Rice’s
Middle East Tour:
Arab Rregimes Back US War Drive
In Iraq And Iran
By Jean Shaoul &
Chris Marsden
20 January, 2007
World
Socialist Web
Saudi
Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the Emirates
have all signed up to the Bush administration’s escalation of
its aggression against Iraq and its plans for a military attack on Iran.
A tour of the Middle East
by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice culminated on January 16 in
a meeting at the Bayan Palace of the emir of Kuwait and the signing
of a joint communiqué by the foreign ministers of the six-nation
Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), plus Egypt and Jordan.
The foreign ministers endorsed
President Bush’s dispatch of 21,000 more troops to Iraq, portraying
this as a means of preventing a further descent into civil war. And
they joined Rice in welcoming a US commitment to defend “the territorial
integrity of Iraq and to ensure a successful, fair and inclusive political
process that engages all Iraqi communities and guarantees the stability
of the country.”
“Nine foreign ministers
[including Rice] are meeting in Kuwait precisely to prevent Iraq from
sliding into a civil war. And that speaks volumes,” Kuwaiti Foreign
Minister Sheikh Mohammad al-Salem al-Sabah said. “We expressed
our desire to see the president’s plan to reinforce American military
presence in Baghdad as a vehicle...to stabilise Baghdad and prevent
Iraq sliding into this ugly war, this civil war.”
Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister
Saud al-Faisal said, “We agree with the full objectives set out
by the new plan, the strategy.... If it were applied, it will solve
the problems facing Iraq.”
Egypt’s Foreign Minister
Ahmed Aboul Ghewas was even more obsequious, telling reporters in Cairo
on Wednesday, “Bush’s strategy is not merely a military
action or operation or a unilateral military programme. It represents
a vision with different political, military and economic aspects.”
Endorsing Bush’s plans
in fact paves the way for the bloody suppression of the Iraqi people
and a worsening of sectarian conflict. The US intends to first crack
down on Sunni insurgents in Baghdad, but is also demanding that the
Iraqi regime of Nouri al-Maliki mount an offensive against Shia militias,
particularly the Mahdi army of Moqtada al-Sadr. Maliki has already announced
the beginning of such a crackdown and 400 arrests.
But the US military “surge”
will not stop with Iraq. Iran is firmly in Washington’s sights
and is accused of being the primary instigator of the Shia insurgency.
In his speech announcing the troop escalation, endorsed by the Arab
states, Bush threatened that the US would “interrupt the flow
of support from Iran and Syria” and to “seek out and destroy
the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies
in Iraq.”
The official communiqué
did not mention Iran explicitly, but declared that “Relations
among all countries should be based on mutual respect for the sovereignty
and territorial integrity of all states and on the principle of no-interference
in the internal affairs of other nations.” Sweeping aside the
oblique political formula of the Arab states, a spokesman for Rice declared
afterwards that this meant Iran.
Every day that has passed
since Bush’s speech outlining a fresh “surge” has
seen fresh political and military threats directed against Tehran. US
Vice President Dick Cheney has said that Iran constitutes a “growing,
multidimensional” threat to the entire region.
As Rice was shuttling between
Middle East capitals, a second US aircraft carrier was despatched to
the Gulf for the first time since the start of the war against Iraq
in 2003. According to a US Navy spokesperson, the USS Stennis, with
3,200 sailors, is part of a strike group consisting of the guided-missile
cruiser USS Antietam, three Navy destroyers—the USS O’Kane,
Preble and Paul Hamilton—the submarine USS Key West, and the guided-missile
frigate USS Rentz, as well as the supply ship USNS Bridge. It will remain
in the Middle East “as long as the situation demands it.”
The US already has nearly
40,000 troops in Gulf countries other than Iraq, including about 25,000
in Kuwait, 6,500 in Qatar, 3,000 in Bahrain, 1,300 in the United Arab
Emirates and a few hundred in Oman and Saudi Arabia, according to figures
from the Dubai-based Gulf Research Centre.
On January 15, the day before
the “GCC plus two” communiqué, US Defence Secretary
Robert Gates gave a news conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels,
Belgium. He described the beefing up of America’s Middle East
forces as reaffirming “our determination to be a strong presence
in that area for a long time into the future.”
He accused Iran of trying
to take advantage of perceived US vulnerability in Iraq. Today, he said,
“the Iranians clearly believe that we’re tied down in Iraq;
that they have the initiative, that they are in a position to press
us in many ways. They are doing nothing to be constructive in Iraq at
this point.”
The British Broadcasting
Corporation reported that in an interview Rice “denied that taking
the war to Syria and Iran would be an escalation.” She told the
BBC that it was simply “good policy” and was a reaction
to unacceptable and lethal Iranian activities against US forces.
Numerous commentators noted
that the ringing endorsement of the foreign ministers could not conceal
their underlying “scepticism” in the prospects of US success
in Iraq. Theirs was a “hands-off” approach that places responsibility
on the Maliki government to demonstrate an “even-handedness”
to ensure against worsening tensions between Sunnis and Shias throughout
the region.
Nevertheless, the Arab regimes
have lined up behind US plans to escalate the conflict in the region
in the full knowledge that it means more military adventures, civil
wars and conflicts that could destabilise the entire region. Indeed,
King Abdullah of Jordan warned that three civil wars are on the cards:
in Iraq, the Palestinian territories and Lebanon.
For the US, such outcomes
are not so much accidental by-products of its determination to control
the region and its extensive oil resources as deliberate policy choices.
In Iraq, its policy of divide and rule through the deliberate fostering
of civil war between Sunni and Shia Muslims is to be extended elsewhere.
As Rice explained in her
testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on January 11,
“This is a different Middle East. This Middle East is a Middle
East in which there really is a new alignment of forces. On one side
are reformers and responsible leaders, who seek to advance their interests
peacefully, politically and diplomatically. On the other side are extremists
of every sect and ethnicity who use violence to spread chaos, undermine
democratic governance, and to impose an agenda of hatred and intolerance.
“On one side of that
divide are the Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia and the other
countries of the Gulf, Egypt, Jordan, the young democracies of Lebanon,
the Palestinian territories led by Mahmoud Abbas, and Iraq. On the other
side of that divide are Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas. I think we
have to understand that that is the fundamental divide.”
The US no longer seeks to
maintain the status quo, but, as Rice herself put it in relation to
Israel’s offensive against Lebanon last summer, to bring about
“a new Middle East.” The Arab regimes will be called on
not only to passively support US actions in Iraq and Iran, but to suppress
the domestic opposition that this will arouse. They will do so because
their own survival has rested for decades upon US support.
The Arab regimes have sought
to dress up their support for Washington’s plans by boosting illusions
that the Bush administration is seeking a just resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. The communiqué agreed that the “Palestinian-Israeli
conflict remains a central and core problem and that without resolving
this conflict the region will not enjoy sustained peace and stability.”
They reaffirmed a commitment to achieving peace in the Middle East through
a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In reality, US policy in
Palestine is to equip the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas with
the military equipment necessary for it to take on Hamas and suppress
all opposition to Israel as part of the “war on terror.”
Reports in Haaretz at the
end of last year noted that, after coordinating with the US and Israel
and discussions between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert,
Egypt was sending arms shipments across the border to Gaza. One shipment
was said to be made up of four trucks with 2,000 automatic rifles, 20,000
ammunition clips and 2 million bullets. The Bush administration is seeking
congressional support to provide up to $86 million to bolster the presidential
guard and expand Abbas’s control over strategic border crossings.
Rice’s brief meeting
with Abbas resulted in nothing of substance regarding moves towards
establishing a Palestinian state. It could not do so because Israel
remains Washington’s key regional ally and is spearheading its
military provocations against Iran. Rice started her tour of the Middle
East in Israel, where she held a three-hour-long discussion with Olmert,
all but half an hour of which was held in private without officials
present. The talks focused on Israel’s role in the campaign against
Iran.
Leave
A Comment
&
Share Your Insights