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   From: o@o.org   
      
        Iran, US in tug of war over Middle East   
                     By Kaveh L Afrasiabi   
      
                     Recently, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stated that   
   the US missions in Iraq and Afghanistan were necessary to contain the threat   
   "emanating from Iran". Whatever else, this pretty much seals the fate of the   
   so-called "exit strategy" and the occasional public relations statements by   
   the White House that US forces will leave the region in the near future.   
      
                     In turn, this raises an important question: Is the US   
   strategy of containing Iran a convenient facade for superpower hegemony bent   
   on dominating the oil-rich region? In probing for an answer, history is   
   rather instructive, reminding one of the Kuwait crisis   
      
      
      
                     and then-president George H W Bush's promise that "our   
   purpose is purely temporary" and that US forces would depart.   
      
                     Well, that was in 1990, and 16 years later there is   
   absolutely no sign that the United States has any intention of vacating its   
   formidable military presence, which includes "over the horizon" forces on   
   the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Instead, in addition to   
   building several large military bases in Iraq, the US military has beefed up   
   its presence in various southern Persian Gulf states that are members of the   
   Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). In her recent trip to the GCC countries, US   
   Secretary of  State Condoleezza Rice once again warned the oil sheikhdoms   
   about Iran's "threat".   
      
                     The GCC is a regional organization involving the six   
   Persian Gulf Arab states. Created on May 25, 1981, the council comprises   
   Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.   
   These countries are in turn all members of the 22-member Arab League, of   
   which Iran is not a member.   
      
                     Responding to the US moves, the Iranian leadership has   
   been busy, dispatching such high-level officials as former president Hashemi   
   Rafsanjani and the speaker of the majlis (parliament) to the GCC region,   
   assuring them of Iran's good-neighborly intentions. Thus, during his trip to   
   Kuwait, Rafsanjani sold the idea of a nuclear Iran as a common good for all   
   Muslim states.   
      
                     This author recalls that at a 1991 conference on Persian   
   Gulf security held at the Institute for Political and International Studies,   
   a Tehran think tank, then-president Rafsanjani unveiled for the first time   
   Iran's idea of "collective security" in the Persian Gulf.   
      
                     Since then, pursuant to this rather lofty objective, which   
   flies in the face of the United States' military bilateralism in the Gulf   
   region, Iran has signed low-security agreements with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait   
   and Qatar, and is about to sign a similar one with Bahrain.   
      
                     These agreements call for cooperation against smuggling,   
   and implicitly envisage some future cooperation on broader security issues.   
   Recently, Iran's military leaders announced Iran's readiness to cooperate   
   with the GCC states on the issue of regional security. So far, pressured by   
   the United States, the GCC states have not taken up Iran's offer, and the   
   prospect for full-scale Iran-GCC security cooperation looks dim as long as   
   GCC politics are dominated by the US.   
      
                     In a sense, the GCC states are caught between the rock of   
   US hegemony and the hard place of Iranian power, and that means a constant   
   juggling act that simultaneously has to satisfy the antagonistic powers of   
   the US and Iran, in light of the fact that with the vacuum of Iraqi power,   
   the pendulum in terms of regional balance of power has shifted in Iran's   
   favor.   
      
                     According to some GCC policy analysts, the United States   
   is exploiting the nuclear crisis over Iran to scare the GCC states away from   
   Tehran's influence and more and more into the protective power of the US.   
   This is why there has been no great alarm on the part of the GCC states   
   about Iran's alleged nuclear-weapons drive.   
      
                     Of course, these states and their conservative leaderships   
   remain jittery about the nuclear standoff and the potential for another war   
   in the war-weary region, but we have yet to see them, or the Saudi   
   leadership, echoing the United States' alarmist attitude with regard to   
   Iran's so-called "nuclear ambitions".   
      
                     Interestingly, in light of Iran's recent announcement of   
   having mastered the nuclear-fuel cycle and thus joined the "nuclear club",   
   the US has revised its estimate of how long before Iran could have its own   
   bombs, now stating that it is a decade or longer away.   
      
                     One clear implication of the United States' new estimate   
   is the effect it may have on the power perception of Iran in the Persian   
   Gulf region, which has become the theater of ongoing US-Iran games of   
   strategy: the GCC states are less inclined to get near Iran if they are   
   convinced that Iran is either bluffing or more years away from having   
   nuclear-weapons potential than they had been led to believe by Tehran.   
      
                     In the ebb and flow of this dialectical game of strategy,   
   where both sides jockey for influence and allies, Iran has a set of   
   advantages, including an increasingly muscular naval force, as well as   
   disadvantages, such as the inferiority of its air force compared with both   
   Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which has a fleet of F-16s, much to the envy of   
   Tehran (see Jets and politics in the Persian Gulf, Asia Times Online, August   
   27, 2004).   
      
                     Inserted in the regional military balance, then, is the   
   Iranian nuclear-weapon potential, which simultaneously operates for and   
   against Iran, in terms of the willingness of the GCC states to cooperate   
   with Iran. In a word, the nuclear question has a contradictory effect,   
   causing a distancing of GCC states from Iran, which is why the Iranian   
   government has been so keen on sending warm signals to the GCC.   
      
                     Crisis and Iran-GCC relations   
                     In view of possible US-inspired financial sanctions on   
   Iran as punishment for its nuclear program, prompting Iran's diversion of   
   its capital from Europe to certain GCC states, the latter's position with   
   regard to the escalating nuclear crisis is becoming key to how this crisis   
   will be played out in the short and medium terms.   
      
                     Last month, the United Nations Security Council passed a   
   statement asking International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei   
   to report simultaneously to the council and the IAEA board by April 28 on   
   whether Iran had halted enriching uranium, a process that can produce fuel   
   for nuclear warheads. To date, Tehran has refused to do so. The next step   
   would be consideration of imposing sanctions.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)