Topping all these layers of religious and ethnic difference lie harsh political realities. The Arab states of the Persian Gulf are tradi tional monarchies dominated by ruling families; the Islamic Republic of Iran is a revolutionary, popu list state with republican forms resting on a theocratic base. And the last 60 years have not been kind to monarchies. The score card of crashed thrones is dramatic: Egypt (1952), Iraq (1958), Libya (1969), Ethiopia (1974), Afghanistan (1973), and Iran (1979). Who is next? Who can blame Persian Gulf rulers for feeling like an endangered species when their large non-Arab neighbor to the north — born in a revolution that overthrew an Iranian king of kings — not only follows what they see as heresy in religion, but espouses a political ideology that rejects the very idea of monarchy? Although the Islamic Republic has never been very good at diplomatic niceties, even those niceties it does practice cannot hide the fact that it rejects monarchs as illegitimate.
