Iran will play its part in calming the current turbulent situation in the world oil market by consenting to a raise in OPEC`s output. This in part seems an effort to bribe the EU to stay out of the ‘three Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf’ controversy.
Iran’s oil minister noted that Iran has "very good" relations with Europe in the energy sector notably with France, Italy, Netherlands, and UK.
"We believe that Europe is going to diversify its energy sources and Iran can play the most important role," he stressed.
However Sunday Iran said it had told the European Union (EU) to stay out of a 'misunderstanding' between the country and the UAE over the three Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf.
The islands in question are full of oil reserves, which fuel the economies of both Iran and the UAE. In addition, the islands are located in the Strait of Hormuz, the mouth of the Persian Gulf. This strategic position could allow a country to influence the Gulf's valuable shipping lane, or even to close off the Gulf all together.
-Am
Oil Minister: Iran wants to send positive signal to oil markets
5/24/04 Amsterdam, May 23, IRNA -- Iranian oil minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said in Amsterdam on Sunday that the Islamic Republic was ready to do its part in calming the current turbulent situation in in the world oil market. "I believe in this situation it is necessary for me to send a positive signal to the market to satisfy our consumers in developed and developing countries," Zanganeh told a press conference here Sunday in response to a question on Iran`s consent to a raise in OPEC`s output.
The Iranian oil minister said, "I believe we don`t have a shortage in the market now but for a short term it is necessary to send a positive signal."
Zanganeh is in Amsterdam to participate in a major energy conference.
He said there is consensus that some part of the reason for the current high oil price is because of political tensions in the Middle East, "not only Iraq but the whole of Middle East."
Other reasons for the high oil price were refinery shortage in the US and speculations in the oil market.
"We are not satisfied with the current situation. We have announced it several times that we want to have a lower price. We still stick to the price-band dlrs 22-28," he said adding "we prefer the higher side of this band. dlrs 28 is very good for us."
Zanganeh further underlined that ``OPEC needs to have a consensus" in making any comprehensive decision.
He noted that Iran has "very good" relations with Europe in the energy sector notably with France, Italy, Netherlands, and UK.
"We believe that Europe is going to diversify its energy sources and Iran can play the most important role," he stressed.
The 9th International Energy Forum, organized by the Dutch economy ministry and co-chaired by Iran and Norway, will end on Monday.
Zanganeh chaired the Sunday`s afternoon session which focused on the core issue of the IEF: investments in exploration, production and transport of energy.
The International Energy Forum (IEF) is the biennial informal Ministerial Meeting, bringing together both the energy producing and consuming countries to discuss the world`s major energy issues.
The first Producer-Consumer Dialogue was held between ministers of oil and gas producing and consuming countries in Paris in 1991.
In 1999, the Producer-Consumer Dialogue was renamed the International Energy Forum.
Reference: Tehran, May 23, IRNA -- Iran said Sunday it had told the European Union (EU) to stay out of a 'misunderstanding' between the country and the UAE over the three Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf.
It is entirely possible the United States, an ally of the UAE, is the hidden force behind the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (PGCC) request that the European Union mediate the issue of the disputed islands between Iran and the UAE in an attempt to create an unhealthy political climate. The involvement of the EU has the potential to ignite an international crisis and divide the Arabs. This looks like the United States is attempting to escalate the territorial dispute as a means to diminish Iran.
-Am
Iran in fresh spat with UAE over disputed Persian Gulf islands
TEHRAN, June 6 (AFP) - Iran on Sunday accused the United Arab Emirates of "unacceptable" behaviour after a UAE navy vessel allegedly entered Iranian waters around a disputed Persian Gulf island and arrested the crew of an Iranian fishing boat.
"The action of the UAE is unacceptable and we have demanded an explanation," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters.
"The Iranian foreign ministry has taken action and talked to the UAE embassy in Tehran. Our embassy in Abu Dhabi is active in this matter, so as soon as possible those who have been taken will be freed."
Asefi gave no details on the incident, but according to press reports here a UAE warship on Thursday entered waters around the island of Abu Musa, opened fire at an Iranian fishing boat and detained its crew.
The Iranian-held island of Abu Musa, along with the islands of Greater and Lesser Tombs, is situated roughly halfway between Iran and the UAE. The UAE continues to claim ownership of the islands.
Tehran gained control over the tiny islands after British forces left the Persian Gulf in 1971.
Make no mistake the invasion of Iran has already begun with the US backing the UAE in the Persian Gulf island dispute which is aligned with the proposed US blockade in the Gulf of Oman. #msg-3136614
This I believe would be in association with the plan to deploy additional US warplanes to Incirlik the same base that was to be used for a planned guerrilla campaign in Iran. #msg-3208349 #msg-3447668
While this may change, an amphibious attack was originally targeted against Iran from the Arabian Sea, with a provocative US blockade in the Gulf of Oman to choke Iran’s sealanes of communications. Pakistan would be the base for mounting massive air reconnaissance and surveillance of Iran, while Iranian dissidents, backed by the US army, would launch land assaults from the Iraq-Iran border. Diplomatic sources say, the main body of the plan would remain the same, although component tactics could change.
Terror & regime change Any US invasion of Iran will have terrible consequences.
11 June 2004: On the one hand, the so-called war against terror has been more or less given up, outside pockets in Pakistan, especially in the FATA areas, where the Pakistan army is facing huge resistance from dug in foreign terrorists. On the other hand, the US is preparing to invade Iran early next year if president George W.Bush is re-elected and later possibly if John Kerry comes in (Intelligence, “US to invade Iran before 2005 Christmas,” 9 June 2004), with the outer deadline being Christmas of 2005.
The giving up on the terror war while Iran invasion plans are drawn up makes no sense, especially since the previous invasion and current occupation of Iraq has further fuelled Al-Qaeda terrorism after 9/11. The Al-Qaeda strategy for the coming years, researched and analysed by the FBI for the US government (Intelligence, “Pak, Saudis will sustain Al-Qaeda: FBI,” 28 May 2004), is to make virtue of its forced dispersion after the October-2001 Afghan War, raise sleeper calls with logisticians and suicide bombers all over America and Europe, and target the militaries particularly of Islamic countries for subversion.
In the Islamic and especially Arab militaries, it hopes to convert men trained in arms and with access to weapons to jihad, in the lower officer levels, and this plan is already underway in Saudi Arabia. The triple car bombing of a Riyadh expatriate residential compound last year has been linked to the Saudi army, as too the October-2000 USS Cole attack to the Yemeni military, and the December-2002 Bali bombing to the Indonesian armed forces.
The two attacks on General Pervez Musharraf, one of them days before the SAARC Summit in Islamabad earlier this year, is also linked to elements within the Pakistani military. In an extraordinary statement sometime back, Musharraf made bold to expose his would-be assassins as military officers, while earlier, he would have shied at fingerpointing at the forces, which after all remain his principal power base and constituency. While it is early to say if the attacks on Musharraf fall into the Al-Qaeda pattern of subverting the Islamic militaries to capture power, there is little to dissuade that it does not.
Now, Musharraf is not the lone target. Yesterday, the Karachi corps commander, Ahsan Saleem Hayat, perilously escaped with his life, while ten of his bodyguards, including seven soldiers, were killed, when terrorists ambushed them near a bridge. The attack comes right in the midst of the flush-out operations in the FATA areas, in which, so far, at least twenty foreign terrorists and an unspecified number of servicemen have been killed.
Targeting Musharraf is a big thing in itself, but not so big too, because he is the obvious target for the Al-Qaeda as the symbol of alliance with the US, and he has detractors for his policies in the higher reaches of the military. It is the bane of all high political and politico-military leadership, as in Musharraf’s case. The number-one man or women, PM or putschist, is also the most vulnerable, the highest on the threat list.
But by attacking one of the corps commanders, the terrorists have opened more fronts against themselves, because the army now is threatened as an institution, and would have to take institutional retaliatory action. This should not be unknown to the terrorists, so it means they are prepared to face the extreme of having to take on the might – and no mean might, too – of the Pakistan army. What this tells is the grown power and reach of the Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups operating in Pakistan because of the US misadventure and preoccupation with Iraq and the neglect of the war against terror.
Pakistan is not the only case of Al-Qaeda terrorism gone out of control. The impunity with which terrorists attack and get away in Saudi Arabia is shocking, with the Al-Khobar shootout last week ending in a carnage of hostages, while at least two of the killer terrorists escaped and no news of capture. In Afghanistan, the Al-Qaeda and Taliban remnants have stepped up the killings to disrupt the first direct elections in years, with a Medicines sans Frontiers team of five wiped out in the Baghdis Province last week, and eleven Chinese construction workers gunned down yesterday near the city of Kunduz.
It is obvious that sucked into Iraq, the US has limited military manpower left to combat the Al-Qaeda elsewhere in the Middle East and South Central Asia, and this is strictly about manpower, close-quarter engagements, because Al-Qaeda and Taliban terror is low-tech, labour-intensive if you like, and NATO is so seriously cross with America that it hesitates to provides troops in Iraq, and no other country is willing to bail out America outside its immediate allies like Britain, Italy, Australia and Japan.
The Al-Qaeda scores in urban terrorism too, as in Al-Khobar, the earlier attacks in Saudi Arabia, Bali, etc, because Western, especially US intelligence, has not been able to penetrate it, as devastatingly exposed in 9/ 11, for which George Tenet, the CIA director, has now been asked to go. Against terror in the American homeland, the US is reasonably secure, though not entirely, and there is orange alert for an Al-Qaeda strike before the presidential elections to swing it Kerry-wards.
But outside the US, the intelligence network is as strong as its weakest link, and the links are weak in the Islamic countries whose governments, sheikdoms and others, cannot justify the Iraqi occupation, or take a hard line against terror for fear of their own survival, or whose undercover agencies are contaminated. Throughout the Afghan war, for example, the US and British forces had to depend on Indian intelligence inputs because the Pakistani ISI was pervasively compromised to the Al-Qaeda and Taliban.
To this intelligence drought against world terror, and US manpower shortages caused by Iraq, America is adding a new disaster, which is the plans to invade Iran. The Pentagon plan, ironically, was leaked by the Pentagon stooge, the Iraqi Shiite politician, Ahmad Chalabi, to the Iranian leadership, which is why he was disgraced with Iraqi police raids on his offices in mid-May. But despite the leak, the Pentagon is going ahead with substantial parts of the invasion plan.
While this may change, an amphibious attack was originally targeted against Iran from the Arabian Sea, with a provocative US blockade in the Gulf of Oman to choke Iran’s sealanes of communications. Pakistan would be the base for mounting massive air reconnaissance and surveillance of Iran, while Iranian dissidents, backed by the US army, would launch land assaults from the Iraq-Iran border. Diplomatic sources say, the main body of the plan would remain the same, although component tactics could change.
At least with Saddam Hussein, there was the spurious excuse of WMDs to attack, but with Iran, there is none, especially after it has more or less agreed to denuke on the lines suggested by the US-British-controlled IAEA. The Iran clergy, particularly Al-Khameini, has attacked the post-June-30 power dispensation in Iraq for being secular and excluding Shia high priests, but the Iranian foreign office, at the same time, has welcomed the changeover, for it does reduce American control, and transfers more authority to the UN. Clearly, Iran is sending mixed signals, calculated not to upset the US very much, but establish its own independent line on Iraq, which any sovereign country would. So where is the provocation for attack?
The US burned its hands with Shah Pehlavi of Iran, and in a sense was responsible for the Khomeini revolution, and the late former US president, Ronald Reagan, had to put himself out in his first term in the early Eighties to restore American morale. If it intervenes again, it is absolutely certain it will not be able to improve the situation – Iraq shows America has not the depth or patience to create a new civil society – and will only make matters worse. You have the Sunni Bathists and Shias up in arms in Iraq, and to that will add the Shias of Iran, and anyone who joins the battle will be exposed to sectarian fighting, as for example, pitched battles between Shias and Sunnis in Pakistani streets if Pakistani bases are used by American warplanes. Like wildfire, the Middle East and Muslim Asia would be engulfed by holy wars, and they will explode on the world with Al-Qaeda terror. It is frightening, the unfolding consequences of attacking Iran after the mayhem in Iraq.
There is a better way, as the constructive engagement of Libya’s Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has shown. Gaddafi’s own immediate family and a solid phalanx of world leaders, including Benazir Bhutto, convinced him to give up his weaponisation programme, and open up to the world. Iran is obviously a more complex case than Libya, because power resides in the clergy, and Iran has not been entirely transparent about its nuclear programme, but the sensible way is to take it gently, and nudge it to moderation. Regime change will only worsen global Islamist terror, and in any case, Saudi Arabia is a fitter case for democratic intervention, if at all.
August 27, 2004 By Pirouz Mojtahedzadeh and Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Politics and the aircraft business have never been strangers, but in July they proved to be linked in a big way when the national airlines of the United Arab Emirates and Turkey announced that together they had invested about US$10 billion to buy European-made Airbus aircraft. To avoid feud and crying foul by the rival US Boeing, they invested less than half that amount buying jets from the United States.
Word of the contract for the French-based aircraft maker came as Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan completed an official three-day visit to France, where he had lobbied political and business leaders to support Turkey's entry into the European Union.
Turkish Airlines announced subsequently on July 21 that it would buy 36 planes worth $3 billion from Airbus and fewer than half that amount from Boeing.
France is playing an especially important role in determining whether Turkey will be allowed to begin membership negotiations with the EU because it appeared to be the sole European heavyweight deeply divided on the question. Yet the aircraft purchase for political favor could not have been more obvious. Crucial talks on the issue are scheduled for December.
Less conspicuous, however, was the UAE's business deal with the Europeans a day earlier to purchase Airbus in return for a joint EU-Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) declaration in late May of support for Abu Dhabi's position on the issue of its claims on three Iranian-held islands in the Persian Gulf.
Website theestimate.com describes the importance of the islands as such: "One reason is the strategic location of the islands astride the shipping lanes through the Strait of Hormuz; this potential military value overlays and enhances other incentives, such as the question of offshore oil in the islands' territorial limits and the prestige element of dynastic claims, which have been part of almost all Gulf boundary disputes."
It was reported on July 20 that Etihad Airways, the national airline of the UAE, had selected Airbus's wide-body long-range aircraft and the new-generation double-deck Airbus A380 for its future growth. The Abu Dhabi-based full-service airline has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to purchase 24 Airbus aircraft, including four of the revolutionary A380s, four ultra-long-range A340-500s, four A340-600s and 12 A330-200s, the most efficient wide-body twin.
The airline has also taken options to purchase 12 additional aircraft, the types of which will be defined in due course. The total value of the agreement is in excess of $7 billion. The airline had spent about $3 billion buying Boeing to keep Airbus's US rival happy.
There had been no mention of negotiations for and agreement on the purchase of these aircraft having taken place simultaneously when the negotiations between EU ministers and GCC officials resulted in the announcement of their joint declaration of May 19. Yet as these negotiations were conducted and an understanding reached through the joint EU-GCC commission for commerce, little doubt remains as to the connection between the two. In addition, the GCC, however, had promised to offer free-trade zones to the EU in the Persian Gulf region. The UAE has been trying to politicize and internationalize the issue of its claims on the said islands for a long time.
As in the way the Arabs began to refer to the Palestinian lands occupied by Israel as the "Occupied Arabic Lands" to make the issue a cause celebre at the Arab world level, Abu Dhabi too has been referring to the islands of Tunbs and Abu Musa as the "Occupied Arab Islands" to turn the issue of its claims on these islands into a cause celebre at the Middle East level as a symbol of Arab national resistance to Iranian influence in the Persian Gulf. Abu Dhabi has had some success in this regard and the Arab-Iranian cooperation for peace in the region has been negatively affected in recent months.
In fact, the recent agreement or understanding with the EU took place through negotiations by the GCC (members include Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, in addition to the UAE). The Iranians for their part, however, deny that there is any dispute on Iran's ownership of these islands. They further argue that the islands of Greater Tunb, Lesser Tunb and Abu Musa were returned to Iran on November 30, 1971, through legal processes, including the signing of an MoU, before the state of the UAE was created.
They argue that according to international regulations no state can defy the agreements that had come into being before its creation, unless such agreements had been officially declared null and void by the newly created state. Not only did the UAE not declare the arrangements arrived at by Iran and Britain (acting as the government of the emirates of Sharjah and Ras al-Kheimah at the time) on the return of the three islands, but also the Supreme Council of the Union decided in its meeting of May 12, 1992, that foreign obligations of the member emirates prior to the formation of the union of Arab Emirates will be the obligations of the union itself.
Moreover, in the circular of October 27, 1992, distributed among the representatives of United Nations member states, Abu Dhabi asked Iran to adhere to the terms of its November 1971 MoU with Sharjah. Hence laying claims on islands returned to Iran before the formation of the UAE, through legal processes acceptable to the UAE, cannot be legally admissible.
Moreover, they argue that in the meeting of May 12, 1992, of the Supreme Council of the UAE, the emir of Sharjah, who was Iran's original partner in the 1971 MoU, refused to pass his emirate's authority over the issue of Abu Musa Island to the UAE leaders and left the meeting.
Hence the UAE leadership's action in assuming authority for the case of Abu Musa Island in that meeting, in the absence of the ruler of Sharjah and without his consent, renders any claim by Abu Dhabi on that island not in complete harmony with the legality of the issue.
Pirouz Mojtahedzadeh is professor of geopolitics at Tarbiat Modares University in Tehran and director of Eurosevic Foundation in London. Kaveh L Afrasiabi is a political scientist and author of books and articles on Iran's foreign policy.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
Iranian-Americans Angry at Arab-bribed National Geographic
Note: Persian Gulf Island Dispute
It is entirely possible the United States, an ally of the UAE, is the hidden force behind the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (PGCC) request that the European Union mediate the issue of the disputed islands between Iran and the UAE in an attempt to create an unhealthy political climate. The involvement of the EU has the potential to ignite an international crisis and divide the Arabs. This looks like the United States is attempting to escalate the territorial dispute as a means to diminish Iran.
The dispute over the islands is unresolved and I am not sure who legally owns them; they are, however, full of oil reserves and their strategic position could allow a country to influence the Gulf's valuable shipping lane, or even to close off the Gulf all together.
-Am
Iranian-Americans Voice their Anger at Arab-bribed National Geographic
Dec 2, 2004, 14:18
Iranian-Americans in the United States are scheduled to meet with the President and other senior executives of arab-bribed National Geographic in Washington on December the 6th to voice their anger at the false alternative of the arabian gulf the American institute has offered for the Persian Gulf.
In a rapid two-pronged campaign, many Iranian-American organizations have put intense pressure on National Geographic for its misnaming of the Persian Gulf in its recent World Atlas.
Over 10,000 individual letters have been sent by Iranians protesting the publication's in correct references to the Persian Gulf, and have undersigned a petition with over 65,000(and counting) signatures.
Meanwhile in Tehran the city's annual international book fair banned the National Geographic from taking part in the next edition of the event.
In Southern Iran, hundreds of university students held a gathering to condemn the arab-bribed National Geographic's move.
While Iranians fight for Persian Gulf, Iran mullah president sends congratulation message to UAE Dec 1, 2004, 06:36
Iran's mullah president here Tuesday, in a message, congratulated the new leader of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) President Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayd Al-Nahayan.
"I extend my sincere regards to your election as the president of the friend and neighboring country, the UAE."
He also expressed hope that "the two nations' relations which is underpinned by cultural, religious and historical commonalties and was bolstered by the late Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan An-Nahayan will be strengthened further in the future."
Khatami wished well for the Moslem nation and government of the UAE.
Iran's First Vice President Mohammad-Reza Aref attended the funeral of late UAE president on Wednesday.
He conveyed the condolences of President Khatami and the Iranian nation to the new president.
All of above whilst Arabs, UAE in particular, bribe National Geographic to change Persian Gulf to Arabian Gulf, plus change the names of Iranian islands in Persian Gulf.
Background: The UAE and Iran continue to dispute the ownership of three islands, Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunb Islands, which are strategically located in the Strait of Hormuz. All three islands were effectively occupied by Iranian troops in 1992. The Mubarak field, which is located six miles off Abu Musa, has been producing oil and associated natural gas since 1974. In 1995, the Iranian Foreign Ministry claimed that the islands are "an inseparable part of Iran." Iran rejected a 1996 proposal by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) for the dispute to be resolved by the International Court of Justice, an option supported by the UAE. In early 1996, Iran took further moves to strengthen its hold on the disputed islands. These actions included starting up a power plant on Greater Tunb, opening an airport on Abu Musa, and announcing plans for construction of a new port on Abu Musa. In the dispute, the UAE has received strong support from the GCC, the United Nations, and the United States. Although Iran remains a continuing concern for officials in Abu Dhabi, they have chosen not to escalate the territorial dispute. The two governments have recently held high-level discussions about the territorial dispute. Iran is one of Dubai’s major trading partners, accounting for 20% to 30% of Dubai’s business. http://216.239.53.104/search?q=cache:qHbUErG91TYJ:www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/uae.html+united+states+U....
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates: The Sunni Arab kingdom of Bahrain is experiencing an upsurge in violence by its Shiite Muslim majority, a Middle East news service said.
Middle East NewsLine reports young Shiite men, possibly with backing from Iran, fought with police in Manama for four nights during the recent Formula 1 Grand Prix. Rioters blocked roads, burned cars and garbage cans and threw rocks at police, MENL reported.
"These acts of sabotage are rejected by everybody, and those who have pushed these young men to these actions should be punished," said Rashid Bin Abdullah Al Khalifa, Bahrain's interior minister. http://www.newkerala.com/news2.php?action=fullnews&id=26234
Excellent! Iran, US in tug of war over Middle East
First, no exit from Iraq.
Second. The United States is doing what the Unites States does best, turning one group against another so that they might kill or neutralize each other for Washington’s agenda as most recently seen In Iraq and now the Northern Caucasus.(#msg-10813854) In her recent trip to the GCC countries, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice once again warned the oil sheikhdoms about Iran's "threat".
At the same time, given the prospect of greater international pressure on Iran in the coming months over the nuclear issue, Iran's dependency on the GCC "outlet" will increase, thereby allowing a greater maneuverability on the GCC's part to make demands on Iran, such as with respect to the contested issue of Iran's possession of the three islands of Amu Mussa, Little Tunb and Big Tunb. A quid pro quo, whereby Iran would consent to a more flexible "sharing" of Abu Mussa in return for the GCC's reluctance to join the United States' global strategy against Iran, is possible. Pls see: (#msg-3136614)
-Am
Iran, US in tug of war over Middle East By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Apr 27, 2006
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.
But without the Security Council's backing - which is quite unlikely given Russia's and China's reluctance - a sanctions regime by the US and its "coalition of willing" will be a tough sell in the GCC states, as this would jeopardize their relations with Iran and thus harm them financially, economically and security-wise.
Hence we should not expect anything more than token gestures by the GCC states that would not fundamentally alter their burgeoning economic relations with Iran. In other words, the current attempts by the US to enroll the GCC states as future members of a "coalition of willing" against Iran are doomed, for the most part.
The GCC states are keenly aware of the protean value of Iran's new political militancy geared against Israel, which appeals to the "Arab street", and they would be risking their political legitimacy if they bandwagoned with the US against their Islamic brethren in Iran.
For the moment, Iran has refrained from any overt criticism of the GCC states, confining itself to the carrot policy of cooperation and enhanced ties, such as by reaching a new understanding with Qatar on shared gas deposits in the Persian Gulf, yet at any moment Iran may switch to the stick of threats should it feel a more overt pro-US drift on the part of certain GCC leaders.
At the same time, given the prospect of greater international pressure on Iran in the coming months over the nuclear issue, Iran's dependency on the GCC "outlet" will increase, thereby allowing a greater maneuverability on the GCC's part to make demands on Iran, such as with respect to the contested issue of Iran's possession of the three islands of Amu Mussa, Little Tunb and Big Tunb. A quid pro quo, whereby Iran would consent to a more flexible "sharing" of Abu Mussa in return for the GCC's reluctance to join the United States' global strategy against Iran, is possible.
But that is future thinking, and right now no one in the region is taking the US threat of military strikes against Iran too seriously, since they know well that the risks to the global oil market are simply too high to allow it to happen. Already, with Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries prices above US$70 a barrel, caused in part by concerns over the Iran nuclear crisis, there has been a sufficient wake-up call to the Western public, particularly in the US, that this may well reach $100 a barrel the moment bombs are dropped on Iran.
This, in turn, has allowed Iran to continue its "nuclear poker", considered brinkmanship by certain analysts and media pundits, even though on the face of it Iran's exercise of its right under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to acquire full nuclear technology under the IAEA's inspection regime can hardly be called "aggression" or "defiance".
It remains to be seen how far the present crisis will degenerate, and whether or not political economy standards will outweigh the purely security considerations on the part of the US and Europe. We may not need to wait for posterity for answers, as the next few months will be highly revealing of the stark alternatives posed by this dangerous crisis.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He is also author of Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
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