Opinion
Ripple effects of Iranian diplomacy
The view from Washington
By Alidad Mafinezam
May 26, 1999
The Iranian
President Khatami's extended trip to Syria, Qatar and Saudi Arabia last
week was nothing short of historic. The geopolitical map of the region
and relations among the two main sects of Islam are being reconfigured.
Khatami's trip has cemented Iran's new cooperative relationship with
the Arab world, an effort that must be counted as his administration's
crowning foreign policy achievement to date.
The vast majority of Arab countries have rejoiced at the thought of
putting their troubled past with Iran behind them, welcoming the chance
to work with Iran for their mutual benefit and greater unity in the Muslim
world. But looking at these events from Washington -- where the Washington
Post managed to all but ignore the trip -- a more complex picture emerges
with U.S.-Iran relations at its core.
When you ask about the impact of the current deepening of American ties
with Iran, Washington-based diplomats from the Arab world and Turkey betray
a certain disguised ambivalence, an optimism tinged with anxiety.
On the one hand an Iranian opening to the U.S. would certainly facilitate
the expansion of Iran's ties with countries covered by the American security
umbrella. The friend of a friend would naturally be a friend too. This
much the Turks and the Arabs readily concede.
But when you get more concrete and ask how they will actually be affected
when an American embassy opens up in Tehran and an Iranian one in this
town, the response is likely to be a nervous "That's a long way off."
They welcome better relations between Iran and their patrons in the
West as an enhancement of their security, but the smaller states in the
Persian Gulf -- the United Arab Emirates comes to mind -- know that once
the Iranians and Americans begin working together, countries whose whole
history began less than thirty years ago will no longer be able to poke
their thumbs at a power across the Straits of Hormuz 30 times larger in
population that has been called Iran for over a thousand years.
The U.A.E. is free to voice its concerns about Iran's "occupation"
of the two Tunbs and Abu Musa islands wherever it wants: in the Gulf Cooperation
Council meetings, in the Arab League and the UN. Security Council.
Protecting perceived infringements of its territorial integrity is the
duty of every sovereign. The U.A.E. is also free to side with Iraq, as
it has, and to lobby for the lifting of sanctions on Saddam Hussein, a
man into whose war machine the U.A.E. poured billions of dollars during
his eight-year war with Iran in the 1980s.
The UAE even has the right to be the main bankroller of the Taliban,
despite the Taliban's horrendous human rights abuses, mass killings, heroin
trade and terrorism. But it cannot use the current lack of relations between
the US and Iran to further its crusade against Iran.
The ruling sheikhs should be under no illusion: one of these years the
U.S. and Iran will talk and one day they will establish diplomatic relations
and begin working together. At that moment Iran may forgive but it will
not forget its erstwhile friends and foes.
Let us assume that Iran agrees to allow the U.A.E. to establish an official
presence in the Tunbs or Abu Musa. Will this presence be guarded by Sheikh
Zayed's Army, by U.A.E. ships operated by British personnel, or going a
small step further, by Her Majesty's ships?
Let us not forget that in 1971, when Britain agreed to give back the
three Islands it had forcibly taken from Iran early in this century, the
U.A.E. did not yet exist as a nation. The irony is that the U.A.E. now
wants to take over territory that it has never owned.
It is a good thing that Iran and Britain have upgraded their diplomatic
ties and appointed ambassadors. Now we have a higher chance of finding
out whether Britain wants these islands to belong to the U.A.E. more than
the sheikhs themselves.
Was it not the British who upon their departure from the Persian Gulf
less than three decades ago brought the seven fragmented sheikhdoms together
to create the UAE in the first place? An improvement of Iran's relations
with U.S.will certainly give Iran more leverage vis-à-vis British
connivance as well.
Turkey is a different matter all together, a country that has had centuries
of non-belligerent, often cooperative relations with Iran and has acted
as a pillar of stability in Eurasia for the past few decades. And there
is no better recipe for bringing order to northern Iraq and the Caucasus
and ensuring energy security in the area than a Turkish-Iranian alliance
-- with Moscow and Washington as partners.
Turkey may be worried that it will lose its strategic significance to
the U,S, once Iran is on board. But it is mistaken. Turkey's strategic
significance and its economic potential would actually rise if it built
a stable and mutually enriching relationship with Iran. Ankara's leverage
over the Kurds and its influence in Iraq, Syria, the Persian Gulf and Caspian
Sea regions, and Turkey's energy security, would all be enhanced if it
could could count on goodwill and cooperation from Tehran.
While Turkey and Iran have serious disagreements over the Kurdish issue
and the place of religion in statecraft, their mutual interests far outweigh
their differences. One out of every four Iranians speaks Azeri (a dialect
of Turkish) as a mother tongue; the cultural affinity of Iranians and Turks
should expand to security and economic cooperation.
If this happens, the two countries will be much better equipped to deal
in the tri-polar world of the next century where competition among America,
Europe and Asia over the Turkish-Iranian region will be much fiercer than
it is today. In this context, instead of being nervous about the establishment
of relations between Washington and Tehran, Turkey should welcome it and
help expedite it.
The author
Alidad Mafinezam is the translator of Mohammad Khatami's works "Islam,
Liberty and Development," 1998, part of which had been published
under the title "Hope and Challenge: The Iranian President Speaks",
1997. The Middle East Institute of Columbia University recently published
his monograph, "The Intellectual Bases of the Khatami Phenomenon,"
1999. In 1997-98 he was the coordinator and furdraiserof the Columbia
University Caspian Project in New York. He currently does advocacy work
on U.S.-Iran relations in Washington, DC. To top
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