Dangerous time for Middle East

Photo illustration: Nino Jose Heredia/Gulf News

February 2, 2007

By Patrick Seale, Special to Gulf News

All the ingredients are coming together for a new war in the Middle East. War-fever is being whipped up against Iran by an ignorant and bullying American president and by Israeli hawks shamelessly exploiting the paranoia lying never far beneath the surface of Israeli opinion.

President George W. Bush appears to fear, or has been persuaded by his neo-conservative advisers, that Iran poses a serious challenge to American hegemony in the strategic Gulf region, while Israeli propagandists equate Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with Hitler and portray his nuclear programme as an "existential" threat to the Jewish state - nothing less than a new holocaust in the making!

The message coming loud and clear from Washington and Tel Aviv is that Iranian ambitions must be stopped, whatever the cost. As American carrier strike forces converge on the Gulf, and as Israeli bombers practise long-range missions, several observers predict an attack on Iran in the early spring.

The outdated and dangerously mistaken security doctrine which underpins this war hysteria is that the United States and its Israeli ally must maintain their military supremacy in the region or risk imminent catastrophe.

Those who preach reconciliation with local forces based on mutual recognition of legitimate interests, on good neighbourliness and an equitable balance of power are dismissed as appeasers and defeatists.

The US and Israel seem determined to ignore the lessons of the wars they have waged, and lost, in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories - namely that occupation breeds insurrection; that blatant aggression and injustice create terrorists; that an elusive "guerrilla" enemy is difficult to subdue; that states faced with the danger of war will seek deterrence; and that the merger of nationalism and Islam can forge ferocious militancy.

The locals, in sum, are not about to roll over and surrender.

Washington should perhaps reflect that China had no need for military bases in the Gulf to strike its recent historic $100 billion deal with Iran to secure long-term supplies of oil and gas, nor did Beijing rely on gunboat diplomacy to increase its bilateral trade with Saudi Arabia by 30 per cent between 2005 and 2006 alone. (Financial Times, January 30)

There are, however, one or two positive signs in the surrounding gloom. Under Democratic leadership, the US Congress is beginning to wake up and is attempting to curb Bush's belligerence by denying him funds for a deeper involvement in Iraq and insisting that he cannot wage war on Iran without explicit Congressional authority.

In turn, the American public is at last rebelling against the disastrous Iraq war, as may be seen from last week's massive anti-war demonstration in Washington.

More important still is the increasingly open discussion in the United States of the noxious influence of the Jewish lobby on America's foreign policy. In spite of scurrilous attacks by right-wing Jews, former president Jimmy Carter's brave indictment of Israeli policies, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, is climbing up the best-seller lists.

Braving American and Israeli objections, the normally timid and divided European Union is calling for an urgent re-launch of the moribund Arab-Israeli peace process.

European states are also showing great reluctance to follow America's lead in boycotting Iranian banks, as demanded by Stuart Levey, US treasury undersecretary for terrorism and intelligence financing.

Positive signs are also emerging from the region itself, suggesting a will by local powers to solve problems without foreign interference. King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia has indicated that he will not be dragooned by the United States into a confrontation with Iran.

Instead, high-level Saudi and Iranian envoys - Prince Bandar Bin Sultan and Ali Larijani, the heads of their respective national security councils - have held long talks in each other's capitals.

Saudi diplomacy has been active on other fronts. The King has summoned rival Palestinian factions - Fatah and Hamas - to Makkah for talks, and there are rumours that the Kingdom is planning to invite Lebanon's warring factions to a summit at Taif, the venue in 1989 of the last attempt to reach an agreement on Lebanese power-sharing.

Defusing tensions between Sunnis and Shiites, inflamed by America's war in Iraq, is high on the agenda of every regional leader.

Hezbollah's chief, Hassan Nasrallah, and Lebanon's Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, have both spoken of the need to resolve difference through dialogue not violence.

Radical change

In the absence, however, of a radical change of policy by both the US and Israel, regional powers need to look to their own defences by agreeing on clear goals. The following are some of these.

• 
  The Gulf States should reject both American and Iranian hegemony, but strive instead to become an area of tolerance and modernity where Western and Iranian influence and interests can coexist.
• 
  A new balance needs to be found in Lebanon to reflect demographic and political realities. In particular, the state's institutions and power-sharing arrangements need to be revised to give the Shiite community a greater, although not a dominant, stake in government decision-making.
• 
  Syrian-Lebanese relations need to be put on a healthy basis. This involves Syria recognising Lebanon's independence in return for Lebanon recognising that, in the absence of an Arab-Israeli peace, Syria has legitimate security interests in Lebanon and cannot tolerate its neighbour falling into the orbit of a hostile power.
• 
  A Palestinian national unity government must be formed on the basis of a common programme which offers Israel recognition within its 1967 borders and an end to violence in return for a reciprocal Israeli commitment to end the occupation, renounce violence and recognise the Palestinians' right to an independent state.
• 
  The Arab states should mount a major diplomatic effort to win European and American support - and the support of the Israeli public - for the Saudi peace plan endorsed at the Beirut Summit of March 2002 which offered Israel normal relations with all 22 members of the Arab League once it withdraws to its 1967 borders. The US can contribute to the plan's success by offering Israel formal security guarantees.
• 
  An international conference - sponsored by the UN, the US, the EU and Russia - should be convened with the aim of bringing the Arab-Israeli conflict to an end once and for all, thereby removing the principal cause of hostility between the West and the world of Islam.

At a time of grave danger, it is time for local states to take their own destinies in hand, free from the malign ambitions and military assaults of external powers.

Patrick Seale is a commentator and author of several books on Middle East affairs.