It looks similar

Brought back to Dina Ezzat are very unpleasant memories

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For any reader closely following what has been written for the past few years, this week's works must have been déjà vu -- threats of war in the Middle East, rhetoric about a volatile region that must tolerate no other nuclear power than Israel, talk of sanctions, confused international and regional priorities and an unending escalation that nobody is really sure where, or actually what, it is leading to.

The same story was written on the eve of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq three years ago. And it is being written in almost identical language today as the US is again using its military might to threaten Iran for failing to succumb to the will of Washington that is often described in the world press -- the Arab press included -- as the will of the international community.

On Saturday morning, there was hardly a front page that did not herald the same story: the report by Mohamed El-Baradei, the chief of the international watchdog IAEA, on Tehran's level of cooperation with his organisation. Exactly as the Arab press informed its reader in January 2002, the report said Iran was not cooperating and is hiding information.

The sequence of stories followed throughout the week. Like Iraq, Iran said it is defiant and will not succumb to the US. And like Saddam Hussein, Iranian President Ahmadinejad called on his people to show resolve in confronting the US and promised the American military hard times if they ever dared attack his country (a threat Iraq did keep in the wake of the US invasion).

Reported were the typical differences within the UN Security Council, with the US permanent representative John Bolton offering the press a generous dose of arrogant and aggressive soundbites that were, as the case was during the lead-up to the war on Iraq, offset by conciliatory statements from the permanent representatives of China and Russia (this time France was not playing the opposing tunes) who called for excluding the military option.

As the week proceeded there were allusions to deals being struck under the table during undeclared direct and indirect US-Iran talks that reportedly covered not only the Iranian nuclear programme but also the role Iran could play to stabilise Iraq and help the US out of its quagmire.

Indeed, as Abdel-Wahab Badrakhan suggested in his regular column in the daily London-based Al-Hayat, it is no coincidence that as the Security Council was debating Iran, a pro-Iranian but unpopular Iraqi prime minister, Ibrahim Al-Jaafari, decided to abandon his quest for power in favour of another pro-Iranian but more popular Iraqi politician, Jawad Al-Maleki.

And the papers noted throughout the week that the link between Iran and the Arab world was much more complex than Iranian influence in Iraq. It was therefore no surprise that Qatari papers announced on Monday that the emir of Qatar had decided to visit Tehran to persuade the Iranians to accommodate American demands. Indeed, as the semi-official Qatari daily Al-Rai noted in its editorial on Monday, "The emir of Qatar will tell his brothers in Iran they have to try and pursue a non-military end to this crisis," something the Qatari foreign minister said he had tried during a visit to Baghdad weeks before the US invasion began in earnest.

Qatar, which plays the generous host to one of the largest US Middle East military basis, had a direct interest to find a way to persuade the Iranians to "show flexibility", as the Qatari press called it, to avoid being involved in facilitating yet another war on a Muslim country. However, other Arab Gulf states, as their papers indicated in many indirect ways, were also expressing concern to Washington, Tehran and other relevant capitals about the havoc that Iran could easily create in their countries if it chose to skillfully mobilise the considerable Shia population in those countries.

Indeed, as Erfan Nezameddin, the regular commentator of Al-Hayat noted in his Monday article titled "The consequences of the Iranian nuclear file; Arabs left under the mercy of regional powers", Iranian leaders must recognise the "legitimate worries" of Arab Gulf states regarding Tehran's nuclear ambitions. Such worries, Nezameddin argued, need to be addressed or else the Iranians should not be too surprised if the Gulf found it in its direct interest to support the US effort to curb Iran's nuclear programme.

"But when all is said and done we should all remember the lessons learned from the Iraqi experience. All sides concerned need to be aware of the risks of walking into moving sands or fields of landmines," Nezameddin warned.

In his regular opinion piece in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Rai Al-Aam, commentator and academic Shafik Nazim Al-Ghabra on Monday had the courage to warn, "should the US attack Iran" many of the Arab Gulf states would be left to wonder about unpleasant issues such as that of the alleged collaboration of Shia with Iran.

And to judge by the fact that the daily Lebanese An-Nahar on Saturday announced that the Shia Amal movement of Lebanon held a party in honour of the Iranian ambassador in Beirut where Iranian defiance against the US was loudly applauded, it was not difficult for the reader to see where Al-Ghabra and other concerned commentators were coming from.

Advice was accorded on the front page of the daily Lebanese As-Safir on Monday morning by no other than former Lebanese Prime Minister Selim Al-Hoss who argued the desperate need for Arabs to realise that they are being caught in a region where they have not much power. One way out, Al-Hoss proposed, is for Arabs to try and assume more responsibility in the developments of the region. This, he said, would be helpful for them in having a say. As such, Al-Hoss proposed that a joint Arab-Muslim force should be promptly composed and delegated to Iraq to help stabilise the situation there since this would be a useful start to the overall stabilisation of the situation.

But in all events, noted Abdul-Bari Atwan, editor-in-chief of the London-based daily Al-Quds Al-Araby on Saturday, "Arabs must realise that the countdown for a US attack on Iran has begun."