Page 2 of 2 Gulf allies turn their backs
on Bush By
M K Bhadrakumar
The most significant portion of the
interview related to ElBaradei's passionate call
for a security system in the Middle East where the
initiative rested with the Arabs. In this he
virtually echoed a long-standing Iranian stance.
"We [Arabs] have to be involved, and we should
know that we have to be in a leading position in
any matter that has to do with our security. We
cannot leave our fate, security, future and
civilization to be the subject of discussion in
European and American councils. We cannot sit back
and wait for the outcomes of what they decide for
us. If this continues, our
existence will never be recognized.
As the Koran says, God does not change the
condition of a people until they change the
condition of their own selves," he concluded.
Tehran
ignores Bush rhetoric There is no
need to second-guess what could be the impact of
the interview on Arab opinion, specially the elite
in the Middle East which respects ElBaradei as a
world statesman commanding immense prestige.
Tehran correctly estimated that it didn't need to
add a comma to what ElBaradei said in his
outspoken interview. During the talks with
ElBaradei, none of the top leaders in Tehran
bothered to match Bush's rhetoric. They seem to
have decided that the best thing is simply to
ignore the US president.
A sole exception
is the main speaker at a Friday prayer meeting on
January 11 in Tehran, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami. The
senior cleric said the Arab regimes in the Persian
Gulf region knew "it would be in their best
interests to be friends with powerful Iran". He
expressed the hope they would be "wise enough not
to let a bankrupt and helpless president decide
their fate in the last year of his government, as
just one more year remains of Bush's presidency
and he is at the end of the line."
But
short of rhetoric, Tehran has effectively undercut
Bush's diplomatic moves in the region. The Iranian
Foreign Ministry announced on Sunday the first
session of an Iran-Kuwait joint commission will be
held in Tehran this week at the level of the
foreign ministers. The deep irony cannot be lost
on the region. Bush will still be in the region
when the foreign minister of one of Washington's
key allies in the region will be visiting Tehran,
breaking fresh ground for cooperation with Iran.
The Kuwaiti foreign minister's visit to
Tehran comes within a day of Bush's call on
Persian Gulf countries to "confront this danger
[posed by Iran] before it is too late". Indeed,
Kuwait was Bush's first halt in the Persian Gulf
during the current tour. What emerges once again
is that, frustrated with US regional policies, a
key ally is breaking loose and pursuing its own
diplomatic drive towards Iran.
Saudis
spurn anti-Iran coalition Reactions
coming from Saudi Arabia, which has been projected
by Washington in recent months as the linchpin of
the Bush administration's efforts to put together
an anti-Iran coalition, have been even more
revealing. Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal
said on Wednesday Riyadh's national interests came
first when dealing with Tehran. "We have relations
with Iran and we talk with them, and if we felt
any danger we have links ... that allow us to talk
about. So we welcome any issue the president
[Bush] raises and we will discuss them from our
point of view," he said. Such bluntness is
unprecedented in US-Saudi relations.
Again, on the eve of Bush's arrival in
Riyadh on Monday, the leading pro-government
newspaper, al-Riyadh, which reflects the views of
the Saudi authorities, said Saudi Arabia refused
to be drawn into wars or tensions with Iran and
the Iran nuclear issue should be solved through
diplomatic means and dialogue. It advised Bush
that he was "welcome as a man of peace, but not as
a man of war" and that if he sought Arab
solidarity, then "he must focus rationally on the
most important issue which is the question of
peace".
Al-Riyadh urged Bush "not to
preoccupy himself with a danger which the US
intelligence has qualified as non-existent in the
short term", a reference to the NIE report that
said Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons
program years ago.
Similarly, influential
Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said on Sunday,
"Iran and Saudi Arabia can turn into a proper
model for the rest of the Islamic world through
mutual cooperation and with the help of other
regional states." He said recent developments such
as the Saudi invitation to the Iranian president
to participate in the hajj were "clear
indications of a deepening of Riyadh's relations
with Tehran".
Setback to US standing
Bush's Persian Gulf tour has suffered
erosion from various quarters. ElBaradei's visit
to Tehran virtually pre-empted any attempt by Bush
to stoke the fires of the Iran nuclear issue.
Ahmadinejad chose the exact median point of Bush's
regional tour to send a communication to the heads
of the six Gulf Cooperation Countries ( GCC -
Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates) states recalling his
proposal at the Doha summit of the regional body
on December 2. This was to the effect that the
security of the region is best addressed via
greater political, security, economic and cultural
cooperation between Iran and those countries.
Ahmadinejad exhorted the GCC to hold more such
meetings with Iran, while he assured his Arab
counterparts of Iran's cooperation.
But
the proverbial last nail on the coffin of American
credibility in Arab opinion would have been the
sensational report appearing in the Sunday Times
on January 13, quoting Iraqi government sources,
that the head of the IRGC, Major General Mohammed
Ali Jafari, had slipped into the so-called Green
Zone of Baghdad last month. Jafari apparently
passed through checkpoints on his way to the
fortified enclave that contains the American
Embassy, even though he is on Washington's "most
wanted" list.
Arab regimes will be
wondering what Washington is really up to by
holding secret talks with a high-ranking Iranian
official while Bush makes incessant demands that
they must confront Iran. Besides, only a few
months ago, the Bush administration declared the
IRGC as a "foreign terrorist organization" and
imposed sanctions on it. It is immaterial whether
the Sunday Times report turns out to be
substantiated or not. Either way, US standing in
the region suffers.
In the Arab world,
perceptions matter the most, and nothing hurts
more than being made to look foolish. The Filipino
Monkey and Jafari have caused havoc on US standing
in the Persian Gulf. Washington looks foolish. The
Arabs have assessed that the right thing to do is
to bide their time until a new president moves
into the White House - which is also what Tehran's
substitute Friday prayer leader Khatami advised
them to do.
Note 1.
The agreement ElBaradei carried away with him from
Tehran on January 13 deals with two issues. One
relates to so-called military-linked studies.
These include indications that Iran was examining
how to convert uranium dioxide into a semi-refined
product called UF4, which can be refined further
into gas suitable for an enrichment cascade; and
among other things, that Iran was studying designs
for missile re-entry vehicles. The second issue
relates to radioactive contamination found at an
Iranian technical university. The IAEA wants to
know how this uranium contamination got there, and
it wants access to the individuals working at the
university, as well as to the equipment that was
used. These two areas that Iran has agreed to
explain within a month are the remaining
unanswered questions on a "work plan" formulated
by the IAEA last year, and endorsed by the
agency's Board of Governors on November 15, 2007.
- Radio Free Europe
M K Bhadrakumar
served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign
Service for over 29 years, with postings including
India's ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and
to Turkey (1998-2001).
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