Gulf Arabs know better than to follow Bush's path to confrontation with Iran by the Daily Star - Editorial

Gulf Arabs know better than to follow Bush's path to confrontation with Iran
By The Daily Star

Monday, January 14, 2008

Editorial

US President George W. Bush used his speech in Abu Dhabi on Sunday to reiterate many of the same accusations about Iran that we have heard him throw around since his first weeks in office seven years ago. Back then, Iran's president was Mohammad Khatami, a reform-minded leader whose efforts to promote inter-cultural understanding earned him the recognition of international institutions such as the United Nations, which acted on his suggestion to proclaim 2001 the Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations. The ensuing election of Khatami's hard-line successor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made Bush's talk of the Iranian "threat" an easier sell, but Arab audiences still seem less worried today about the possibly nefarious aims of the Islamic Republic than they are about the US president's proven track record of stirring up chaos and instability in the region.

Indeed, fears that another Iraq-style calamity will occur on their doorstep have prompted several Gulf Arab leaders to reach out to their Iranian neighbors like never before in a bid to ease regional tensions. This development has ironically made Ahmadinejad the unlikely recipient of a series of rare warm gestures: He became the first Iranian president to be invited to a summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the first to attend the hajj in Saudi Arabia in an official capacity, and last May he became the first to go on a state visit to the United Arab Emirates.

Nearly a year after Ahmadinejad's historic visit to the UAE, Bush used the country as a stage from which to issue his Sunday plea to the people of the region to "confront this danger [ Iran] before it's too late." What Bush fails to realize is that members of his audience were probably cringing at the tone of his most recent message - and perhaps even planning another round of diplomacy to try to smooth over any new tensions the American head of state may have stirred. Bush showed enormous insensitivity to the concerns of the people of this region by choosing the UAE as a venue to deliver his anti-Iran message. Like its Gulf Arab neighbors who are also on the faultline between Washington and Tehran, the UAE is worried about Iran's rising influence, but it also has a vested interest in calming tensions and maintaining a semblance of regional stability. Indeed, the UAE's leaders have demonstrated skillful and creative diplomacy in simultaneously balancing their country's relations with the US and Iran at a time when the two foes have shown increasing hostility toward one another.

Bush is entitled to his warped opinions about Iran, but his message would have been better-suited for delivery to his deluded cronies in the White House than to his wiser allies in the Gulf. The average American might be fooled by Bush's latest attempt to lump Al-Qaeda, "freedom-haters," Hamas, Hizbullah, the Taliban, Iraqi insurgents and Iran into the same lot (which until recently included France), but the people of this region have a much better understanding of these phenomenons and forces. They fortunately also have a better sense of the real root causes of the region's challenges, as well as the required solutions. Thus the Iranian people can rest easily knowing that Gulf Arab leaders will respond wisely to Bush's latest attempt to stir up mischief.