U.S., Iran struggling for Arabs’ support
5/10/2007 10:00:00 PM GMT
By Emile Tayyip
The almost-simultaneous visits of the U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney and Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the Middle East this week indicate a struggle by the two countries to win the support of Arab leaders.
Both leaders will tour the oil-rich region and arrive days apart in the United Arab Emirates, whose government carefully arranged their arrivals and departures. Cheney is expected to leave Iraq to the UAE on Thursday, while Ahmadinejad, the first Iranian president to visit Abu Dhabi, will arrive there on Sunday after spending two days in neighboring Oman.
Both leaders would visit the region for different reasons.
Cheney’s tour, which would take him to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan as well as a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Gulf, is aimed at convincing Iraq's mostly Sunni neighbors to back the four-month U.S.-led “security crackdown” in the war-torn country and seek their support for the fragile political process there, moves that signals that White House's desperate need to contain the situation in Iraq.
"These are some of the most respected and most influential leaders in that part of the world," a senior aide said. "You're in a situation where you want to be firing on all pistons and using every tool we have."
Cheney’s visit follows previous visits by senior U.S. officials to the region as part of Washington’s efforts to counter Iran’s influence in the region and rallying support from Arab leaders for confronting Tehran over its nuclear program, which Washington suspects is aimed at building atomic arms.
According to the Associated Press, the vice president is also expected to ask UAE President Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan to shut down Iranian firms in his country that U.S. officials allege are backing Tehran’s nuclear program.
Ahmadinejad, for his part, would try to ease Arabs’ concerns over Tehran’s insistence on developing a peaceful nuclear program. He would also try to convince Arab leaders to drop their military alliances with Washington, which maintains 40,000 forces on land bases in Gulf states outside war-torn Iraq and currently has 20,000 sailors and Marines in the region.
Ahmadinejad wants the UAE, Oman and the other Gulf Arab countries to join Tehran in a regional effort to maintain stability in the oil-rich Gulf, analysts say.
"Iran is maintaining the policy of persuading the Gulf states from being allied with America," said Sadeq Zibakalam, a Tehran University political scientist. "Perhaps Ahmadinejad will also be assuring his hosts that there is no need to be afraid of us."
Relations between Washington and its longtime Gulf Arab allies have been deeply affected by the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which could help Tehran in wooing the Arabs out of the American camp.
It’s worth mentioning that the U.S. vice president, a potent force in an increasingly weak White House, will be the senior-most official from Washington to visit Saudi Arabia since King Abdullah slammed Washington’s “illegitimate foreign occupation” of Iraq.
However, Cheney’s aide tried to undermine the impact of such tensions, saying: “I think on the whole, Saudi leadership is a very good thing, given the strength and enduring nature of our relationship with the Saudis and the amount of work and cooperation we’ve done over the years.”
Analysts say neither Cheney nor Ahmadinejad is expected to win the support of Gulf Arabs, who fear being sandwiched in another U.S.-led war.
"We have a deep mistrust of both sides," said Mustafa Alani of the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center. "Each is trying to defend his corner on major issues in the region. But neither is likely to accomplish very much… We have a huge mistrust of the U.S. and cannot publicly support its position.”
So far, Gulf states have been reluctant to back Iran’s offer of an alliance. An Emirates government official told AP on condition of anonymity that his government would press Ahmadinejad to resolve a dispute over three Gulf islands. Relations between the two countries could greatly improve if Tehran, which administers the islands, agrees to allow an international arbitrator to decide their status, analysts say.
"Together Iran and the Gulf states can take care of the region's security," said Zibakalam, the Tehran professor. "If there are problems, like these islands, they could be solved with good will and cooperation."U.S., Iran struggling for Arabs’ support
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