-Caveat Lector-
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: March 28, 2007 12:12:33 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Subject: Left at the Altar in Iraq -- Saudi Arabia's Oil-Lords Dump
Bush, Embrace Iran
SAUDI ARABIA CALLS IRAQ WAR
"ILLEGITIMATE OCCUPATION"
http://euronews.net/index.php?page=info&article=414053&lng=1
One of America's closest Arab allies has attacked the war in Iraq
as an "illegitimate foreign occupation."
Speaking at the start of a summit of the Arab League in Riyadh,
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia hit out at the Bush administration.
He accused it of putting Iraq at risk of a civil war and trying to
unilaterally write the future of the Middle-East.
It is set to be a very politically charged two day meeting. King
Abdullah also demanded the immediate lifting of the international
embargo against the Palestinian authority. And Arab leaders have
voted unanimously to revive their 2002 peace offer to Israel.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon described the situation in the
Middle East as "dangerous". He said he had exhorted Israel to take
a new look at the Arab peace offer which it rejected five years
ago. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said this could be a last
chance for peace with Israel. The Arab peace plan demands, among
other things, an Israeli withdrawal from all land occupied since
the 1967 war.
"Abdullah has always had a close relationship with president George
W. Bush. On April 27th, 2005 when Abdullah came to the United
States for a visit. He and Bush held hands and discussed the flower
arrangements of the grounds where they met as they strolled together.
"Holding hands is considered a sign of close friendship in Saudi
Arabia."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_of_Saudi_Arabia
Iran-Saudi Arabian Embrace: A New Beginning?
History shows that when interests coincide, rivals tend to cooperate
Dilip Hiro
YaleGlobal, 9 March 2007
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=8888
An unusual guest: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (left) is
greeted by Saudi King Abdullah in Riyadh. Will the hand holding
mark a new beginning?
LONDON: The news coming from the Middle East of late spoke of
growing concern among Iran's Sunni Arab neighbors about the Shia
state's growing power. That story line took a new twist on March 3
when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Riyadh to the
warm embrace of King Abdullah, the ruler of Saudi Arabia and a
longstanding ally of the US.
The image – and the accompanying pledge by the two leaders to
resist any attempt to spread the sectarian conflict in the Middle
East for the good of the region in particular and the Muslim world
at large – was in dramatic contrast to Sunni-Shiite conflict raging
in Iraq daily. The image also stood in contrast to speculation in
Washington about the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran
intensifying to the point of each funding and training sectarian
militias in Iraq to engage in full-scale civil war.
So what does one to make of this unexpected scene from Riyadh? To
assess the significance of the apparent beginning of détente, one
needs to transcend the exclusively sectarian framework constructed
recently. Viewed from the perspective of history, the Iran-Saudi
relationship would confirm Lord Palmerston’s aphorism that enemies
are not permanent, but interests are.
Yet the ongoing Sunni-Shiite violence in Iraq – against the
background of Jordanian King Abdullah’s warning about the emergence
of a “Shiite Crescent” in the Middle East – has colored the view of
the American policymakers to such an extent that many now can’t
help but view the Muslim world through the sectarian prism. In the
eyes of American strategists, Iran’s power amounts to a security
threat as the Saudi kingdom contains a quarter of the globe’s oil
reserves. The petroleum reserves of Iran amount to only half of the
Saudi Kingdom’s.
This concern about Iranian power and a narrow sectarian perspective
have led US officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney and
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, to engage in demonizing the
predominantly Shiite Iran. Sounding more Sunni than real Sunni
Arabs, they assert that the Sunni Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and
the small Gulf monarchies are threatened by the emergence of a
super-confident Iran, intent on acquiring nuclear weapons. However,
the recent dispatch of carrier battle groups to the Gulf and
heightened speculation about a US attack on Iran could just be
saber-rattling meant to create division in the Iranian leadership.
There are also reports that Saudis are trying to restrain both sides.
An overview of the relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia –
situated on the opposite sides of the Persian Gulf – since the 1979
Islamic revolution in Iran, shows periods of both intense rivalry
and active cooperation.
With Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the radical founder of the
Islamic Republic, declaring monarchy un-Islamic and attacking the
hereditary rulers of the Arabian Peninsula, his regime alienated
all the monarchs of the Gulf.
Tehran’s relations with the Saudi Kingdom soured further when the
latter sided openly with Iraq, ruled by the secular Baath Party,
during the Iran-Iraq War, 1980 to 1988.
Yet when oil prices collapsed in the spring and summer of 1986 to
$10 a barrel, hurting the economies of both Saudi Arabia and Iran,
Saudi King Fahd met the Iranian oil minister that October. They
backed the idea of a fixed price of $18 a barrel. Being the leading
exporters of oil in the Organization of Oil Exporting Countries,
their joint decision carried weight.
And when Saudi oil minister Ahmad Zaki Yamani, who had held the job
for 24 years, failed to endorse this target, King Fahd dismissed him.
In other words, economic interests led to a convergence of the
policies of the two leading Islamic states in the Gulf.
As it is, both Iran and Saudi Arabia are fundamentalist states,
both administered according to the Sharia, Islamic law. The
difference is that Iran has a representative system, with its
citizens choosing their representatives through regularly held
elections, whereas Saudi Arabia is a monarchical autocracy which
does not allow citizens’ political participation in the
administration of the state.
Following the end of the Iran-Iraq War and the death of Khomeini in
June 1989, overall relations thawed between Tehran and Riyadh. This
trend was aided by the subsequent election of Ali Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani, a pragmatic cleric, as president of Iran.
Rafsanjani had a cordial meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah
in March 1997 in Pakistan on the fringes of an Islamic gathering,
and was invited to undertake the hajj pilgrimage in Mecca the
following month. This paved the way for Iran to host the triennial
summit of the Islamic Conference Organization (ICO), headquartered
in Jeddah, in December. By then Muhammad Khatami, a moderate
cleric, had succeeded Rafsanjani.
The hosting of the ICO summit by Iran, which is 90 percent Shia,
was remarkable. Of the 49 members of the ICO, only four were Shia-
majority states. Breaking with protocol, Khatami had two private
meetings with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah.
It is worth noting that it was after an ICO summit in Mecca last
year that Ahmadinejad re-asserted at a press conference, where King
Abdullah, the host, was present, that the extent of the Holocaust
had been exaggerated.
And, following his recent meeting with King Abdullah, Ahamdinejad
declared with his customary bluster that “Both Iran and Saudi
Arabia are aware of the enemies’ conspiracies. We decided to take
measures to confront such plots. Hopefully this will strengthen
Muslim countries against oppressive pressure by the imperialist
front.”
Their talks centered round Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinians.
Within days of this summit, the Iranian government announced that
it would attend the meeting of Iraq’s neighbors and the permanent
members of the UN Security Council in Baghdad on March 10 to find
ways of stabilizing security in that hapless country.
Reports from Beirut mentioned a wave of optimism unleashed by the
Ahmadinejad-Abdullah meeting, defusing the three-month-old standoff
between the Riyadh-backed government of Sunni Prime Minister Fouad
Siniora and the Tehran-backed Shiite Hezbollah leading the opposition.
On the core Israeli-Palestinian conflict, ignoring Washington’s
objections to the timing, King Abdullah has decided to revive the
2002 Saudi Arabia’s Middle East peace plan – offering Israel
recognition by all Arab states in return for its evacuation of Arab
land occupied during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War – at the Arab League
summit in Riyadh later this month.
Remaining opposed to the idea of recognizing Israel under any
circumstances, Iran views Abdullah’s upcoming move as benign: The
move implies reduction in Washington’s influence in the region.
How Iran and Saudi Arabia end up dovetailing their policies to
deescalate the Sunni-Shiite violence in Iraq – an aim which they
share with the US – will only become clear at the forthcoming
conference in Baghdad to be followed by a ministerial meeting in
April.
All things considered, in their foreign policies, Iran and Saudi
Arabia have so far stood at opposite poles.
Tehran has backed radical movements in the Muslim world
irrespective of their sectarian allegiance: Hamas, for instance, is
a Sunni organization. Riyadh, on the other hand, has supported
orthodox and fundamentalist forces among Sunni Muslims. For
instance, it was one of only three countries that recognized the
Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
Yet it’s also true that when Iranian and Saudi leaders find that
their traditional rivalry is undermining their countries’ economic
or diplomatic interests, they adopt a pragmatic stance and close
ranks in the name of Islamic solidarity.
Dilip Hiro is the author of “The Iranian Labyrinth,” and most
recently “Blood of the Earth: The Battle for the World’s Vanishing
Oil Resources,” both published by Nation Books, New York.
Rights:
© 2007 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization
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