BOOK
REVIEW A systems solution to the Middle
East Israel and the
Persian Gulf: Retrospect and Prospect by
Gawdat Bahgat
Reviewed by Sreeram
Chaulia
Although the Middle East has
commanded the attention of analysts for decades,
few have studied its volatility in terms of its
two subsystems - the Levant (Israel, Jordan,
Lebanon and Syria) and the Persian Gulf (Iran,
Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf
monarchies). Gawdat Bahgat, a political-science
professor, argues in this new book that
developments in one subsystem
echo in the other and
that a comprehensive regionwide peace has to
address sources of instability in both.
The author first provides an
empirical summary for his diagnosis by surveying
recent developments underscoring the strong links
between the two subsystems. Continuing Israeli
military operations against Palestinian civilians
drew outrage from Arabs
and Iranians in the Gulf
region, even as the terrorist attacks of September
11, 2001, pressured Gulf states to dissociate
themselves from radical Palestinian and Lebanese
groups.
Saudi Arabia's 2002 peace plan for
Palestinians and Israelis was meant to absorb some
of this pressure from Washington. The 2003 war on
Iraq led to the introduction of the "roadmap"
peace plan, underscoring the connection between
changes in the Gulf and peace in the Levant.
Bahgat reminds readers that a similar segue
occurred after the 1991 Gulf War in the form of
the Madrid peace conference.
With Iraq
under US occupation, Baghdad's future interaction
with Israel holds interesting possibilities. The
Gulf states' attitude to Israel was not always
negative, the shah of Iran (Mohammad Reza Shah
Pahlavi) being the case in point. While
ideological orientations (pan-Arabism and
political Islam) demand an anti-Israel stance,
economic and strategic interests moot a more
accommodative policy in the Gulf states. The
author sees a "relative predominance of national
interests" emerging, which suggests less hostile
relations with Israel in the future. Slow
"de-ideologization" of the region renders a
detente "desired and possible". (p 12)
Bahgat describes four caveats to this
optimistic scenario. First, leaders use foreign
policy as a tool to achieve domestic goals.
Anti-Israel approaches serve as legitimizing
mechanisms for Arab regimes. Second, since the
Gulf states do not share borders with Israel, it
is less costly to adopt a more belligerent stand
against Israel than it is for the "frontline"
states that are its immediate neighbors. Third,
the issue of ethnic and religious minorities and
their treatment hardens positions on both sides.
Fourth, given the relative lack of political
institutionalization in the Gulf states, the world
views of individual personalities - an
unpredictable factor - determines foreign-policy
lines.
Iran's relations with Israel before
its 1979 revolution were cooperative because of
perceived threats of Soviet penetration and the
rising tide of Arab nationalism led by Egyptian
President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Iran's territorial
disputes with Arab states over Bahrain, Abu Musa,
Greater and Lesser Tunbs and Khuzestan propelled
the shah's determination to seek non-Arab regional
allies. Iranian dependence on US economic and
military aid and the US Jewish lobby buttressed
the close alliance between Iran and Israel. The
shah's advisers believed that "ties to the Jewish
state could gain Iran considerable mileage in
Washington". (p 21)
Israel prized the
value of Iran as a transit point for Iraqi Jews on
their way to the Promised Land and was also
influenced by the freedoms Iranian Jews have
historically enjoyed. Both ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei tolerated
Iranian Jews in ways Arab regimes did not.
Bahgat judges Khomeini-era Iranian policy
toward Israel as "not completely separated from
pragmatic national interests". (p 18) The
Iran-Contra affair (Israeli arms were supplied to
Iran with US complicity in the early 1980s) is an
illustration. Under Khamenei, ideology is not
irrelevant but moderated by the decline in Iranian
living standards, economic stagnation and direct
and indirect US sanctions. Iran also has internal
forces pushing for a more pragmatic position
regarding Israel on the grounds that Tehran need
not be "more Palestinian than the Palestinians
themselves".
Unlike the Arab-Israeli
conflict, Iranian support for Hezbollah in Lebanon
represents a direct national-security interest for
Tehran. Strong traditional links between Shi'ites
in Iran and Lebanon (both follow the Ithna
Ashariyah sect) gird this strategic alliance. Yet,
Bahgat points out, the rise of moderate elements
in Iran facilitated Hezbollah's softening as a
political party in Lebanon, a process intensifying
after the Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon in
2000.
Among Iran's main motivations to
acquire nuclear capability is the Israeli nuclear
asymmetry in the Middle East and Jerusalem's
refusal to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Tehran considers nuclear capability necessary to
deter potential attacks by the "the world's
sixth-ranking nuclear power". To occlude
Osirak-style operations by Israel, Iran has taken
precautions by scattering its nuclear
installations and protecting them with
sophisticated defense equipment. Tehran also warns
of retaliation on Israel's nuclear reactor at
Dimona if Jerusalem takes direct action.
Bahgat sums up the Iran-Israel scorecard
by remarking that "despite some current setbacks,
pragmatism is gaining ground at the expense of
extremism". (p 59)
Iraq has been one of
the strongest opponents of the Jewish state since
its creation, without a hint of compromise or
rapprochement. The country's location and
ambitious leadership formulated a national
perception that Baghdad has a leading role in
shielding the Arab world from Israel and Iran.
Imbued with Arab nationalism and a long-running
alliance with Moscow, every government in pre-2003
Iraq has been anti-Israeli and anti-West.
Persecution and discrimination of Iraqi Jews and
Israeli encouragement of Iraqi Kurdish separatism
(through weapons deliveries and intelligence
sharing) added fuel to the fire for years.
Saddam Hussein's militant position toward
Israel was aimed at asserting Iraq's regional
leadership and status. Aware that geographical
distance made an aggressive policy toward Israel
cost-effective, he cultivated strong ties with the
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and rival
radical Palestinian outfits. During the Iran-Iraq
war, Israel favored Iran, but once Saddam thawed
his anti-Israeli rhetoric for practical reasons,
it also explored avenues of rapprochement with
Baghdad. This was in coordination with the US tilt
toward Iraq in the 1980s. However, Saddam's
relentless quest for weapons of mass destruction
brought relations back to the boiling point.
During the Gulf War, Iraq launched Scud
missiles against Israel, but Jerusalem responded
with uncharacteristic self-restraint because of
heavy US arm-twisting. These Iraqi strikes altered
the security environment of the entire Middle East
by ensuring that "Israel would not have to handle
Saddam alone and that the US would maintain a
hegemonic presence". (p 93) Also, non-conventional
capabilities and the methods to deliver them
became an option of warfare in the region.
Israel's unprecedented military operation that
destroyed Saddam's Osirak reactor in 1981 had
already opened the ledger of proliferation of
chemical and biological weapons as the Arab
response to a sense of growing demoralization,
weakness and victimization.
Bahgat
assesses that the 2003 war on Iraq has
considerably diminished Arab states' ability to
form an eastern front against Israel and enhanced
Jerusalem's strategic advantages in the Middle
East. US military and political presence in Iraq
benefits the Israeli standing in the region and
might even herald a gradual revival of the
Haifa-Mosul pipeline to pump Iraqi oil to Israel's
major port city.
Saudi Arabia's attitude
to Israel can be explained by US pressures to
adopt a moderate stand and pulls in the opposite
direction from the kingdom's domestic
constituency. The powerful load of Islam on Saudi
policy and the alliance between the royal family
and the Wahhabi movement ensure that the Saudi
perception of the world is drawn from the Koran.
Riyadh considers Zionism an anti-Arab and
anti-Islam phenomenon whose goal is to occupy
Muslim land. However, Bahgat reminds that "the
Saudi state's national interests are not mutually
exclusive with those of Israel". (p113) In the
past, they shared common enemies in Nasser's
Egypt, Khomeini's Iran and Saddam's Iraq.
Although Saudi Arabia and Israel also have
special relationships with the US in common, the
Saudis always resented Washington's support to
Israel and offered financial backing to the
"frontline" Arab states and the PLO. Saudi money
has been used to strengthen pro-Western Arab
regimes and weaken radical Palestinian groups and
Arab states. Compared with Iran or Saddam's Iraq,
Saudi Arabia has a less strident take on Israel
and it is willing to make conditional peace with
it in the context of a pan-Arab consensus.
Bahgat observes that the fall in real
terms of Saudi oil revenues has reduced Riyadh's
clout over the other five members of the Gulf
Cooperation Council to speak with one voice
against Israel. This contrasts the hitherto
leading role played by the Saudis in drawing Arab
strategy toward the Jewish state. After the 1973
oil shock made Riyadh an economic power, most Arab
decisions related to Israel were made in
consultation with the Saudis. Now, the kingdom is
on a weaker platform to dictate Arab policy toward
Israel.
Overall, Bahgat summarizes the
Saudi disposition to Israel as one of "cautious
acceptance". Despite animosity, Saudi Arabia is
not Israel's No 1 foe. Both prince (now King) Fahd
bin Abdul Aziz's peace plan (1981) and Abdullah
bin Abdulaziz al-Saud's peace plan (2002)
explicitly included a conditional recognition of
Israel. The latter offered Israel full peace with
political, economic and cultural normalization, a
bold initiative that has not won many backers
because of the continuing violence in West Bank
and Gaza.
Last, Bahgat takes up the
relations of the smaller Gulf monarchies (Bahrain,
Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates)
with Israel. These energy-rich mini-states gave
generous monetary aid to the "frontline states"
and Palestinian fighters from the 1970s, but grew
less critical of Israel after the Gulf War. Some
have low-level diplomatic and commercial contacts
with Israel, maintaining that "the road to
Washington goes through Tel Aviv". (p 140)
Traditions of relative tolerance and
acceptance of foreign cultures facilitated these
demarches toward Israel. Oman's lead in accepting
and dealing with Israel reflects deep-seated
pragmatism and is in part a reaction to the
Palestinian involvement in the Dhufar rebellion,
which threatened the sultanate. Qatar's opening is
based on assessment of Israel as an attractive
market for natural-gas exports and as a transit
route to Europe.
However, the large
Palestinian lobbies in these small Gulf monarchies
and the spiteful attitude of the regional great
powers toward Israel complicate rapprochement.
Bahgat predicts that the mini-states are "not
likely to pursue full diplomatic relations with
the Jewish state without a solution with Syria and
a recognition of basic Palestinian rights". (p
143)
For two generations, the Persian Gulf
states viewed Israel through ideological lenses.
The deaths of Nasser in 1970 and of Khomeini in
1989 weakened ideological appeals and strengthened
national-interest calculations. Israel "is seen by
a growing number of Arabs and Iranians as a Middle
Eastern state that they have to live with". (p
146) This coincides with a global trend, with
Russia turning into a major trade, scientific and
military partner of Israel. The removal of
Saddam's regime eliminated a principal adversary
of Israel in the Gulf. Iran finds itself
surrounded by US troops from all directions and it
may have little choice but to embark on a detente
with Israel.
Ultimately, Bahgat
emphasizes, much depends on the domestic
configurations of the Gulf states. "So long as
there is little domestic peace, there is unlikely
to be regional peace". (p 152) Saudi Arabia's
political and economic reforms have a long way to
go. Iran's home environment is freer than that of
its Arab neighbors, but there is no guarantee that
the reform path will succeed. In essence, the way
domestic politics evolve in these two linchpin
states will determine the overall systemic
condition for peace in the Middle East.
Bahgat's original contribution takes the
onus away from the theater of Palestinian-Israeli
conflict to the larger picture involving the
powerhouses of the Persian Gulf. It successfully
posits that there can be no lasting peace in the
Middle East without addressing grievances in both
the Levant and the Gulf.
Israel and the
Persian Gulf: Retrospect and Prospect by
Gawdat Bahgat. Gainesville, University Press of
Florida, 2006. ISBN: 0-8130-2908-2. Price
US$59.95, 188 pages.
(Copyright 2006 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about sales, syndication and republishing
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and Iranians in the Gulf
region, even as the terrorist attacks of September
11, 2001, pressured Gulf states to dissociate
themselves from radical Palestinian and Lebanese
groups. 
