Jan
The Middle East includes Iran, Mr. President
President George W. Bush dropped in on Egypt, the last stop on his eight day trip to the Middle East, on Wednesday.
One of the main themes of the visit was his persistent finger-wagging at Iran, and the encouragement of other countries in the Middle East to similarly wag their fingers at their neighbor.
Bush’s disapproval of Iran is nothing new. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has no qualms about expressing criticism toward the United States and its allies. This behavior is unlike that of most nations in the Middle East, most of which have diplomatic ties (some strained, some smooth) with the United States.
Asking Middle Eastern nations to shun Iran, however, is not going to happen. Nor should it.
Americans would scoff at any request from a country to shun Mexico. Arabs have gently brushed away these requests from Bush during his trip to help him put the pressure on Iran.
There are some key reasons why the Arab world will not, and should not, shun Iran:
- The obvious: They are in close proximity. Iran and Iraq fought a horrific war in the 1980s over a bit of land and a little port called Shatt el Arab that is at a strategic location in the Persian Gulf. Neither Arab nations nor Iran want a repeat of that.
- Religious tension: Iran is a nation populated overwhelmingly by Shi’a Muslims. The Arab world, with the exception of Iraq, is overwhelmingly Sunni (the differences between the two will be explained in a later post). If the Arab world shuns Iran, it looks like it is shunning an entire religious population, and for the minority Shi’a Muslims in the Arab world, the situation might make them feel vulnerable.
- Economic benefits: There is a lot of potential for economic benefits from both sides if Iran and the Arab world improve their diplomacy.
- Security: Iran needs the Arab world to protect it from U.S. threats (in case of a viable threat, the Arab world could plead and intervene on Iran’s behalf), and the Arab world could use Iran to shield it from threats from the -stan nations–Afghanistan and Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons.
A good relationship between the Arab world and Iran would be good for Americans, too. Iran is far more willing to respond to diplomacy with its neighbors than it is to the U.S.
