Download 5. Clinton Administration 1990s - E

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Fanit Izzeddine
Pr. M. Manaa
Culture, Globalization and U.S foreign policy
May, 11 2008
The American Foreign Policy towards the Rise of Shiism after
the Invasion of Iraq
“The Redirection”
Intoduction:
After the Islamic revolution, the United States broke its relations with Iran and
built other ones with some Sunni Arab states like; Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt in
order to contain the revolution within its borders. However, those new relations
became more complex after 9/11 attacks because Alqaeda is Sunni and most of its
operatives come from some Sunni extremists groups circles inside Saudi Arabia.
Thus, the bush administration wanted to form a Shiite government in Iraq to have a
pro-American balance (to have Sunni Arab states and Shiite Arab states).
Unfortunately for the Americans, that policy was mis-calculated; the situation in Iraq
was deteriorated. The unexpected and the unintended result was the empowerment
of Iran. Bush ignored that most of Shiite leaders in Iraq have nice ties with Iranian
Regime and that most of them were in exile there during Saddam Hussein regime.
This new political set pushed the White house to look for a policy that could grind
down the Shiite leverage over particularly Iraq and Lebanon and in the region in
general; this policy is called “the Redirection”
Part One: American-Iranian relations through history
1. American-Iranian early relations
Political relations between Iran (Persia) and the United States began when the Shah
of Persia, Nassereddin Shah Qajar, officially dispatched Persia's first ambassador,
Mirza Abolhasan Shirazi…, to Washington D.C. in 1856. In 1883, Samuel Benjamin
was appointed by the United States as the first official diplomatic envoy to Iran.
Ambassadorial relations were however established in 1944.
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The first Persian Ambassador to The United States of America was Mirza
Albohassan Khan Ilchi Kabir. Even before political relations, since the early to mid
1880s, Americans had been traveling to Iran. Justin Perkins and Asahel Grant were
the first missionaries to be dispatched to Persia in 1834 via the American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions.
The famous “vizier” (minister) of Nasereddin Shah, Amir Kabir, also initiated direct
contacts with Washington. By the end of the 19th century, negotiations were
underway for an American company to establish a railway system from the Persian
Gulf to Tehran.
Up until World War II, relations between Iran and the United States remained
cordial. As a result many Persian …constitutionalists came to view the U.S. as a
"third force" in their struggle to break free of the humiliating British and Russian
meddling and dominance in Persian affairs. It is even believed that such
appointments were the result of contacts made by the Persian Constitutional
revolutionaries with the executive branch of the US government, even though no
official documents of such contacts exist. What is certain however is that Persia's
drive for modernizing its economy and liberating it from British and Russian
influences had the full support of American industrial and business leaders.(Early
relations)
2. The Turning point in the American-Iranian Relations in the 1950’s:
From 1952-53, Iran's nationalist Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq began a
period of rapid power consolidation, which led the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi,
to a brief exile and then into power again. Much of the events of 1952 were started by
Mossadeq’s nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, now British
Petroleum. Established by the British in the early 20th century, an agreement had
been made to share profits (85% British-15% Iran), but the company withheld their
financial records from the Iranian government. Due to alleged profit monopolization
by the Anglo-Iranian Oil company, the Iranian Parliament had unanimously agreed
to nationalize its holding of, what was at the time, the British Empire’s largest
company.
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The United States and Britain, through a now-admitted covert operation of the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) called Operation Ajax, conducted from the US
Embassy in Tehran, helped organize protests to overthrow Moussadeq and return the
Shah to Iran. The operation failed and the Shah fled to Italy. After a second successful
operation he returned from his brief exile. Iran's fledgling attempts at democracy
quickly descended into dictatorship, as the Shah dismantled the constitutional
limitations on his office and began to rule as an absolute monarch.
During his reign, the Shah received significant American support, frequently
making state visits to the White House and earning praise from numerous American
Presidents. The Shah's close ties to Washington and his bold agenda of rapidly
Westernizing Iran soon began to infuriate certain segments of the Iranian population,
especially the hardline Islamic conservatives. Because of their eventual ascension to
power during the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Operation Ajax is considered as one of the
worst CIA "blowbacks" ever.
Relations in the cultural sphere however remained cordial. Pahlavi University,
Sharif University of Technology, and Isfahan University of Technology, three of Iran's
top academic universities were all directly modeled on American institutions such as
the University of Chicago, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania.[6][7] The Shah in
return was generous in awarding American universities with financial gifts. For
example, the University of Southern California received a gift from the Shah in the
form of an endowed chair of petroleum engineering, and a million dollar donation
was given to the George Washington University to create an Iranian Studies
program.(The 1950 s and the politics of oil)
3. The Iranian Revolution:
The Iranian Revolution (also known as the Islamic Revolution,…was the
revolution that transformed Iran from a monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza
Pahlavi to an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the
revolution and founder of the Islamic Republic. It has been called "the third great
revolution in history," following the French and Bolshevik revolutions, and an
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event that "made Islamic fundamentalism a political force ... from Morocco to
Malaysia."[9]
Although some might argue that the revolution is still ongoing, its time span can be
said to have begun in January 1978 with the first major demonstrations to overthrow
the Shah, and concluded with the approval of the new theocratic Constitution —
whereby Khomeini became Supreme Leader of the country — in December 1979. In
between, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi fled Iran in January 1979 after strikes and
demonstrations paralyzed the country, and on February 1, 1979 Ayatollah Khomeini
returned to Tehran to a greeting by several million Iranians. The final collapse of the
Pahlavi dynasty occurred shortly after on February 11 when Iran's military declared
itself "neutral" after guerrillas and rebel troops overwhelmed troops loyal to the Shah
in armed street fighting. Iran officially became an Islamic Republic on April 1, 1979
when Iranians overwhelmingly approved a national referendum to make it so.
The revolution was unique for the surprise it created throughout the world it lacked
many of the customary causes of revolution — defeat at war, a financial crisis, peasant
rebellion, or disgruntled military;[14] produced profound change at great speed;[15]
overthrew a regime thought to be heavily protected by a lavishly financed army and
security services;[16][17] and replaced an ancient monarchy with a theocracy based on
Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists... Its outcome, an Islamic Republic "under the
guidance of an 80-year-old exiled religious scholar from Qom," was, as one scholar
put it, "clearly an occurrence that had to be explained.…"
Not so unique but more intense is the dispute over the revolution's results. For
some it was an era of heroism and sacrifice that brought forth nothing less than the
nucleus of a world Islamic state, "a perfect model of splendid, humane, and divine
life… for all the peoples of the world." At the other extreme, disillusioned Iranians
explain the revolution as a time when "for a few years we all lost our minds," [20] and
as a system that, "promised us heaven, but ... created a hell on earth." (The Iranian
Revolution)
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4. Some Consequences of the Islamic Revolution
4.1 The Hostage Crisis:
Iran hostage crisis, in U.S. history, events following the seizure of the American
embassy in Tehran by Iranian students on Nov. 4, 1979. The overthrow of
Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlevi of Iran by an Islamic revolutionary government
earlier in the year had led to a steady deterioration in Iran-U.S. relations. In response
to the exiled shah's admission (Sept., 1979) to the United States for medical
treatment, a crowd of about 500 seized the embassy. Of the approximately 90 people
inside the embassy, 52 remained in captivity until the end of the crisis.
President Carter applied economic pressure by halting oil imports from Iran and
freezing Iranian assets in the United States. At the same time, he began several
diplomatic initiatives to free the hostages, all of which proved fruitless. On Apr. 24,
1980, the United States attempted a rescue mission that failed. After three of eight
helicopters were damaged in a sandstorm, the operation was aborted; eight persons
were killed during the evacuation. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who had opposed
the action, resigned after the mission's failure.
In 1980, the death of the shah in Egypt and the invasion of Iran by Iraq (see IranIraq War) made the Iranians more receptive to resolving the hostage crisis. In the
United States, failure to resolve the crisis contributed to Ronald Reagan's defeat of
Carter in the presidential election. After the election, with the assistance of Algerian
intermediaries, successful negotiations began. On Jan. 20, 1981, the day of President
Reagan's inauguration, the United States released almost $8 billion in Iranian assets
and the hostages were freed after 444 days in Iranian detention; the agreement gave
Iran immunity from lawsuits arising from the incident.
In 2000 former hostages and their survivors sued Iran under the 1996
Antiterrorism Act, which permits U.S. citizens to sue foreign governments in cases of
state-sponsored terrorism. The following year they won the lawsuit by default when
Iran did not offer a defense. The U.S. State Dept. sought dismissal of the suit, arguing
it would hinder its ability to negotiate international agreements, and a federal judge
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dismissed the plaintiffs' suit for damages in 2002, ruling that the agreement that
resulted in their release barred awarding any damages. (Iran hostage crisis)
4.2 Iran-Iraq War:
In its region, Iranian Islamic revolutionaries called specifically for the overthrow of
monarchies and their replacement with Islamic republics, much to the alarm of its
smaller Sunni-run Arab neighbors Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf
States. Most of these countries were monarchies and all had sizable Shi'a populations
including a majority population in Iraq and Bahrain. In 1980, Iraq whose government
was Sunni Muslim and Arab nationalist, invaded Iran in an attempt to seize the oilrich predominantly Arab province of Khuzistan and destroy the revolution in its
infancy. Thus began the eight year Iran-Iraq War, one of the most destructive and
bloody wars of the 20th century.
A combination of fierce patriot resistance by Iranians and military incompetence by
Iraqi forces soon stalled the Iraqi advance and by early 1982 Iran regained almost all
the territory lost to the invasion. The invasion rallied Iranians behind the new regime,
and past differences were largely abandoned in the face of the external threat. The
war also became an opportunity for the regime to crush its remaining opponents,
mostly the Soviet-backed leftist groups, dishing out harsh treatment, including
torture and imprisonment.
Realizing its mistake, the Iraqis offered Iran a truce. Khomeini rejected it,
announcing the only condition for peace was that "the regime in Baghdad must fall
and must be replaced by an Islamic Republic."[189] The war continued for another
six years with hundreds of thousands of lives lost and great destruction from air
attacks. While in the end the revolutionaries failed to expand the Islamic revolution
into Iraq, they did solidify their control of Iran
4.3 Hezbollah Bombings 1983
The U.S. contends that the organization of Hezbollah has been involved in several
anti-American terrorist attacks, including the April 1983 United States embassy
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bombings which killed 17 Americans, the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing which killed
241 U.S. peace keepers in Lebanon, and the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing.
A U.S. District court judge ruled in 2003 that the April 1983 United States Embassy
bombing was by what had been at the time been a new organization called Hezbollah
supported by the state of Iran.
In May 2003, in a case brought by the families of the 241 servicemen who were
killed, U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth declared that the Islamic
Republic of Iran was responsible for the 1983 attack. Lamberth concluded that
Hezbollah was formed under the auspices of the Iranian government, was completely
reliant on Iran in 1983, and assisted Iranian Ministry of Information and Security
agents in carrying out the operation.
A U.S. federal court has found that the Khobar Towers bombing was authorized by Ali
Khomeini, then ayatollah of Iran (Reagan Administration)
5. Clinton Administration 1990s:
In April 1995 a total embargo on dealings with Iran by U.S. companies was
imposed by U.S. president Clinton. Trade with the U.S., which had been growing
following the end of the Iran-Iraq war ended abruptly The next year the American
Congress passed the Iran-Libya Sanctions act which threatened even non-U.S.
countries making large investments in energy. The act was denounced by the
European Union as null and void, but blocked some needed investment for Iran
nonetheless. (Clinton Administration)
6. Hopes of Reconciliation
The election of reformist president brought hopes for a thawing of relations. In
January 1998 Khatami called for a "dialog of nations" with US in a CNN interview. US
Secretary of state Madeleine Albright answered with conciliatory words and there
followed an exchange of wrestling teams, freer travel to and from the US, and an end
to the U.S. embargo of two Iranian export items, carpets and pistachios. Relations did
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not improve further though, as Iran's conservatives opposed them in principle and
the U.S. preconditions for discussions included changes in Iranian policy on Israel,
nuclear energy, and support for terrorism. (Khatami and Iranian Reformers)
7."Axis of evil" Speech
On January 29, 2002 U.S. President George W. Bush gave his "Axis of evil" speech,
describing Iran, along with North Korea and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, as an axis of evil
and warning that the proliferation of long-range missiles developed by these
countries was of great danger to the US and that it constituted terrorism. The speech
caused outrage in Iran and was condemned by reformists and conservatives alike. [33]
Since 2003 the U.S. has been flying unmanned aerial vehicles, launched from Iraq,
over Iran to obtain intelligence on Iran's nuclear program, reportedly providing little
new information. The Iranian government has formally protested the incursions as
illegal.
In January 2006, James Risen, a New York Times reporter, alleged in his book
State of War that the CIA carried out a Clinton approved operation in 2000
(Operation Merlin) intended to delay Iran's nuclear energy program by feeding it
flawed blueprints missing key components - which backfired and may actually have
aided Iran, as the flaw was likely detected and corrected by a former Soviet nuclear
scientist who headed the operation to make the delivery.
Trita Parsi, author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and
the United States (Yale University Press, 2007), in this article says: "According to
Lawrence Wilkerson, former secretary of state Colin Powell's chief of staff, it was
Cheney and Rumsfeld who made sure that Washington dismissed Iran's May 2003
offer to open up its nuclear program, rein in Hezbollah and cooperate against alQaeda." (Axis of evil speech)
8. War on Terrorism- War in Iraq:
The 2003 invasion of Iraq, from March 20 to May 1, 2003, was led by the United
States, backed by British forces and smaller contingents from Australia, Poland and
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Denmark. A number of other countries were involved in its aftermath. The invasion
launched the Iraq War, which is ongoing.
The objectives of the invasion, according to U.S. President George W. Bush and
U.K. former PM Tony Blair were "to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction
(WMD), to end Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi
people."[8] Blair said the actual trigger was Iraq's failure to take a “final opportunity”
to disarm itself of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that U.S. and coalition
officials called an immediate and intolerable threat to world peace. In a January 2003
CBS poll, 64% of Americans approved of military action against Iraq. 63% wanted
President Bush to find a diplomatic solution rather than going to war with Iraq, and
62% believed the threat of terror would increase if war was waged with Iraq.
Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions
which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate
and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War
chemical munitions are assessed to still exist although some misplaced or abandoned
remnants of pre-1991 production were found, U.S. government spokespeople
confirmed that these were not the weapons for which the U.S. went to war.
The invasion of Iraq was opposed by some traditional U.S. allies, including France
and Germany. Their leaders argued there was no evidence of WMD and that a war in
Iraq was not justified in the context of UNMOVIC's February 12, 2003 report. On
February 15, 2003, a month before the invasion, there were many worldwide protests
against the Iraq war, including a rally of 3 million people in Rome, which is listed in
the Guinness Book of Records as the largest ever anti-war rally.[13] According to the
French academic Dominique Reynié, between January 3 and April 12, 2003, 36
million people across the globe took part in almost 3,000 protests against the Iraq
war.
In preparation for the invasion, 100,000 U.S. troops were assembled in Kuwait by
February 18.[15] The United States supplied the vast majority of the invading forces,
but also received support from Kurdish troops in northern Iraq. (Invasion of Iraq)
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Part Two: The Redirection
This policy is a secret strategy adopted by the Bush administration to face the spread
of Shiism in the Middle East. It was first revealed by a man called Seymour Hersh.
1. Who is Seymour M. Hersh:
Seymour (Sy) Myron Hersh (born April 8, 1937 Chicago) is an American Pulitzer
Prize winning investigative journalist and author based in Washington, DC. He is a
regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine on military and security matters.
His work first gained worldwide recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai
massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War, for which he received the 1970
Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. His 2004 reports on the US military's
mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison gained much attention.
Hersh received the 2004 George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting given annually
by Long Island University to honor contributions to journalistic integrity and
investigative reporting. This was his fifth George Polk Award, the first one being a
Special Award given to him in 1969.
In 2006 he reported on the US military's plans for Iran, which allegedly called for the
use of nuclear weapons against that country. ( Who is Seymour Hersh)
2. A Shift in the American Mind towards Shiism:
In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush
Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has
significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The “redirection,” as some inside the
White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an
open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening
sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has
decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the
Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in
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clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization
that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at
Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of
Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to
America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the insurgent
violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni forces, and not from
Shiites. But, from the Administration’s perspective, the most profound—and
unintended—strategic consequence of the Iraq war is the empowerment of Iran. Its
President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made defiant pronouncements about the
destruction of Israel and his country’s right to pursue its nuclear program, and … its
supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on state television that
“realities in the region show that the arrogant front, headed by the U.S. and its allies,
will be the principal loser in the region.”
After the revolution of 1979 brought a religious government to power, the United
States broke with Iran and cultivated closer relations with the leaders of Sunni Arab
states such as Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. That calculation became more
complex after the September 11th attacks, especially with regard to the Saudis. Al
Qaeda is Sunni, and many of its operatives came from extremist religious circles
inside Saudi Arabia. Before the invasion of Iraq, in 2003, Administration officials,
influenced by neoconservative ideologues, assumed that a Shiite government there
could provide a pro-American balance to Sunni extremists, since Iraq’s Shiite
majority had been oppressed under Saddam Hussein. They ignored warnings from
the intelligence community about the ties between Iraqi Shiite leaders and Iran,
where some had lived in exile for years. Now, to the distress of the White House, Iran
has forged a close relationship with the Shiite-dominated government of Prime
Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
The new American policy, in its broad outlines, has been discussed publicly. In
testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January, Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice said that there is “a new strategic alignment in the Middle
East,” separating “reformers” and “extremists”; she pointed to the Sunni states as
centers of moderation, and said that Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah were “on the other
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side of that divide.” (Syria’s Sunni majority is dominated by the Alawi sect.) Iran and
Syria, she said, “have made their choice and their choice is to destabilize.”(Hersh)
3. New Calculations in the Middle East
The policy shift has brought Saudi Arabia and Israel into a new strategic embrace,
largely because both countries see Iran as an existential threat. They have been
involved in direct talks, and the Saudis, who believe that greater stability in Israel and
Palestine will give Iran less leverage in the region, have become more involved in
Arab-Israeli negotiations.
The new strategy “is a major shift in American policy—it’s a sea change,” a U.S.
government consultant with close ties to Israel said. The Sunni states “were petrified
of a Shiite resurgence, and there was growing resentment with our gambling on the
moderate Shiites in Iraq,” he said. “We cannot reverse the Shiite gain in Iraq, but we
can contain it.”
“It seems there has been a debate inside the government over what’s the biggest
danger—Iran or Sunni radicals,” Vali Nasr, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign
Relations, who has written widely on Shiites, Iran, and Iraq, told me. “The Saudis and
some in the Administration have been arguing that the biggest threat is Iran and the
Sunni radicals are the lesser enemies. This is a victory for the Saudi line.”
Martin Indyk, a senior State Department official in the Clinton Administration
who also served as Ambassador to Israel, said that “the Middle East is heading into a
serious Sunni-Shiite Cold War.” Indyk, who is the director of the Saban Center for
Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, added that, in his opinion, it was not
clear whether the White House was fully aware of the strategic implications of its new
policy. “The White House is not just doubling the bet in Iraq,” he said. “It’s doubling
the bet across the region. This could get very complicated. Everything is upside
down.”
The Administration’s new policy for containing Iran seems to complicate its
strategy for winning the war in Iraq. Patrick Clawson, an expert on Iran and the
deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, argued,
however, that closer ties between the United States and moderate or even radical
Sunnis could put “fear” into the government of Prime Minister Maliki and “make him
worry that the Sunnis could actually win” the civil war there. Clawson said that this
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might give Maliki an incentive to cooperate with the United States in suppressing
radical Shiite militias, such as Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.
Even so, for the moment, the U.S. remains dependent on the coöperation of Iraqi
Shiite leaders. The Mahdi Army may be openly hostile to American interests, but
other Shiite militias are counted as U.S. allies. Both Moqtada al-Sadr and the White
House back Maliki. A memorandum written late last year by Stephen Hadley, the
national-security adviser, suggested that the Administration try to separate Maliki
from his more radical Shiite allies by building his base among moderate Sunnis and
Kurds, but so far the trends have been in the opposite direction. As the Iraqi Army
continues to founder in its confrontations with insurgents, the power of the Shiite
militias has steadily increased. (Hersh)
4. Saudi Arabia Role:
The Administration’s effort to diminish Iranian authority in the Middle East has
relied heavily on Saudi Arabia and on Prince Bandar, the Saudi national-security
adviser. Bandar served as the Ambassador to the United States for twenty-two years,
until 2005, and has maintained a friendship with President Bush and Vice-President
Cheney. In his new post, he continues to meet privately with them. Senior White
House officials have made several visits to Saudi Arabia recently, some of them not
disclosed.
Last November, Cheney flew to Saudi Arabia for a surprise meeting with King
Abdullah and Bandar. The Times reported that the King warned Cheney that Saudi
Arabia would back its fellow-Sunnis in Iraq if the United States were to withdraw. A
European intelligence official told me that the meeting also focused on more general
Saudi fears about “the rise of the Shiites.” In response, “The Saudis are starting to use
their leverage—money.”
In a royal family rife with competition, Bandar has, over the years, built a power
base that relies largely on his close relationship with the U.S., which is crucial to the
Saudis. Bandar was succeeded as Ambassador by Prince Turki al-Faisal; Turki
resigned after eighteen months and was replaced by Adel A. al-Jubeir, a bureaucrat
who has worked with Bandar. A former Saudi diplomat told me that during Turki’s
tenure he became aware of private meetings involving Bandar and senior White
House officials, including Cheney and Abrams. “I assume Turki was not happy with
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that,” the Saudi said. But, he added, “I don’t think that Bandar is going off on his
own.” Although Turki dislikes Bandar, the Saudi said, he shared his goal of
challenging the spread of Shiite power in the Middle East.
The split between Shiites and Sunnis goes back to a bitter divide, in the seventh
century, over who should succeed the Prophet Muhammad. Sunnis dominated the
medieval caliphate and the Ottoman Empire, and Shiites, traditionally, have been
regarded more as outsiders. Worldwide, ninety per cent of Muslims are Sunni, but
Shiites are a majority in Iran, Iraq, and Bahrain, and are the largest Muslim group in
Lebanon. Their concentration in a volatile, oil-rich region has led to concern in the
West and among Sunnis about the emergence of a “Shiite crescent”—especially given
Iran’s increased geopolitical weight.
“The Saudis still see the world through the days of the Ottoman Empire, when
Sunni Muslims ruled the roost and the Shiites were the lowest class,” Frederic Hof, a
retired military officer who is an expert on the Middle East, told me. If Bandar was
seen as bringing about a shift in U.S. policy in favor of the Sunnis, he added, it would
greatly enhance his standing within the royal family.
The Saudis are driven by their fear that Iran could tilt the balance of power not
only in the region but within their own country. Saudi Arabia has a significant Shiite
minority in its Eastern Province, a region of major oil fields; sectarian tensions are
high in the province. The royal family believes that Iranian operatives, working with
local Shiites, have been behind many terrorist attacks inside the kingdom, according
to Vali Nasr. “Today, the only army capable of containing Iran”—the Iraqi Army—
“has been destroyed by the United States. You’re now dealing with an Iran that could
be nuclear-capable and has a standing army of four hundred and fifty thousand
soldiers.” (Saudi Arabia has seventy-five thousand troops in its standing army).
(Hersh)
5. Lebanon; the Theatre of Conflict:
In Lebanon, Hezbollah, the Irani-backed party, is considered the major threat to
Israel. Both Israelis and Sunnis in Lebanon are trying to kill Nasrallah, Hezbollah
leader, in order to weaken the Irani influence in Lebanon and in the region in general.
Jordan’s King Abdullah II has warned that a Shiite government in Iraq that was
close to Iran would lead to the emergence of a Shiite crescent.) This is something of
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an ironic turn: Nasrallah’s battle with Israel last summer turned him—a Shiite—into
the most popular and influential figure among Sunnis and Shiites throughout the
region. In recent months, however, he has increasingly been seen by many Sunnis not
as a symbol of Arab unity but as a participant in a sectarian war.
Nasrallah accused the Bush Administration of working with Israel to deliberately
instigate […] “insurrection and fragmentation within Islam. […] there is a huge
campaign through the media throughout the world to put each side up against the
other,” he said. “I believe that all this is being run by American and Israeli
intelligence.” […].He said that the U.S. war in Iraq had increased sectarian tensions,
but argued that Hezbollah had tried to prevent them from spreading into Lebanon.
Nasrallah said he believed that President Bush’s goal was “the drawing of a new
map for the region. They want the partition of Iraq. Iraq is not on the edge of a civil
war—there is a civil war. There is ethnic and sectarian cleansing. The daily killing and
displacement which is taking place in Iraq aims at achieving three Iraqi parts, which
will be sectarian and ethnically pure as a prelude to the partition of Iraq. Within one
or two years at the most, there will be total Sunni areas, total Shiite areas, and total
Kurdish areas. Even in Baghdad, there is a fear that it might be divided into two
areas, one Sunni and one Shiite.”
Nasrallah said he believed that America also wanted to bring about the partition
of Lebanon and of Syria. In Syria, he said, the result would be to push the country
“into chaos and internal battles like in Iraq.” In Lebanon, “There will be a Sunni state,
an Alawi state, a Christian state, and a Druze state.” But, he said, “I do not know if
there will be a Shiite state.” Nasrallah told me that he suspected that one aim of the
Israeli bombing of Lebanon last summer was “the destruction of Shiite areas and the
displacement of Shiites from Lebanon. The idea was to have the Shiites of Lebanon
and Syria flee to southern Iraq,” which is dominated by Shiites. “I am not sure, but I
smell this,”.
Partition would leave Israel surrounded by “small tranquil states,” [...] “I can
assure you that the Saudi kingdom will also be divided, and the issue will reach to
North African states. There will be small ethnic and confessional states,”[…]. “In
other words, Israel will be the most important and the strongest state in a region that
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has been partitioned into ethnic and confessional states that are in agreement with
each other. This is the new Middle East.”
The focus of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, after Iran, is Lebanon, where the Saudis
have been deeply involved in efforts by the Administration to support the Lebanese
government. Prime Minister Fouad Siniora is struggling to stay in power against a
persistent opposition led by Hezbollah, the Shiite organization, and its leader, Sheikh
Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah has an extensive infrastructure, an estimated two to
three thousand active fighters, and thousands of additional members.
The Bush Administration has publicly pledged the Siniora government a billion
dollars in aid since last summer. A donors’ conference in Paris, in January, which the
U.S. helped organize, yielded pledges of almost eight billion more, including a
promise of more than a billion from the Saudis. The American pledge includes more
than two hundred million dollars in military aid, and forty million dollars for internal
security.
The United States has also given clandestine support to the Siniora government,
according to the former senior intelligence official and the U.S. government
consultant. “We are in a program to enhance the Sunni capability to resist Shiite
influence, and we’re spreading the money around as much as we can,” the former
senior intelligence official said. The problem was that such money “always gets in
more pockets than you think it will,” he said. “In this process, we’re financing a lot of
bad guys with some serious potential unintended consequences. We don’t have the
ability to determine and get pay vouchers signed by the people we like and avoid the
people we don’t like. It’s a very high-risk venture.” (Hersh)
Conclusion:
It is true that the United States’ aim, from this redirection in the region, is to erode
the leverage of the Shiites whose influence is strongly present in Iraq mainly. Tehran
is using the Iraqi mire along with Lebanon for its bargain policy to get concessions
since it receives a big pressure from Washington. However, I think that the Bush
administration does not care whether there is a “Rise of Shiism” or not, its interest is
not to find barriers in front of its ambitions in the region. The evidence is that the
White House depends on some Shiite groups in Iraq to face the Sunni insurgents
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there. However, in Lebanon the insurgents are Shiites, from the American opinion, so
it depends on some Sunni extremists, whose ideology opposes that of Nassrallah, to
face the Shiite strong military presence. In fact, what is seen in the region is the
confrontation of ideologies, the Americans, with their globalization, are trying to
influence the minds and the Iranians, with their “Regionalization” are trying to
acquire the hearts of the people.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States-Iran_relations#1990s:_Clinton_administration
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_StatesIran_relations#Early_relations
-Hersh, Seymour. “The Redirection”. NewYorker Magazine. 05/03/2007.
20/01/20
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/05/070305fa_fact_hersh
-“Invasion of Iraq”. Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia. 18/04/2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq
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http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0825448.html.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States-Iran_relations#Khatami_and_Iranian_reformers
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_StatesIran_relations#1980s:_Reagan_administration
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Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia.15/04/2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_StatesIran_relations#The_1950s_and_the_politics_of_oil.2C_a_turning_point
- “The Iranian Revolution”. Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia. 25/03/2008. 26/03/2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Revolution#cite_note-Jubilee-4
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is
Seymour
Hersh”.
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Hersh
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Free
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10/04/2008
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