Converging
Interests In Iraq Allow Bush An ‘Iranian Option’ -
Arabs Threatened
By Nicola Nasser
31 July, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Converging U.S. – Iran
interests in Iraq are creating a common ground for an “Iranian
option” for President George W. Bush that could be developed into
an historical foreign policy breakthrough of the kind he has been yearning
for in the Arab – Israeli conflict or India; however several factors
are ruling out this window of opportunity, including his militarization
of the U.S. foreign policy, obsession with the “regime changes”
overseas, his insistence on exploiting to the maximum his country’s
emergence as the only world power in the aftermath of the collapse of
the former Soviet Union (USSR), an Iranian independent regional agenda
that so far cold not be reconciled with his own, and a detrimental Arab
feeling of insecurity of such a potentiality.
A potential “Iran option” for Bush, whether it emerges out
of a diplomatic engagement or a military confrontation, be it on Iraq
or on Iran per se, would embroil Arabs adversely and directly because
both protagonists are waging their political as well as military battles
on Arab land and skilfully using Arab wealth, oil, space, diplomacy
and even Arab proxies to settle their scores towards either political
engagement or military showdown.
True it is still premature to conclude that the prerogatives for a U.S.
– Iranian regional understanding is about to emerge, or that the
Arab feeling of insecurity would seriously jeopardize the friendships
or alliances Washington has forged with the majority of the Arab regimes
over decades of a love and hate relations, but the burgeoning U.S. –
Iranian dialogue over Iraq and the convergence of bilateral interests
as well as their complementary roles there during the last four years
are flashing red lights, especially in neighbouring Arab capitals.
The first and second rounds of US – Iran dialogue in Baghdad in
May and July this year should not perceive “dialogue” as
the goal per se, but should be viewed as a diplomatic tactic within
the context of a US strategy that either aims at playing Iran, in the
same way Washington has been playing Israel, as a menacing threat against
the Arabs to blackmail them into falling in line with the US Middle
East strategy or, if a regime change in Tehran proves unaffordable,
to revitalize the US-Iranian joint policing of the Gulf, but in this
case on a partnership basis instead of the Iranian subordinate role
during the Shah era, which boils down to serving the same US strategy
vis-à-vis the Arabs in general and the oil rich Arab countries
in the Gulf in particular.
On July 29, Robin Wright reported in The Washington Post that Bush was
sending this week his secretaries of state and defence, Condoleezza
Rice and Robert Gates, to the Middle East with a “simple”
message to Arab regimes: “Support Iraq as a buffer against Iran
or face living under Tehran’s growing shadow … The United
States has now taken on the role traditionally played by Iraq as the
regional counterweight to Iran.” Both secretaries were scheduled
to meet with the Saudi Arabian monarch King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz
in Jeddah on Tuesday.
Wright was aware however that, “On Iraq, Rice and Gates will have
a hard sell,” particularly with Saudi Arabia, whose leader King
Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz raised a short – lived media tit-for-tat
with the Bush Administration when he called in March this year the U.S.
presence in Iraq an “illegal foreign occupation.” Wright
quoted Kenneth Katzman of the Congressional Research Service as saying:
“Iranophobia will not be enough to get the Saudis to back Iraq,”
as they think that the U.S. – backed Iraqi government of Nouri
Kamal al-Maliki is helping Iran – backed groups.
Arab and Saudi “taking aback” has less to do with backing
the U.S. in Iraq or against Iran, as this backing was never a in doubt
or question since the invasion in 2003, and much to do with the realistic
prospects of an imminent U.S. military redeployment in Iraq that could
leave the country dominantly in the hands of pro – Iran sectarian
militias and parties, thus inevitably setting the stage there for either
an escalating civil sectarian strife or worse for disintegration of
the Iraq territorial integrity into sectarian and ethnic political entities
fighting over oil and “borders,” with menacing regional
repercussions.
Al-Maliki’s government is not helping to dispel this “Iranophobia.”
On July 24, U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, Patrick Cockburn, quoted the
Iraqi Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, in British The Independent,
as saying that like it or not, “Iran is a player in Iraq”
and should be engaged in dialogue. No similar statement bestowed on
Arab neighbours a parallel role; may be these neighbours should qualify
more, Iran – style, to be “players” there.
Ahead of both secretaries’ visit Washington unveiled what they
perceive as an encouraging “banana,” a major $20 billion
arms package for Saudi Arabia and other GCC oil – rich states
with an eye to countering an “Iranian threat,” in the latest
manifestation of an old U.S. blackmailing ploy to scare them into keeping
the U.S. defence industries busy and recycling whatever surplus of petrodollars
these states have amassed from the soaring of crude oil prices following
the invasion of Iraq.
Arabs could not but compare this paid for “banana” with
the U.S. tax payers’ $30 billion the Bush Administration has pledged
as “aid” for her Israeli strategic regional ally, a pledge
confirmed days ago by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert who added that Bush
also pledged to him to sustain Israel’s dominant “quality”
edge militarily over Arabs combined or individual states.
Both the late Ayatullah Khumeini – led Iran and the late Saddam
Hussein - led Baath regime in Iraq were skilfully exploited by Washington
as the scarecrows to blackmail GCC countries into buying more weapons
and spending their surplus petrodollars. However the Iranian –
Iraqi war (1980 – 1988) had turned Iraq into the regional counterweight
to Iran, a role Washington insists now on assuming with Iraqi blood
and oil, but denying the Iraqis even a contribution thereto. Iraq's
ambassador to the United States on July 25 launched a withering attack
on the US administration's reluctance to provide basic weaponry to his
country's U.S. – led and trained ill-equipped armed forces; Pentagon
spokesman Bryan Whitman acknowledged “it is clear that there is
still much to be done with respect to equipping the security forces”
of Iraq, in another indication the U.S. is planning not to extricate
herself militarily from her Iraqi debacle yet.
Arab Options Between Worse and Worst
The “banana” followed on record U.S. expressions of frustration
with their insufficient backing to Bush’s war on Iraq: “Saudi
Arabia and a number of other countries are not doing all they can to
help us in Iraq. (Washington.) would expect and want them to help us
on this strategic issue more than they are doing,” said Zalmay
Khalilzad, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, on Sunday. However,
Washington is offering the Arabs a choice between two adverse options
between a worse and a worst as an alternative to the current bad war
– fraught status quo. Similarly Saudi Arabia is “frustrated
by the United States but is at a loss what to do about it,” said
Rob Malley, Middle East director of the Brussels-based International
Crisis Group.
The convergence of US and Iranian plans for Iraq and their complementary
roles there during the past four years are not the right precedents
to allay Arab fears. The prospect of a potential bilateral US-Iranian
understanding on policing Iraq, if Arabs are to be left out of such
an arrangement, is perceived by them as a prelude to a similar regional
co-ordination that would renovate the US-Iranian policing of the Gulf
in the 1950s – 1970s.
Multiple channels of communication were recently opened between Washington
and Tehran. The US- installed government(s) in Baghdad since the invasion
of Iraq in 2003 was the indirect channel. The gatherings of Iraq's neighbouring
states, which both Iranian and U.S. officials attend alongside non-neighbours
like Egypt, opened another semi-direct channel. The U.S. – Iranian
meetings at the ambassadorial level in Baghdad were the first public
direct channel since 1979. Realpolitics suggests a fourth covert channel
as also always a possibility.
Officially Tehran still demands that the U.S. withdraws from Iraq, but
on the ground Tehran was the first country and is still the most vehemently
supportive nation of the U.S. – sponsored “political process”
and the U.S. – installed regime in Baghdad. Ironically Tehran’s
demand to end the US occupation of Iraq does not necessarily entail
the logical conclusion of an Iranian support for the Iraqi resistance
to this occupation; her demand instead to support the regime that was
created in Baghdad by this same occupation reveals a contradictory Iranian
approach to both the U.S. occupation and Iraq.
For Arabs the two rounds of U.S. – Iran dialogue in Baghdad were
a bad omen, regardless of the conflicting reports on the “success”
or “failure of the dialogue, which created a distrusting public
perception that Arabs could be squeezed between a pressuring US demand
to fall in line with the creation of an anti-Iran bloc and the pressing
prospect of an emerging US-Iranian bilateral regional arrangements,
a position which offers them a choice between two bad options: Either
to be relegated to their past minor roles or get embroiled in a conflict
that in no way could serve their interests.
On the one hand they are being asked to forego their conflict with Israel
and coexist with her 40-year military occupation of Arab lands and instead
spearhead the US-led anti Iran efforts; on the other they feel betrayed
by being left out to play the role of mere onlookers and not the role
of equal partners to the budding US-Iranian dialogue, which they have
been long advising in their earnest search for ways to avoid a fourth
Gulf war in less than thirty years that could devastate them for a long
time to come. They have been seeking to defuse a war-fraught US-Iranian
confrontation and see no interest whatsoever in a new military outbreak
in their region and accordingly they have sought US-Iranian dialogue,
but not to be left out of it.
During the Shah of Iran era, the GCC countries were only “minor”
partners to both their strategic relationship with the United States
and to the US-Iranian joint policing of the region. That subordinate
minor security role is no more feasible or acceptable, at least because
such a role does not correspond to their oil, financial and vital logistical
inputs in past, current and potential future regional security arrangements.
In the end they are the major indigenous demographic component and the
major geopolitical asset of any perceived security plans as well as
the major contributors thereto and the main losers thereof. If they
cannot be the masters they should at least be equal partners. To be
assigned their past minor role will serve neither their interests nor
those of other partners to regional security.
The Arabs of the volatile region are and have always been realistic
enough to accommodate the legitimate interests of both protagonists,
who have been nonetheless the main encroachers on both each other interests
and those of the Arabs and are still the major sources of instability
and insecurity in the region who also never hesitated to foment regional
conflicts into wars.
Does it need any documentation the now well – known fact that
Iran more than welcomed and was the major beneficiary of the embroilment
of her Arab and American adversaries in the Kuwait war in 1990-91 and
in the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, or that Washington was counting
on this Iranian stance to secure Tehran’s collusion, at least
by default or by courting her courted sectarian Iraqi militias and parties
who flocked into Iraq with or in the footsteps of the invading tanks
and troops, when the Bush Administration planned her invasion?
The U.S. – Iran convergence of interests in Iraq in the context
of a prevailing military brinkmanship sustained by Washington is empowering
Tehran with a win – win position that could tilt against her only
if an outright war breaks out, and both antagonists are unmercifully
exploiting their “Arab cards” to improve their no-win positions.
The Gates and Rice’s visit comes in this context; so are Tehran’s
latest official statement that the UAE’s three Iran - occupied
islands of Abu Mousa, Little Tunb and Big Tunb are not negotiable and
her semi-official statement that the independent Kingdom of Bahrain
is part of Iran, a statement which Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki
refused to apologise for, saying in Manama it was a personal point of
view that doesn’t reflect an official policy.
GCC Arabs in particular who do not trust Iran could not but interpret
such statements as meant per se; others in good faith interpret them
as playing an Arab card in political manoeuvring aimed at warning pro
– U.S. Arabs to help fend off U.S. military adventures against
Iran, otherwise a military confrontation could lead Tehran to making
good on her statements. “The Enterprise” was the third U.S.
aircraft carrier of the Fifth Fleet sent to the Gulf recently, where
the number of US war ships has never been so large since the invasion
of Iraq in 2003. Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait are hosts of U.S. military
commands that Iran would target in any fighting flare up.
Case for U.S. ‘China Opening’ to Iran
GCC countries could not afford a fourth regional war. Washington has
so far failed to “change” the Iranian regime and several
internal and international factors make any such change by force, Iraqi
style, improbable. Neither could she replace Iran as the eastern neighbour
of Arabs nor is Tehran able to dislodge the U.S. from her entrenched
and strategically held bases on the Arab side of the Gulf. Both Arabs
and Iranians also could not ignore or forego their geopolitical and
historical interaction, cemented by Islam and humanitarian and inter-marriage
inseparable links where large Arab and Iranian minorities live on both
sides of the Gulf coasts, nor could they do away with their huge mutual
trade interests where, for example the UAE tops Iran’s trade partners.
The only alternative left for the three protagonists is to engage each
other on the basis of, “if you can’t beat them, join them.”
Iran is on record as calling for a regional security arrangement with
Arabs, but short of any U.S. role. The U.S. is ruling out any change
to her dominant security role in the region, let alone allowing in any
role for the Islamic regime. But the GCC Arabs are more open to partnerships
based on international law and mutual interests. Saudi Arabia's foreign
minister, Prince Saud al-Feisal, has recently surprised many, particularly
in Washington, by proposing a joint Iran-Gulf Cooperation Council consortium
to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes; his Iranian counterpart Mottaki
responded favourably.
Engaging Iran was recommended by the James Baker – Lee Hamilton
bipartisan Iraq Study Group; the Bush administration rejected the idea,
until it has become unavoidable by the dictates of the facts on the
ground in Iraq, but approached it tactically with the dialogue at ambassadorial
level in the Iraqi capital. However, “The price of anything that
could remotely be called a victory in Iraq at this point, or at least
not a defeat, is negotiating with Iran. And that means being willing
to give Iran some of what it wants from us, including, for example,
assurance that we're not going to shock and awe Iranians if they simply
don't do as they're told, … Iran is unlikely to do much to help
the U.S. in Iraq without receiving something significant -- both in
terms of its economy and its security -- in return,” Hooman Majd
wrote in the Salon online on July 16. But Majd missed the fact that
Iran already got her “price” in Iraq and the fact that Bush
still does not subscribe to his strategic approach.
Nonetheless, this is the strategy advocated by a wide and influential
U.S. spectrum of politicians, not least among them the bipartisan Iraq
Study Group and the Democrats. Noam Chomsky, in his new book INTERVENTIONS
published by City Lights Books in July 2007, had this to say: “In
the energy-rich Middle East, only two countries have failed to subordinate
themselves to Washington’s basic demands: Iran and Syria. Accordingly
both are enemies, Iran by far the more important.” However, “Despite
the saber-rattling, it is, I suspect, unlikely that the Bush administration
will attack Iran,” because the world, seventy-five percent of
Americans and “the U.S. military and intelligence community is
also opposed to an attack,” Chomsky concluded.
Would this lead to, “A 'China Opening' to Iran?” Asked Jeremi
suri, a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
and the author of “Henry Kissinger and the American Century,”
in the Boston Globe on July 24. In July 1971, Kissinger, acting as President
Nixon's special representative, secretly travelled to Beijing for a
dramatic opening in relations between the United States and China -
two nations estranged from one another for more than 20 years. “Today,
the historical parallels are striking,” Suri said.
Bush confronts a war in Iraq with no end in sight, American standing
abroad has plummeted and domestic opposition to present policies is
growing. Iran, similarly, contends with a clash of generations and worldviews
at home, as well as a cast of external challengers, including the International
Atomic Energy Agency and the UN Security Council. Leaders in Washington
and Tehran need one another. The White House should pursue a “China
opening with Iran,” wrote Suri.
Iran is more than open to such an “opening.” It is no more
a secret that Iran is ready to trade her Iraqi privileged status quo
and her regional political influence for a détente with the West,
with the U.S. in the forefront, as her greatest prize that would secure
the Western recognition of her Islamic regime as a fait accompli.
The seriousness of Washington’s “saber-rattling” vis-à-vis
Iran was not questioned only by Chomsky, but her pursuing a regime change
in Tehran was in spotlight since the ceasefire in the Iran – Iraq
war in 1988. “It was the USA” who “stopped the war,
and … stopped Saddam (Hussein) from recapturing parts of Iran”
and “not the wisdom” of the Iranian leaders, according to
Bahman Aghai Diba, a member of the preparatory committee of the UN Security
Council Resolution 598 in the Iranian Foreign Ministry, who wrote in
the Persian Journal on July 29:
“Iraqi regime had accepted the Resolution 598 of the UNSC almost
one year before the date that Islamic republic of Iran accepted it…
At that time, the Iranian forces were well entrenched inside the Iraqi
territory… The Iraqi regime, under the pressures of war, was asking
all international figures and organizations to help end the war and
get the Iranian forces out of Iraq… Almost one month before acceptance
of the Resolution 598 by Iran, the Iraqi forces captured Fav and later
they pushed Iranian forces back to Iranian territory… In the middle
of this chaos, the MKOs [Mujahedin Khalgh Organization) staged an attack
in the most irregular and bizarre way. Some of the advanced units of
the MKOs that were consisted of lightly armed and poorly trained boys
and girls simply riding family sedan cars reached as close as Qom, south
of Tehran. The regime was feeling the collapse. Iran decided to stop
the war immediately.”
U.S. – Iran Dialogue
Short of political survival prospects, both besieged governments of
Bush in Washington and al-Maliki in Baghdad have desperately hanged
on to the option of a dialogue with a forthcoming Iran, but a fruitful
conclusion of the dialogue, which ended its seven – hour second
round in Baghdad on July 24, will depend on whose terms an agreement
or an understanding would be reached.
Cornered between a time limit set by an assessment report on the status
of the war raging in Iraq on September 15 and the political prerogatives
of engaging Iran over Iraq, the Bush Administration has decided, ostensibly
responding positively to an Iraqi request, to hold a second session
of a dialogue with Iran at an ambassadorial level as a last resort to
win more time for both Bush’s Iraq new security plan and for al-Maliki’s
government to meet Bush’s “benchmarks” by September.
The first round of the bilateral ambassadorial talks in Baghdad on May
28 recorded the first public bilateral budding dialogue since 1979 and
broke the 27-year diplomatic freeze between what Tehran condemns as
the “Great Satan” and Washington rules out as a “Rogue
state” and “pillar of the axis of evil.” It put the
Arabs on their guard; they and their Iraqi brethren were left out of
the meeting in the aftermath of which a fierce debate raged inside the
Bush administration over taking “military action” against
Iran “before George Bush leaves office in 18 months,” according
to the Guardian on July 16, but the second round of talks vindicated
a report by the New York Times on June 15 that the advocates of diplomatic
engagement led by Secretary Rice “appear to be winning [the debate]
so far.”
Desperately clinging to the “Iranian option,” the Bush Administration
was even ready to forego the fate of four Iranian-Americans held by
Tehran. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack confirmed the detainees
were not on the agenda of the second Baghdad talks because “the
meetings in Baghdad are only about Iraq.”
Similarly al-Maliki’s government has bet all on the resumption
of the U.S. – Iran dialogue. Iraqi president Jalal Talabani late
in June visited Tehran in a bid to convince Iran’s top leaders
resume dialogue with the U.S.; on June 27 he thanked Iran for acceptance
of the Iraqi bid.
Iran in turn was “unconditionally” forthcoming, ostensibly
also responding positively to an Iraqi request: “Iraqi officials
have made the request,” Foreign Minister Mottaki told IRNA after
a meeting with Talabani. Iraq’s ambassador to Iran, Mohamed Majid
al-Sheikh, thanked the Iranian officials on July 3 “for not setting
any precondition for a second round of talks with the U.S.”
The trilateral U.S.-Iranian-Iraqi committee of “experts”
they agreed to set up on July 24 to coordinate their “security”
efforts in Iraq was a step toward discussing what ambassador Ryan Crocker
said were “ways forward,” during what Iraqi Foreign Minister
Hoshyar Zebar said would be the “the next round of talks …
on a higher level.” Mottaki, revealing a receptive attitude, declared
his country’s willingness to discuss higher level talks, but Washington
nixed such a prospect for the time being: “I don't see that happening
at this point of time,” said Sean McCormack.
The Baghdad talks came on the backdrop of a revised U.S. military plan,
known as the Joint Campaign Plan and developed by the top U.S. commander
in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and the U.S. ambassador in Iraq, Crocker,
which envisions American troops being in Iraq for at least another two
years to secure a “nationwide security by mid-2009,” after
which permanent U.S. bases would safeguard the emerging status quo,
according to the Voice of America on July 24, citing a The New York
Times report.
In making the case for a continued U.S. troop presence, Bush argues
that al-Qaeda or Iran would take over Iraq after a “precipitous
withdrawal” of U.S. forces; he reinforces his arguments with the
conclusions reached in recent “war games” exercises conducted
for the U.S. military by retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson, which were
cited by the Washington Post on July 17: “If U.S. combat forces
withdraw from Iraq in the near future, three developments would be likely
to unfold. Majority Shiites would drive Sunnis out of ethnically mixed
areas west to Anbar province. Southern Iraq would erupt in civil war
between Shiite groups. And the Kurdish north would solidify its borders
and invite a U.S. troop presence there. In short, Iraq would effectively
become three separate nations.” Iran cites similar warnings, adding
that the withdrawal of the Iranian “influence” would bring
in a system more threatening to neighbours than the Saddam Hussein –
led Baath regime.
Their agreement on the common denominators of identifying the enemy
as “terrorism” and identifying the goal as the stability
of the regime they both installed in Baghdad and recognized as the legitimate
representative of the Iraqi people is most likely theoretically to produce
agreement on cooperation to beat the common enemy and secure stability
for their converging interests. Al-Maliki opened the trilateral meeting
with a statement focusing on the common denominator, “terrorism,”
and called on “everyone” to stand beside Iraq “to
counter the scourge of terror and extremism,” he said, referring
to anti-occupation national resistance more than to the actual terrorism
of the Iran – supported militias and squabbling political parties
who are the backbone of his government and the US-dominated “political
process.”
The prospect of a potential bilateral US-Iranian understanding on policing
Iraq is perceived by Arabs as a prelude to a similar regional co-ordination
that would renovate the US-Iranian policing of the Gulf. On June 30
the Asia Times reported that Mohammad Javad Larijani, the brother of
Ali Larijani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator and head of the powerful
Supreme National Security Council, called to expand those talks to broader
issues such as Afghanistan, “Persian Gulf” security, and
the tensions in the Middle East: “We should not negotiate only
about Iraq,” he said.
Accordingly, when the two major foreign powers responsible for the destruction
of the Iraqi state and the sectarian disintegration of the Iraqi society
meet and say they are determined to stay in the country to restore it
to “stability,” they leave no room for guessing that their
complementary roles during the past four years have started to diverge
and they are now merely trying to sort things out in order to avoid
reaching a point of conflict that could jeopardize their war spoils
in the occupied country.
Both Americans and Iranians played down the significance of their Baghdad
“dialogue.” Former US ambassador to Syria and senior policy
adviser to the Iraq Study Group, Edward Djerejian, had told AP that
Arabs, “all have their own ongoing relationship and dialogue with
Iran. So I can't see where they can really question the US entering
dialogue with Iran, and they really should embrace it.”
True the future of Iraq as well as the current situation in the wretched
war-torn country were the focus of the US and Iranian diplomats in the
Iraqi capital, but the dialogue was not confined to that and the regional
roles of both sides were also on the agenda. Moreover, the Iraqis themselves
are more concern to Arabs than to any other self-proclaimed concerned
parties, at least because Iraqis in their majority are compatriot Arabs
and because Iraq is also a founding member of the League of Arab States.
Ruling them out of any future arrangements for Iraq and the region would
surely antagonize them to figure out where their strategic interests
lie.
*Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist in Kuwait, Jordan, UAE and
Palestine. He is based in Birzeit, West Bank of the Israeli –
occupied territories.
Leave
A Comment
&
Share Your Insights
Comment
Policy
Digg
it! And spread the word!
Here is a unique chance to help this article to be read by thousands
of people more. You just Digg it, and it will appear in the home page
of Digg.com and thousands more will read it. Digg is nothing but an
vote, the article with most votes will go to the top of the page. So,
as you read just give a digg and help thousands more to read this article.