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2 Gulf allies turn their backs on
Bush By M K Bhadrakumar
So, it was Filipino Monkey, after all. The
Pentagon has admitted that the footage of the
famous incident of January 6 when five speedboats
of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps
(IRGC)"buzzed" three US Navy warships in the
Strait of Hormuz could have been compromised.
"I am coming at you. You will explode in a
few minutes" - that was what the American navy men
heard. An indignant Washington announced the US
Navy was on the verge of firing on the IRGC boats,
but for the latter abruptly turning away. President
George
W Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates added their
strident warning that Tehran would face dire
consequences if "provocative actions" were
repeated.
But the Iranian footage of the
"incident" makes a laughing stock of the US
administration. The funny thing is, it was an
incident that didn't happen. Commander Lydia
Robertson, spokeswoman for the US Fifth Fleet in
Bahrain, put a brave face, while admitting, "We
don't know for sure where they [threats] came
from. It could have been a shore station." Chief
of Naval Operations in the Pentagon, Admiral Gary
Roughhead, backed up explaining, "Based on my
experience in operating in that part of the world,
where there is a lot of maritime activity, trying
to discern is very hard to do."
"Filipino
Monkey" is the code name given by the US Navy to a
mysterious but profane voice which often
challenges it in the Strait of Hormuz. The voice
could be, if The Seattle Times newspaper is to be
believed, "likely more than one person, who
listens in on ship-to-ship radio traffic and then
jumps in, shouting insults and jabbering vile
epithets". US Navy women are said to suffer
particularly degrading treatment.
ElBaradei counters Bush Tehran
has asked Washington to apologize for "attempts to
mislead public opinion". Instead, Bush has lashed
out at Iran during the various halts of his
ongoing seven-nation Middle East tour. But here,
again, there has been a problem. He has to make
the Iranians look like the baddies on the basis of
counter-terrorism. The Iranians have ensured that
the counter-proliferation card in Bush's pack
lacks punch.
Even as Bush was swinging his
way through the Persian Gulf, the region had
another distinguished visitor - the director
general of the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei. The timing couldn't
have been better fine-tuned. ElBaradei arrived in
Tehran just as Bush was touching down in Kuwait.
They could almost hear each other. Tehran rolled
out a red-carpet welcome for ElBaradei, with
senior officials repeatedly underlining that
Iran's relations with the IAEA have entered a "new
phase". ElBaradei's itinerary included a meeting
with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
IAEA spokeswoman in Vienna Melissa Fleming
has since confirmed that ElBaradei's visit has
been of a substantive nature, with Iran committing
to answering all questions about its past nuclear
activities within the coming four weeks, including
activities that were alleged by the US as linked
to a weapons program. Fleming revealed that
ElBaradei was given information on Iran's "new
generation of centrifuges", which was a topic of
considerable interest to the IAEA for assessing
the extent of Iran's technological advancement in
the nuclear field. [1]
Fleming claimed
ElBaradei was able to "press his case" with his
hosts for a suspension of Iran's uranium
enrichment. Conceivably, ElBaradei proposed to the
Iranian side an exit strategy for the impasse that
the United Nations Security Council currently
faces. He told the media he discussed in Tehran
"ways of solving the issue as well as ways to
negotiate with the United Nations Security
Council". He stressed his intention is "to find
solutions for Iran's nuclear issue so as to turn
the problem into a normal issue". The head of
Iran's Atomic Energy Agency, Gholam-Reza Aqazadeh,
also confirmed that "grounds are now being
prepared" for resolving all issues and that Tehran
has the "necessary political determination" in
this direction.
Aqazadeh advised the West
to seize the "existing positive atmosphere" and
shift towards engaging Iran. The influential head
of the Majlis (Parliament)National Security and
Foreign Policy Commission, Alae'ddin Broujerdi,
aptly summed up the dead seriousness with which
the Iranian leadership approached the visit. He
said the IAEA chief's visit was "important",
"positive in principle" and "helpful for the
country".
Iran's chief nuclear negotiator,
Saeed Jalili, also welcomed the "constructive
role" of ElBaradei, while the latter expressed the
hope that a "breakthrough" in the Iran nuclear
issue would be possible by March. Significantly,
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad assured
ElBaradei Iran was keen to resolve remaining
issues with the IAEA. Tehran has no doubt given
the utmost seriousness to packing ElBaradei's trip
with content and substance with the objective of
enabling a favorable IAEA report in March.
The meeting with Khamenei was most
certainly intended to convey that the Iranian
leadership is speaking with one voice. Khamenei
stressed, "Iran has time and again declared that
Islam prohibits the proliferation and use of
nuclear weapons."
ElBaradei being in
Tehran has major implications. In Iranian politics
itself, it becomes a boost for Ahmadinejad's
standing and is bound to cast its shadow on the
parliamentary elections of March 14. The
continuing cooperation between Iran and the IAEA
makes it virtually impossible for the Bush
administration to rake up the matter in the
Security Council. The indications are that Paris
senses that President Nicholas Sarkozy needlessly
antagonized Tehran. European rhetoric on the whole
has diminished. Russia and China are able to dig
in with greater conviction on the issue in the
Security Council, while at the same time they feel
more comfortable in pressing ahead with their
strategic cooperation with Iran.
All eyes
are now on the report of ElBaradei at the IAEA
meeting in March. Tehran, naturally, is pinning
high hopes that the Iran nuclear file may become a
routine affair involving a nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty member country. But the
most important outcome of the ElBaradei visit is
perhaps its impact in molding regional opinion in
the Middle East and in the Persian Gulf region.
It gives the decisive push to the
"pro-West" Arab regimes to turn their backs on
Bush's desperate pleas to join an anti-Iran
coalition. Even for the most ardent "pro-West"
Arab regimes, there is a serious problem now in
identifying with the US-Israeli chorus. Equally,
this "new thinking" will have implications for the
Palestine-Israel peace process, as well as the
situation in Lebanon and Iraq. Simply put, Tehran
may be on the verge of breaking through to
mainstream Arab regional politics - a historic
breakthrough.
ElBaradei appeals to Arab
opinion ElBaradei further chipped in by
giving an exclusive interview just before his
departure for Tehran to the Saudi-owned newspaper
published from London, al-Hayat, which is widely
read in the region. It is significant he chose
al-Hayat, and, more important, al-Hayat took such
an initiative.
In the interview, he put
the problem in a historical perspective as an
"issue of distrust" ensuing from the West's abrupt
boycott of Iran following the revolution in that
country in 1979, which only prompted Tehran to
keep up its so-called fissile cycle through covert
means after all Iranian attempts to "build bridges
of trust with the West" failed. Therefore, "There
is a process of distrust and the only solution to
build trust in the future is through negotiation
because the Security Council can impose sanctions,
but these alone cannot reach a complete solution
for this problem," he explained.
ElBaradei
said Iran is still years away from being able to
make a nuclear weapon; that he drew a "deep sigh
of relief" when the US National Intelligence
Estimate (NIE)was released in Washington in
end-November, which "eliminated the element of
urgency from the Iranian file and created an
opportunity to start a serious dialogue to resolve
the problem through negotiation"; that the Iranian
nuclear program "cannot be separated from the
security process in the Middle
East".
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