Looking east

Gulf and other Arab states should think seriously of striking a strategic alliance with Iran, writes Ayman El-Amir*

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The recently concluded third summit conference of the leaders of OPEC in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, must have had more than oil and dollar value on its agenda. For Arab producers, the protection of this much- coveted commodity must have loomed high, particularly now that the price per barrel of oil is flirting with the watershed value of $100. This opens out on the larger question of the security and stability of the troubled oil-rich region. The need for a new, home grown Middle East security alliance is becoming a pressing necessity as the geopolitical and military situation continues to deteriorate.

Political and military alliances have an odious record in the contemporary history of the Middle East. As the Arab nationalist movement culminated in independence in the second half of the 20th century, the military presence and political influence of the old colonial powers declined. However, the Cold War was escalating and the two superpowers, the United States and the former Soviet Union, competed to extend their spheres of influence to strategic areas of the world. The US drew a line in the sand around the oil- rich region to ward off any attempt by the former Soviet Union to get too close to that lifeline of Western economic survival.

While Turkey served in the 1950s and 1960s as NATO's southern bulwark against communist expansion, US obsession with the policy of containment of the former Soviet Union engineered the idea of lumping strategic Arab countries into a British-US controlled military and political alliance -- the short- lived Middle East Treaty Organisation, better known as the Baghdad Pact. The Western order of priorities perceived the communist threat as the main concern for Middle Eastern countries. However, this view clashed with the Arab nationalist movement and such leaders as Gamal Abdel-Nasser who regarded Israel, not communist expansion, as the most lethal and immediate threat to the development and progress of their nations. A conflict of wills and strategic visions followed. US-led Western paranoia was self-defeating as it drove Nasser and a number of Arab nationalist leaders into closer alliance with the former Soviet Union. This, in turn, made leaders like Nasser a target of hostile Western machinations. The vibrant movement of Arab nationalism broke down as Egypt suffered its most humiliating military defeat in a century during the June 1967 War with Israel. Thus, a shining chapter in the history of the independent Arab nationalist movement was slammed shut.

The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) that was associated with the rise of national independence compromised itself by violating its founding principle and pre-condition of its membership: to be free from foreign military bases or alliances. State members of the movement were accepted as "non-aligned" with foreign military bases on their territories. The caveat was that in some cases these bases were not present as a matter of national choice but as a force majeure. Others existed under long-term agreements that preceded the formation of the NAM, such as the century-old US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But there were other, more flagrant examples, too, where alliances were code-named friendship and cooperation agreements and military bases were camouflaged as facilities and advisors. The NAM was sucked into the winds of the Cold War.

In the Gulf region, Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 demonstrated the vulnerability of the oil states to interregional rivalries, and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 marked the revival of the defunct colonialist conquest of territories awash in natural resources that are coveted by Western economies. In both cases, small wealthy Gulf States were either incapable or unwilling to defend their national territories and wealth against ravenous foreign powers hungry for oil and strategic position. Saddam's most unpardonable mistake was that he used his country's growing military power to intimidate and/or invade his neighbours in a short sighted show of regional hegemony. With the invasion of Iran and then Kuwait, Saddam lost any credibility of serving as the linchpin of a common regional security alliance that could defend the region and its wealth against foreign ambitions.

After four costly wars in the Gulf region in less than three decades the wealthy but vulnerable Gulf States decided to outsource their national defence. The US was only too happy to be the sub-contractor, except that it is bleeding heavily in Iraq and its armed forces are thinly spread over more than 700 military installations across the world. Now that the threat of Saddam is removed, the US has conjured up the scarecrow threat of Shia Iran to justify its sprawling military presence in almost all states of the Gulf region and Saudi Arabia. It is a mutually rewarding arrangement: the US will dominate, control and defend oil resources against real or made-up enemies while the Gulf states that foot the bill need not worry about external threats, actual or imaginary.

The only problem with this happy agreement is that conventional Arab pride considers foreign military presence as an anathema rather than a panacea. It is a source of resentment that feeds into the agenda of nationalist and fundamentalist groups and could be a trigger to destabilise present everlasting regimes. The Gulf Arab region is not Japan or Germany where US military presence is part of the terms of surrender treaties or defence pacts. It is viewed rather as part of the colonial legacy, or neo-colonial hegemony, as the invasion of Iraq has proven. As the case was in the attempted Western domination of the 1950s, the US is misrepresenting Arab priorities again, making Iran and not Israel the most lethal and immediate threat to the development and growth of Arab countries, the same way it presented communism as contaminating toxic waste.

The US, however, underestimates Iran, which has so far successfully broken through the isolation straightjacket the US has been trying to dress it in. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit and talks in Bahrain a few days ago was an important gesture that Iran has dropped Shah-era territorial claims in the small Gulf state. Last month, Iran hosted a summit conference of the heads of the five Caspian Sea littoral states that agreed to form an economic cooperation organisation. They also pledged that their territories would not be used as launching pads for aggression against any member of the group. In the meantime, China has dropped out of a US-planned meeting of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany that was designed to discuss new sanctions against Iran. The meeting, which was supposed to be a test of the unanimity of the Security Council on imposing new sanctions, was cancelled.

Iran and the Arabs may have their political differences and minor territorial disputes, but the Shia-Sunni rift the US and Israel are promoting and unfurling in Iraq smacks of the old divide and rule policy. Arab monarchies and pseudo-republican regimes are more apprehensive of Iran's revolutionary rhetoric than potential military intervention. After all, it was Saddam who invaded Iran in 1980 to impress upon his weak Gulf neighbours his credentials as the uncontested leader of the Arab world. His misadventure played into the hands of the US, which eventually rushed to save him from a humiliating defeat. In addition, the Arab pack stood helplessly by -- and some actively helped -- as their ally, the US, not Iran, invaded and destroyed one of their own, Iraq.

Several Gulf states, led by Saudi Arabia, have embarked on a multi-billion dollar shopping spree for advanced Western weaponry systems. Building national defences is a legitimate prerogative of every country. But planning military strategy for national defence presupposes a complex number of variables and the definition of potential threats, as well as the power and reach of the enemy and underlying political motivations. Gulf States would not want to be caught up as innocent bystanders in a potential US military confrontation with Iran, or an Israeli military strike against, and consequent reprisals by Iran.

At a time when regional economic, political and military alliances are sprouting in every region of the world, it would make great sense that Gulf and other Arab states build a regional economic zone and a military defence pact in association with Iran. If you think that, due to heavy US military presence in the Gulf and other constraints, this is more easily said than done, you're probably right. Much preparatory work has to be done to reform and harmonise political, economic, social and cultural standards in these countries and minimise disparities. But there is also much more common interest among all parties concerned than meets the eye. Only such an alliance could help pacify and reconstruct Iraq, mitigate regional tensions, protect against military intervention, settle old regional disputes and create an area of common prosperity. Saudi Arabia has recently unveiled plans to build a special 35,000-strong special force to protect oil wells and installations. The Gulf Cooperation Council, with an increasingly proactive Saudi Arabia at its helm, should take the lead.

* The writer is a former correspondent for Al-Ahram in Washington, DC. He also served as director of UN Radio and Television in New York.