US policymakers wanting to contain Iran’s regional influence should take note of Saudi Arabia’s active courting of its neighbour.
Another round of talks and another failure to find a breakthrough over Iran’s nuclear programme. Despite it being the most pressing crisis facing the international community, the tougher rhetoric adopted this year appears to have done little to halt Iran’s alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons, with the latest meeting in Istanbul involving the US and EU breaking up without progress at the weekend.
But while Western leaders have gradually ramped up their rhetoric against Tehran over the past few years, applying progressively more painful sanctions in the process, Iran’s Arab neighbours have appeared puzzling silent in the face of this looming threat to regional stability.
At least, they’ve appeared silent—until now. As Meir Javedanfar noted recently in The Diplomat, US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks reveal that Persian Gulf rulers have actually been just as vocal behind closed doors as their Western counterparts have been in public. Bahrain’s King Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa, for example, told US officials that the nuclear programme should be terminated by ‘whatever means necessary,’ while Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah urged General David Petraeus to ‘cut the head off the snake.’
Such comments should come as no surprise to those who watch the region closely. Ever since the Iranian revolution in 1979, Tehran’s mullahs have sought to export their Shiite revolution to countries where their co-religionists make up a substantial minority. From Lebanon to Iraq, Iran has supported groups that have sought to weaken the regime and undermine regional stability. As a result, with US commitment to the Middle East apparently wavering, (and with its tendency to cut and run when intransigent regimes and subversive groups turn up the pressure), Arab states have often looked to Saudi Arabia to protect the region from this Persian menace.
One country in particular where the kingdom has succeeded in minimizing Iranian influence is the tiny island nation of Bahrain. From offering the country free oil to sending in soldiers to quell protests, the Saudis have a history of assisting their neighbour. But despite its small size and tiny native population (it’s smaller on both measures than the US state of Rhode Island) Bahrain’s future should be of serious concern for Washington policymakers. After all, the US Fifth Fleet is headquartered there, while its ships patrol the Straits of Hormuz, protecting the narrow waterway from Iranian machinations.
Shia Iran has always looked across this waterway to the oil producing sheikhdoms with some enmity—a number of the principalities in the region have significant Shia populations, but are ruled by Sunni monarchies that have suppressed their religious status.
And Bahrain has always looked a particularly appealing target for Iran. The Shia there account for about 70 percent of the population, but are ruled by a Sunni minority. In addition, the island was under Persian rule for most of the period between 1602 and 1783. It was these factors that prompted Tehran’s newly enthroned mullahs to incite Bahrain’s Shia to rebel against their Sunni masters.
Photo Credit: Bahrain Ministry of Foreign Affairs
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bahrainidelta15
Dear Steven Sotloff, I invite you to visit the little island of our beloved Bahrain. We are well known world-wide for our peaceful living, shia and sunni. The united people have shown their loyality to our leaders on 2 occasions, last meeting involved 450,000 more or less by photoes if you have time to search. When you write about my country, I have to make sure what you are saying is true or near to it. But if you decided to take orders from above who give wrong stats to disfigure my country then you lost your honesty. Bahrain contained shia who migrated from Iran in 1940s, and continued to grow up reACHING NOW MAY BE 46%. Only few are originally from Bahrain.More than 50% sunni, AL Khalifa Sunni as all leaders of Arabian Gulf. Shia never protested, they were abput to overcome the country with violence and terrorism which weakileaks proved US embessay connection and support to those terrorists payed by Iran. Kindly talk about my country with respect to Bahraini people who will die for their country.
Waffler
Hey Obama are you listening?
American has the next Jimmy Carter on its hands, this time
there is no cold war allies, as then and America is broke.
Your ally Britain no longer fights side by side. They are too busy
sending MBA’s to assist the Gulf businesses, as well as training
their youth to be anchors on Al Jazerra and Russia TV
Your allies want to know do you have any Reagan or Bush in you?
In the Asian culture, you resign with honor.
Lady S.
I think that the author haven’t been to Bahrain, or even to live there for a little while, because only in Bahrain from all the GCC (Gulf Co-operation Countries) and from all the Arab countries that the Shia – the Iranian supported group, can and oblige the country and it’s goverment to shut down totaly the whole country on the Shia religious days, example on the 15th and 16th of December 2010, where all the country was shut down all 2 days with nowhere to go to buy even a small bottle of water in any place!
Grant
There are two problems with this argument. The first is that the author writes with the view that Iranians are only interested in spreading trouble throughout the Middle East when it’s pretty much just backing groups and states favorable to Iran*. The second is that the author doesn’t seem to note that many of Bahrain’s problems are linked to its current system, one which the U.S should only support if it can be accomplished with earning the ire of the people there.
* Is there really any moral difference between Saudia Arabia sending soldiers to help Bahrain during protests and Iran backing an opposition leader of a militant group in Iraq? The only difference is that one is favorable to U.S interests and the other isn’t.
Geoffrey Britain
There are four problems with your comment: the first is your naive dismissal of Iranian ‘trouble making’ by characterizing it as merely promoting national self-interest. Secondly, there is a great moral difference between US interests and Iranian interests, which the briefest of appraisals of the differences between Shariah law and the American legal code reveals. Thirdly, there is the idealistically naive thinking that abjures practical considerations by implying that the US should only support regimes who enjoy popular support.
Would that we lived in a perfect world where we could afford such luxury but when the real world imposes its inevitable consequences for such naivete, invariably the fourth problem arises; ‘ivory tower’ thinkers who espouse such views inevitably lack the stomach to face the consequences of their naivete and so fail to deal forthrightly with the resulting circumstances, further compounding the difficulty of the situation…
Grant
No, not really. To start I never once implied that the U.S shouldn’t attempt to counter Iranian interests. As an American interested in working for the government I’m of the opinion that the U.S currently needs to consider itself in opposition to Iran. That doesn’t mean that we should cover our actions with convenient myths that the states opposed to us are ‘irrational’ or that they are doing anything other than acting in their own perceived interests. Every nation-state does things that it believes to be in its own interests, that in no way makes it harmless and I’m not sure how you could interpret my argument to think I was saying that. My main point was that the author should be more honest about what he’s really calling for.
Following that the U.S legal system and Iranian sharia-based law are inherently moral for the people who support them and immoral for the people who don’t. I’m an atheist so I consider divine laws to be impossible and a supporter of the rights of individuals so I prefer the American legal system but I don’t pretend that it is objectively a good system. It’s an artificial creation of humans designed to work in a manner that a certain group of humans liked.
Thirdly I never suggested anywhere that we should only act with popular support. I suggested that we should avoid gaining the hatred of the people of Bahrain. Because the Iranians clearly linked the U.S to the Shah the U.S lost a vital nation once that Shah left and our position in that part of the world has suffered greatly ever since. While Bahrain isn’t as strategically important as Iran, dealing with another hostile nation for the next thirty years is an irritation that we really don’t need. It’s all fine to back authoritarian governments, we just should make sure that we can get along as well with whoever’s in charge once the current dictator falls (as events in Egypt are making clear).
Finally, you appear to not recognize that my arguments are attempting to view the situation from a (mostly) realist perspective.