Arabs fear fallout of nuclear conflict
Nervous Arab states fear a war in the Gulf but a nuclear-armed Iran is
an even greater concern
Arab governments are deeply worried about the prospect of war between
Iran and Israel and/or the US for the very good reason that several of
them would be directly in the firing line if hostilities erupted. Any
fallout could have devastating consequences.
Iranian retaliation against oilfields, refineries and desalination
plants in the Gulf, especially in eastern Saudi Arabia, is an obvious
worry. Tehran has gone on the record as threatening to close the
Straits of Hormuz, the choke point for 40% of globally-traded oil, if
it is attacked. Wa****ngton quickly insisted that it will not let that
happen.
As the sabres rattled this week, Iran warned that it would strike at
Tel Aviv and the US navy, though Revolutionary Guard Shehab missiles
would find it difficult to distinguish between American and Arab
targets: the US Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain; US Central Command in
nearby Qatar and the US navy has long relied on docking facilities at
Jebel Ali in the United Arab Emirates.
Even without the threat of war, Iran's Arab neighbours have long lived
in fear of another Chernobyl: the Bushehr nuclear reactor, two miles
from the Gulf coast, is closer to six Arab capitals (Kuwait, Riyadh,
Manama, Doha, Abu Dhabi and Muscat) than it is to Tehran. Any nuclear
accident would be an ecological disaster.
But the recent sniping has been ominous. "We are sandwiched between
Iran on the one hand and Israel and the US on the other," said Mustafa
Alani of the Gulf Research Centre in Dubai. "We feel that we are going
to be victims."
Abdullah Alshayji, a Kuwaiti analyst, agrees, describing the Gulf
states as "feeling like helpless bystanders with little room to
manoeuvre". War would be "a nightmare of epic pro****tions for the
whole region," he said.
And Tehran is mistrusted in almost every Arab capital. None believe
the insistent claim that it is interested only in civilian nuclear
power and has no military ambitions. It is seen as working to
establish its hegemony across the Middle East, setting the agenda
through allies or "non-state" proxies such as Hizbullah and Hamas,
confounding the US and Israel in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine.
Syria, Iran's only Arab ally, is the glaring exception, maintaining a
strategic relation****p that dates back to the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Maverick Qatar, home to al-Jazeera as well as a huge US air base, has
been careful to stay on good terms with Tehran, not least because of
massive joint natural gas projects. Otherwise Arab states are united
in their suspicion of the country they fervently hoped to see defeated
by Saddam Hussein in his eight-year struggle against Ayatollah
Khomeini. Historic Arab antipathy to Persians still runs very deep.
And vice versa.
The sight of long-range Iranian missiles being launched into desert
skies was a grim reminder of that war against Saddam. But Arabs
already see Iran as the main beneficiary of the more recent conflict
in Iraq, with the Sunnis defeated and marginalised by the ****a-
dominated government in Baghdad =97 even if there are now signs of
grudging acceptance that it is there to stay.
Public statements by Arab leaders make clear that they oppose military
action by Israel or the United States. The six-member Gulf Cooperation
Council has declared that it would not allow its territory to be used
to attack Iran =97 and even hosted Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
at its summit late last year.
Saudi Arabia, where some military men are said to be privately
advocating a hardline stance towards Iran, has chosen the path of
accommodation rather than confrontation. King Abdullah made a symbolic
public declaration of this policy last year when he invited
Ahmadinejad to go on the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.
Bahrain, just a few miles across the Gulf from Iran, has anxieties
over so-called Iranian "sleeper cells" amongst its restive ****as - the
majority of the population in the Sunni-ruled kingdom. But it too
favours engagement and diplomacy =97 and worries about conflict. The
same is true of Kuwait, at the head of the Gulf.
Further afield, Jordan's King Abdullah, who coined the phrase "****a
crescent" to describe the alarming spread of Sunni-****a sectarianism,
warned recently that action against Iran would open a "Pandora's box".
His recommendation: "Engage with the Iranians. A military strike in
Iran will only solicit a reaction from Iran and Iranian proxies, and I
don't think that we can live with any more conflicts in this part of
the world."
Privately, things may be different: "If we have to choose between
Iranian nuclear deterrence and intimidation, or accept military action
as a solution, we'll accept military action," says Alani. "We in the
Gulf can live with Iranian retaliation for a week or a month. That's
manageable compared to the possibility that Iran will be a nuclear
power."
Israel, waging an intensifying propaganda campaign over Iran - and
seeking to coax Syria away from its alliance with Tehran - likes to
claim that "moderate" Arab states would sup****t an attack on Iran's
nuclear installations, though passive acquiescence is not the same as
active sup****t.
"We would not be participants," Alani says of the Gulf states. "We
would be beneficiaries. But no one will say this in public. We don't
want premature confrontation because we still believe there is a
margin for a diplomatic solution."
Still, there is no mistaking the anxiety in the region. "Perhaps the
objective of Iran's frequent threats is to stir up fear amongst the
Gulf states over the repercussions of any US strike against it so that
they it turn may pressure Wa****ngton into preventing any military
action," observed Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed in the Saudi-owned al-Sharq
al-Awsat. "But this is having an opposite effect from the desired
one."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/10/middleeast.iran
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