ANALYSIS-Arab states want Bush's Iraq policy to counter Iran
Source: Reuters
By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent BEIRUT, Jan 8 (Reuters) - When U.S. President George W. Bush unveils his new Iraq policy this week, Washington's Arab allies want him to allay their fears of rising Shi'ite power in Baghdad and Iranian influence across the Middle East. Though they doubted the wisdom of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-ruled Arab states now fear that U.S. troops might withdraw hastily, leaving an Iraq dominated by Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias. That in turn could consolidate the emergence of a Tehran-led axis linking Iran, Iraq and Syria with Islamist groups such as Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Iranian-backed Palestinian Hamas group, all with a strongly anti-U.S. agenda. Mustafa Alani, a security analyst at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai, said Arab governments feared the United States was losing its grip on Iraq, even if they still hoped it would not cut and run, thereby handing victory to Iran. "Their major worry is Iranian influence over the Iraqi government and outside the government," he said. "There will be no cooperation for the new American policy in the region unless Bush really points his finger at this issue." Bush's new policy will include "benchmarks" for the Iraqi government to meet, as well as sending up to 20,000 extra troops to try to stabilise the country, the New York Times reported. It cited senior administration officials on Sunday as saying that the goals include steps to draw more alienated Sunnis into the political process, ease discrimination against former Baath Party members and share out oil revenue fairly. ARAB JITTERS International Crisis Group analyst Joost Hiltermann said Arab governments were "very nervous" about Washington's capacity to control events in Iraq or even to prevent its disintegration. They wanted to hear Bush promise continued U.S. engagement, a serious effort to bring Sunni nationalist insurgents into mainstream politics and tougher action against Shi'ite militas. "Their underlying concern is that Iraq might fall apart. That would give more opportunity for Iran to get in," he said. In the 1980s, Washington's Arab allies backed Saddam Hussein's Iraq in its costly eight-year war with non-Arab Iran, feared as a strategic rival and source of Islamic militancy. Though they turned against Saddam when he invaded Kuwait in 1990 and were glad to see his fall, they have been dismayed how the U.S. invasion brought Kurds and Iran-backed Shi'ite factions to power at the expense of once-favoured Sunni Arabs. Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak has complained that Saddam's hanging, with the jeers of his Shi'ite executioners ringing in his ears, had turned the former Iraqi dictator into a martyr. The sectarian carnage in Iraq has raised Sunni-Shi'ite tensions elsewhere, including Saudi Arabia, which has a big Shi'ite minority based in the oil-producing eastern province. Imams of several Saudi mosques have been concluding their Friday sermons with victory prayers for Iraqi Sunnis. "The Iraqi government has unfortunately followed a sectarian agenda. There are fears now that Sunni districts in Baghdad will come under attack by some militias," said Adel al-Harbi, political editor at the Saudi newspaper al-Riyadh. Alani said the Arab states believed it would be futile to expand the U.S. military presence unless its goal was to control Shi'ite militias, not just to fight Sunni insurgents. "They don't want a cosmetic measure. They want a real measure to impose direct U.S. control and they want it to be evenhanded in dealing with both sorts of terrorism," he said. NO DEAL WITH IRAN What conservative Arab governments oppose is any direct U.S. dialogue with Iran that would effectively reward its alleged meddling in Iraq. "Arab states want to isolate Iran, not engage it," Hiltermann said, adding that in their view Iranian influence had to be held back in Lebanon, Iraq and Palestinian territories. "They are in a double bind," he added. "They would love to give support to the Sunni insurgents in Iraq, but they can't be seen to be doing that because they are American allies and are dependent on the U.S. and Western countries for aid." They would also be wary that any such support could end up empowering al Qaeda militants in Iraq, whose wider jihadist goals include overthrowing Western-backed Arab governments. As Sunni Arab governments consider how they can resist the regional ambitions of a potentially nuclear-armed Iran, one option would be to join a U.S.-backed alignment with powers such as Turkey and even Israel that share their interest. "This is going to develop if American failure in Iraq becomes a reality," Alani said. Any alignment involving Israel could pose problems for Arab states allied to Washington, whose own people are angered by the plight of the Palestinians and U.S. support for Israel. An even-handed U.S. push for progress on peace between Israel and the Palestinians would ease those dilemmas. (Additional reporting by Souhail Karam in Riyadh)
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