Bush hopes to persuade gulf allies of Iranian threat
U.S. President likely to conclude $20-billion arms deal with Saudis during tour of five Arab states
MARK MACKINNON
January 12, 2008
JERUSALEM — Fresh from three days of trying to make peace in one part of the Middle East, U.S. President George W. Bush landed in the Persian Gulf yesterday, promising weapons and hoping to convince his allies of the threat he believes is posed by Iran.
Bush hopes to persuade gulf allies of Iranian threat
U.S. President likely to conclude $20-billion arms deal with Saudis during tour of five Arab states
MARK MACKINNON
January 12, 2008
JERUSALEM — Fresh from three days of trying to make peace in one part of the Middle East, U.S. President George W. Bush landed in the Persian Gulf yesterday, promising weapons and hoping to convince his allies of the threat he believes is posed by Iran.
Mr. Bush arrived in Kuwait at the beginning of a five-day, five-country tour of the Arab world during which he will mix official meetings with kings, presidents and emirs with rally-the-troops visits to U.S. military forces stationed in the region. The intent is to build a common front to pressure Iran – which Mr. Bush said this week was “a threat to world peace” – into ceasing its efforts to acquire nuclear technology.
He’s likely to get a cool reception. Kuwaiti newspapers, which are under state supervision, reported yesterday that the country’s ruler, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, intended to tell Mr. Bush that he was worried any military strike on Iran would destabilize the entire region, which is key to the world’s oil supply. An editorial in the English-language Kuwait Times said the prospect of a war between the United States and Iran “scares the heck out of people here.”
It’s a sentiment that’s widely felt around the region. “Bush can’t force me to have Iran as an enemy. Iran will be our neighbour for thousands, millions of years. We need to have peaceful relations with our neighbours,” said Nabeel Rajab, head of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights. Bahrain, a tiny island kingdom that hosts the U.S. Fifth Fleet, is the next stop on Mr. Bush’s itinerary.
Mr. Bush also visits the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt before heading home on Jan. 16. While in the region, he is expected to finalize a deal to sell $20-billion in advanced weaponry to Saudi Arabia.
The trip follows three days of shuttle diplomacy in Jerusalem and Ramallah, during which Mr. Bush tried to coax Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas toward a final-status peace deal. But even while he was in Israel and the West Bank, Iran was one of Mr. Bush’s favourite topics.
Many believe that the peace process Mr. Bush launched last year at a summit in Annapolis, Md., that was attended by most Arab states has a secondary purpose of constructing a coalition of so-called “moderates” to combat Iran’s rising influence across the region.
While the Sunni Arab states of the Persian Gulf are uneasy about both Tehran’s nuclear program and its sway over fellow Shiites in war-torn Iraq and other countries, analysts say their interest in confronting Iran has cooled considerably since the Annapolis gathering. Many were dissuaded by the last National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that Iran appeared to have ceased its efforts to acquire a nuclear weapon five years ago.
Since the National Intelligence Estimate’s release in November, there has been a rapid diplomatic rapprochement between Iran and the Sunni kingdoms across the Persian Gulf. In December, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad was invited to attend a summit of the Gulf Co-operation Council, a first for an Iranian leader. The summit’s final communiqué called for talk of a military strike on Iran to be “eliminated,” and Mr. Ahmedinejad hailed a new era in relations between Iran and its neighbours.
Shortly afterwards, Mr. Ahmedinejad was invited to join the annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. It was another first for an Iranian leader.
“What happened after the CIA report was that the Arab countries, the Egyptians, the Saudis, adopted another policy. They decided to ameliorate their relations with Iran,” said Diaa Rashwan, a political analyst at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo.
Mr. Bush’s efforts to convince them to reverse course will likely fail because the war in Iraq and the President’s perceived pro-Israel bias have driven American credibility near an all-time low in the Arab world, he said.
Worsening matters for Mr. Bush this week has been a mini-scandal over an incident Sunday involving U.S. warships and Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf.
The U.S. Navy this week released a heavily edited video that appeared to show the small Iranian craft darting dangerously close to a U.S. frigate. A voice, attributed to the Iranian radio operator, appeared to threaten the American ship, warning “you will explode.” Mr. Bush called the incident a provocation and warned Iran against a repeat.
A day later, Iran issued its own edited video of the incident in which the patrol boats kept their distance and had only a brief, apparently routine, exchange over the radio in which the Iranian radio operator asked the warships to clarify their course and heading. In the Iranian video, which shows the radio operator calling the American ships, the operator has a different voice than in the American version.
The U.S. Navy has since admitted that the voice on its video may not have belonged to any of the Iranian sailors.
At Friday prayers that were carried on state radio in Iran yesterday, senior cleric Ahmad Khatami called the incident a “funny show” aimed at fuelling “Iranophobia” in the region.
Mr. Khatami said that Mr. Bush’s attempts to portray Iran as a danger were “a repetitive lie, which will not have an audience as our neighbours know a powerful Iran will be their best friend.”
