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2 Iran unveils a Persian Gulf
security plan By Kaveh L
Afrasiabi
The lofty objective of a
collective security arrangement in the Persian
Gulf received a major boost when a representative
of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
unveiled a 10-point proposal that, if followed,
will definitely boost stability in the the
volatile, crisis-ridden region.
Speaking
at the World Economic Forum in Doha, Qatar, Hassan
Rowhani, a powerful clergyman who was Iran's chief
nuclear negotiator during the era of president
Mohammad Khatami, offered
the
most comprehensive vision yet by Iran on the
thorny issue of Persian Gulf security, linking it
to the subject of civilian nuclear cooperation.
The 10-point proposal is as follows:
1. Establishment of a Persian Gulf Security
and Cooperation Organization comprising the six
member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council
(GCC) as well as Iran and Iraq in accordance with
Clause 8 of Resolution 598 of the United Nations
Security Council. 2. Preparing common security
grounds for fighting terrorism, organized crime
and drug smuggling, as well as other joint
security concerns. 3. Gradual removal of all
restrictions in political, security, economic and
cultural fields. 4. Development of trade ties
by taking the countries' potentials into
consideration and conducting joint investment in
economic projects to achieve a regional free-trade
mechanism. 5. Guaranteeing the security and
energy export of regional countries to secure
their interests and achieving a sustainable
mechanism for energy needed by the world. 6.
Building confidence among regional countries in
the nuclear field. 7. Setting up a joint
consortium for uranium enrichment among regional
countries to procure nuclear fuel and other
peaceful nuclear activities under the supervision
of the International Atomic Energy Agency. 8.
Forging serious cooperation among regional
countries for having a Middle East free of weapons
of mass destruction. 9. Putting an end to arms
races in the region by providing resources for the
purpose of economic development and fighting
poverty. 10. Making foreign military personnel
exit the region and establishing full security by
the regional countries.
Unfortunately,
there is only a dim prospect for this proposal's
acceptance by the Arab states of the GCC, which
have devised their own version of "collective
security" that does not include the region's two
most populous states, Iran and Iraq, and which
have traditionally relied on US protectorate power
and are therefore averse to any security plan that
might actually increase their sense of
vulnerability vis-a-vis their assertive non-Arab
neighbor, Iran. The GCC comprises Bahrain, Kuwait,
Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates.
Still, what matters about Iran's
pitch is less the immediacy of its adoption in the
region and more the sense of confidence-building
it generates regarding Iran's non-hostile,
good-neighborly intentions. Iran's stated
willingness to forge close bonds with the GCC on
fighting terrorism is an excellent example of how
the Persian Gulf intelligence community can pool
resources to combat the scourge of terrorism, as
well as narcotics traffic, which has a security
component.
But as seen from the prism of
the Arab world, Iran's willingness to share
nuclear technology, and the proposal to set up a
joint regional consortium, may be even more
important, particularly since Rowhani has linked
that to the effort to create a
nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East.
While some Arab pundits may dismiss such
ideas as a propaganda ploy, the response of their
governments is likely to be more nuanced, with
some smaller GCC states keen on not alienating
Iran and moving back to the bitter past of the
1980s, when revolutionary Iran sought to undermine
them.
Since the early 1990s, however, Iran
has taken a "pragmatic turn" in its foreign
policy, culminating in low-level security
cooperation agreements with a number of GCC
states, including Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. What
the recent crisis over the British sailors has
taught the GCC states is that despite radical
rhetoric, Iran is still saddled by the same
elements of political realism and pragmatism
inviting further cooperation.
Ideologically, Iran's projection of a
"regional patriotist" image seeking self-reliance
instead of foreign dependency is attractive in the
Arab world and undermines the effort of Iran's
adversaries to depict Iran as the "coming hegemon"
bent on regional domination. Such Iran-phobic
scare tactics, pointing at Iran's nuclear program,
miss an important point about post-revolutionary
Iran detected by French philosopher Michel
Foucault, that is, the anti-hegemonic, liberating
potential of the Islamic Revolution questioning
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