Secretary Rice's Mideast mission: contain Iran
US plans to give more than $20 billion in military aid to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other Sunni Arab states.
from the August 2, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
The new strategy of containing Iran taking shape in the Middle East resembled the cold war standoff with the Soviet Union. At that time, the US bolstered the militaries of regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt as well as the Western democracies of Europe with a twofold objective: to create powerful friends and thereby restrict that country’s territorial ambitions, and to draw the Soviets into an arms race that some strategists believed the US and its friends would be better able to afford economically than the Kremlin.
Rice, whose academic expertise was on the Soviet Union and the strategies to oppose that regime, now looks to be running Middle East policy from an old playbook.
“Iran is not the Soviet Union. In 1946, the Red Army was all the way to Berlin and had helped win the war,” says Ervand Abrahamian, an Iran analyst and historian at Baruch College in New York. “What capabilities do the Iranians have? These old cold warriors need a reality [check].”
Mr. Abrahamian also says the notion that arming Saudi Arabia and its neighbors will somehow contain Iran is inaccurate, and may in fact encourage Iran in the view that a nuclear bomb is its best guarantee of survival.
“Iran has no has no military capability outside it’s own territory, it’s military budget is the total of Kuwait’s and the United Arab Republics combined and … it has no projection ability,” he says. “Sure, Iran can support the militias in Iraq, but that’s not a threat to Saudi Arabia. I think the point is to harness in the Saudis and Gulf States diplomatically so they can say ‘Hey, we’re building an anti-Iranian coalition,’ [which] draws attention from the Iraq and Palestinian issues.”
Asked if the logic is to draw Iran into a costly arms race, Abrahamian says it might, but worries about the consequences. “I can’t imagine that Iran is not going to somehow react. The danger is if Iran is pushed into an arms race, the cheap answer to the problem is to go nuclear.”
Javedanfar also worries that any arms raise could encourage Iran in its nuclear ambitions, but has the added concern that the US is rewarding the Saudis at a time when he and many others believe that country is contributing to the bloodshed in Iraq, something which in turn could help Iran.
“Instead of selling weapons to the Saudis, the Americans should be twisting their arms, saying if they don’t contain the Sunni elements now, they get nothing,” he says.
“To give weapons to the Saudis now, while they are also part of the problem in Iraq, is going to mean a bigger mess. It’s going to strengthen the Iranian position, because the Shiites, who were hoping America would be an ally, will fall into the [Iranian camp] with more enthusiasm than before.” [Editor's note: The original version quoted Mr. Javedanfar saying that giving weapons to Saudi Arabia would push more Shiite groups into the"Shiite camp." It should have been clarified that he was specifically referring to the "Iranian camp."]
US officials appear to believe that Saudi Arabia could wield influence in Iraq to bring Sunni militants to the peace table.
Analysts in Saudi Arabia say that while the country is happy to have more aid, the Kingdom will evade outright confrontation with the Islamic Republic of Iran and is likely to take a different tack than the US. The country recently hosted a visit by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.
“Saudi Arabia is working to contain Iran, based on its own interests. Our policy is not to leave a vacuum for them – but [also] not to escalate things with them but to engage with them positively,” says Mr. Khashoggi
“Saudis have realized that there are two fronts in Iran – the hard-liners and the moderates,” he says.
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