Sunni?"
Also in the mix is extreme ethnic and national pride. Iranians are justly proud of their imperial history and of maintaining a distinct identity for more than 2,500 years through an often tragic history of invasions and defeats. Iranians are proud of their national language, their literature, and their achievements in science, scholarship, and the arts. Arabs have a similar pride in their ancient civilization, their traditions, and, in particular, their remarkable language.
Too often, however, this pride has become chauvinism and has made each side look down on the other and denigrate its achievements and civilization. To many Arabs, the Iranians were arrogant, luxury-loving fire-worshippers and pagans until the Arabs brought them the enlightened message of Islam. To many Iranians, the Arabs were uncultured nomads who destroyed the great Iranian civilization of the ancient Near East. Such stereotypes fly in the face of reality, but they persist and continue to exercise their power.
Mutual ignorance compounds the hostility. Despite centuries of interaction and contact, neither side knows much about the other. What do Arabs and Iranians know of each other's art, literature, history, politics, and traditions? Very little. Perhaps a close parallel is the relations between Mexicans and Americans. As Americans we appreciate Mexican food (or a variety of it) and Mexican music. But what do most of us know of Mexico's culture and history? Very little indeed. So in this mutual ignorance it is easier to dismiss the others as "liars," "snakes," and "heretics" than make the effort required for understanding.
Arab Monarchs: Endangered Species
Topping all these layers of religious and ethnic difference lie harsh political realities. The Arab states of the Persian Gulf are traditional monarchies dominated by ruling families; the Islamic Republic of Iran is a revolutionary, populist state with republican forms resting on a theocratic base. And the last 60 years have not been kind to monarchies. The score card of crashed thrones is dramatic: Egypt (1952), Iraq (1958), Libya (1969), Ethiopia (1974), Afghanistan (1973), and Iran (1979). Who is next? Who can blame Persian Gulf rulers for feeling like an endangered species when their large non-Arab neighbor to the north -- born in a revolution that overthrew an Iranian king of kings -- not only follows what they see as heresy in religion, but espouses a political ideology that rejects the very idea of monarchy? Although the Islamic Republic has never been very good at diplomatic niceties, even those niceties it does practice cannot hide the fact that it rejects monarchs as illegitimate.
Adding to this venomous blend is Iran's own diplomatic ineptitude, which has long fed its neighbors' suspicions. For 30 years the Islamic Republic has shown an ability to make gratuitous enemies both near (e.g., Kuwait) and far (e.g., Argentina). Tehran's charm offensives have been shortlived and too often have degenerated into crude threats and old territorial claims. Deep-seated Iranian prejudices against Arabs may be too strong to suppress for very long.
Iran No Friend of Ours
Perhaps to distract its population from obvious economic and political failures at home, the Islamic Republic has beaten the drum for Arab causes and shown itself more Arab than the Arabs in shouting for oppressed Palestinians at, for example, "Quds Day," which the Iranians tacked into Ramadan. Such action -- seen as an attempt to alienate neighboring governments from their populations -- has not won Iran many friends in Arab capitals. These campaigns from Tehran have raised suspicions that the Iranians' true motive is not to help oppressed Arabs, but to embarrass Arab governments -- which might be more amenable to working with the Israelis than their publics -- and ultimately to re-create the Islamic Revolution on neighboring soil. Under these conditions, it should come as no surprise that rulers in Riyadh and elsewhere might hope someone will "do something" about their troublesome neighbor.
Do the Arabs really want a war with Iran? Probably not, given the potentially disastrous economic and political consequences of such a conflict. But with all their pent-up grievances, both ancient and recent, they are not above sharing frustration, particularly with those American visitors who might -- for very different reasons -- share their feelings of hostility.
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