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2 Iran and the US: At least they're
talking By M K Bhadrakumar
This year's great shamal, al-Haffar
("the Driller"), which will appear over the
Arabian Desert hardly weeks from now, caressing
the sand dunes to wild ecstasy and bathing the
land with its hot, dry dust storms, cannot
substantially add to the turbulence in the region.
Even such a calm, reflective observer of
the political landscape around him as Rami Khouri
agrees that these are extraordinary times in the
Middle East and Persian Gulf. He wrote last week,
"We are in the midst of a potentially historic
moment when the
modern
Arab state order that was created by the Europeans
in circa 1920 has started to break down, in what
we might perhaps call the Great Arab Unraveling.
"Shattered Iraq is the immediate driver of
this possible dissolution and reconfiguration of
an Arab state system that had held together rather
well for nearly four generations. It is only the
most dramatic case of an Arab country that
wrestles with its own coherence, legitimacy and
viability."
Foreign interventions in the
domestic affairs of the region and foreign support
for local proxies have touched audacious levels.
More than at any time, political elites in the
region are seeking out foreign patrons.
This is despite the Arabs not seeing the
United States as an honest broker in settling the
current problems besetting their region. This is
also despite the oft-proclaimed interest in the
Arab world for a "Look East" outlook. Arab leaders
such as Prince Hassan bin Talal of Jordan have
repeatedly underlined that Asia might offer useful
models for resolving social and political
imbalances in West Asia and North Africa.
He wrote recently, "Much as the region's
history and modern development are tied to Europe
and the United States. It is time to start
diversifying ... Powers of today and tomorrow
concentrated in Asia would do well to invest in
the people of West Asia." Yet the ground reality
is that the Asian powers' political profile in the
Arab world has been declining in recent years
while their economic profile might have enhanced.
This holds good for China and India in particular.
The great Arab arms bazaar The
most visible sign of the Western dominance is the
latest shopping spree for new Western weapons by
Arab states across the Persian Gulf region. The
United States greatly benefits from the Gulf arms
bazaar. Patriot missiles capable of intercepting
ballistic missiles have been positioned in several
Gulf countries - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar -
in a strong signal to the region to rally against
Iran, and that Washington will not be found
wanting if only the small, vulnerable monarchies
and sheikhdoms allow themselves to gather within
the fold of US protection.
The 6th Fleet
is based in Bahrain; US Central Command is in
Qatar; the US Navy has docking facilities in the
United Arab Emirates; a second US aircraft-carrier
group is now in the Persian Gulf. The Gulf
monarchies nonetheless see themselves as the
likely first targets of an Iranian attack. They
seek a military deterrent of their own. US
weapon-makers and arms merchants are having a
field day.
The prospect of a potential
US-Iran military confrontation touches raw nerves
in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, while the
Persians themselves remain disdainful. It is
estimated that the Gulf monarchies will spend up
to US$60 billion this year on arms purchases. They
are buying up the US state-of-the-art combat jets,
helicopters, cruise missiles, attack helicopters,
tanks, air tankers, missile-defense batteries,
airborne early-warning systems, anti-tank rocket
launchers and so on. Some among them are
contemplating a naval overhaul.
They are
allowing themselves to be locked into old,
hackneyed security paradigms - like sacrificial
lambs on the altar of Western geostrategy. But the
paradox is that the "threat" of instability facing
the region doesn't have a military solution.
Khouri ventured to describe the actual threat as a
"resumption of history".
Indeed, the
current narrative of historical change in the
Middle East is noteworthy because of the
insistence of the people of the region to be
participants in the political process, rather than
remain as mute, passive recipients of foreign
dictates. The self-assertion by Middle Eastern
"non-state actors" has no precedent in the history
of the region. People are not only restless, they
are determined to play a role in shaping the new
drama that is their destiny. That suffuses the
political landscape with a fin de regime
pall.
Any conspiracy to ignore or to
sideline "non-state actors" - Hezbollah in
Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, al-Aqsa Martyrs
Brigade, the Badr and Mehdi militias in Iraq, the
Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Union of Islamic
Courts in Somalia - will only postpone the crisis.
Arguably, a balance of power that is
stable can be negotiated with them, given
political courage and imagination. It is futile to
place the blame for this dilemma on Iran's
doorstep. For example, it is needless to take a
Manichaean view of the Lebanon issue from a
completely sectarian or tribal perspective,
whereas it is possible to view the developments as
unfolding within the framework of democratic
aspirations.
In fact, it is highly
doubtful that even if Iran and Syria attempt to
control the Islamist militant and resistance
groups, they will succeed. This is because these
are in essence "neighborhood" groups that derive
their legitimacy from being the defenders of their
native soil and their people's rights rather than
as movements that gained strength by virtue of
being surrogates of foreign powers.
Limits to demonizing
Iran Besides, the driving force behind the
anti-American forces in the region is precisely US
and Israeli policies in the region. No amount of
demonizing Iran can obfuscate this reality. All
indications are that the US is concluding that
realistically it has no military options against
Iran and it must, therefore, somehow make a fairly
good fist of things.
Washington will,
understandably, play down the significance of its
decision to participate in the regional conference
on Iraq taking place in Baghdad on Saturday. US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced the
decision almost as an afterthought at the end of
her testimony on February 27 to the US Senate's
Appropriations Committee.
Conceivably, the
decision by the US administration would have been
made several weeks before her public statement.
And Tehran would have been discreetly consulted on
its likely reaction to such a conference.
Curiously, the leader of the Supreme Council of
Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim,
who has often played the role of a go-between,
paid an unscheduled visit to Tehran on February 5,
during which he said, "All Iraqi statesmen support
talks [between Iran and the US] and we believe
negotiations will bear many results."
In
all probability, the Baghdad conference will
generate its own dynamic for a more broad-based
US-Iran dialogue. On the eve of Rice's
announcement on the meeting, former secretary of
state Henry Kissinger made a forecast, "The time
has come to begin preparing for an international
conference to define the political outcome of the
Iraq war. Whatever happens, a diplomatic phase
is
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