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2 Iran unveils a Persian Gulf
security plan By Kaveh L
Afrasiabi
world's hierarchies.
Hence Iran's empowerment is, in a sense,
tantamount to a regional empowerment, benefiting
the Muslim and Arab world, and not just Iranians.
Rowhani's statement in Qatar has once again served
notice on the functional utility of Iranian power
as a "common good" for the region, and a prudent
response by the GCC states is not to cast doubt on
its sincerity but rather to ask
Iran
to prove it with action.
The problem with
that scenario, on the other hand, is that whereas
Iran has pushed for a regional free-trade zone in
the Persian Gulf, several GCC states have entered
long-term bilateral agreements with both the US
and Europe, following the "Greater Middle East"
grand design, that complicate efforts to enhance
inter-regional cooperation.
Not only that,
Rowhani's call for an end to a regional arms race
clashes with the interests of Western, Russian,
Chinese, and other military contractors who would
hate to lose the multibillion-dollar arms market
in the Persian Gulf.
Nevertheless, the
combined economic needs of the rising populations
of GCC states and the need to lower military
expenditures give an urgency to at least putting
some control on the regional conventional and
ballistic arms race.
Iran's offer of
security cooperation with the GCC states has to be
seriously explored in all areas, including by
setting up a pan-Persian Gulf military research
committee that would issue reports on how to
manage the arms race instead of letting it get out
of hand as is the case today. Similarly, the
questions of joint exercises, interoperability of
weapons systems, intelligence sharing and the like
must be probed.
Conspicuously absent in
Rowhani's statement was any reference to
environmental cooperation. Yet this is a ripe area
for enhanced cooperation given the growing problem
of pollution and other (industrial and
non-industrial) environmental hazards that can
only be tackled through joint action and are to
some extent beyond the capabilities of any single
state.
On this front, Iran has accumulated
a prized experience by signing a convention on
environmental protection in the Caspian Sea, with
all the region's littoral states, and can now
apply that experience to the Persian Gulf, with
the help of dozens upon dozens of environmentalist
groups. [1]
As in the Caspian Sea, where
the debates on environmental cooperation often
intersect with "environmental security" and larger
security issues, eg, in light of rampant poaching
in the Caspian, in the Persian Gulf too the
question of environmental protection is not
divorced from, among other things, the role of
foreign warships polluting the waters.
Unfortunately, the United States has so
far not paid any attention to this particular
issue, despite the outcry by several local
environmental groups about pollution from its
warships. For a US government so keen on its image
in the Middle East that it spends billions of
dollars on public relations, the devotion of a
small sum to this cause could go a long way in
enhancing its image.
The US could, for
instance, push for the creation of a United
Nations program on the Persian Gulf environment,
similar to the UN's Caspian Environment Program.
The United States' aversion is based on the
concern that systematic studies of such a program
could pinpoint the US as a culprit, adding to its
current headaches in the region.
Only
through common security can the Persian Gulf
states realistically hope for durable peace and
tranquility in a war-ravaged region that is both
blessed and cursed by its possession of a lion's
share of the world's energy deposits.
The
presence of foreign forces incites the feelings of
some Muslims and is a root cause of radicalism and
terrorism, which cannot be effectively combated as
long as the Arab states of the region are stuck in
the client networks hatched by Western powers.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi,
PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New
Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview
Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's
Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs,
Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa
Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear
potential latent", Harvard International Review,
and is author of Iran's Nuclear
Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
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