Daily Telegraph: It may not seem like it sometimes, but we do have some friends left in the Middle East. The continuing fall-out from the invasion of Iraq, which prompted a rare moment of unanimity among Arab leaders as they vehemently objected to Saddam Hussein’s overthrow, and the West’s failure to address the Palestinians’ aspirations for statehood have, on occasion, caused friction. The Daily Telegraph
By Con Coughlin
It may not seem like it sometimes, but we do have some friends left in the Middle East. The continuing fall-out from the invasion of Iraq, which prompted a rare moment of unanimity among Arab leaders as they vehemently objected to Saddam Hussein’s overthrow, and the West’s failure to address the Palestinians’ aspirations for statehood have, on occasion, caused friction.
The Saudis, for example, profoundly shocked at the treatment of their Sunni co-religionists by Iraq’s resurgent Shia majority, have turned a blind eye to the thousands of foreign insurgents crossing their borders to carry out suicide missions against coalition troops; the Egyptians, who are similarly held to be staunch allies of the West, have failed to stop the steady flow of Iranian arms into the Gaza Strip for use by the radical Hamas Palestinian militia against Israel.
But while the spirit of co-operation between the West and its traditional allies in the region can sometimes leave much to be desired, deep bonds persist between these two very different cultures, especially Britain and those Arab states that were formerly under its protection.
The Saudis, for all the controversies over human rights and unconventional business practices, remain one of our most important allies, as do the Jordanians, who form an important bulwark of stability compared with their neighbours in Iraq, Syria and the occupied West Bank.
But in terms of pure Anglophilia, it is hard to beat the plucky little kingdom of Bahrain where the golf-loving King, Sheikh Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa, extols the virtues of all things British – from supporting the Blair government’s decision to invade Iraq to the delights of regular stints staying at the Dorchester Hotel in London.
Indeed, so enamoured is the king, who undertook his education in Cambridge and his military training at Sandhurst, of the British way of life that he has even attempted the bold step of introducing parliamentary democracy to his oil-rich kingdom. It is the first serious effort made at proper democratic representation in a region where autocratic government based on tribal primacy is more often the norm.
But even though the Bahrainis remain proud of their close association with Britain and America (the American 5th Fleet has its main Gulf base in Bahrain) and their tentative experiments with democracy, their bold approach has none the less attracted much resentment, not least from the other side of the Gulf – Iran.
Before the latest diplomatic stand-off between the West and Teheran over Iran’s uranium enrichment programme, the Iranians had an unhappy history of trying to intimidate Bahrain. The majority of the island state’s 750,000 population are, like the Iranians, Shias, which has encouraged Teheran to make irridentist claims over the emirate. This attitude appeared to harden over the summer, when the influential Iranian newspaper Kayhan carried the inflammatory claim that Bahrain was a “province” of Teheran.
While that diplomatic spat was resolved by a hastily arranged summit of the countries’ foreign ministers, the Bahrainis fear that Iranians are embarking on a sinister attempt to subvert the monarchy by radicalising impressionable young Shias and setting up a number of “sleeper” cells that could be activated if the West attacked Iran.
The Iranians are also reported to be stoking up similar tensions in Saudi Arabia, where the small Shia population is said to have been infiltrated by Iranian agents who would like to put a network of cells in place to attack the country’s oil fields.
Nor is Britain’s lax attitude towards granting political asylum to dissidents from the Middle East helping the Gulf states to protect themselves from Iranian destabilisation. A number of leading Bahrainis have been given asylum in London, even though they are committed to overthrowing one of Britain’s key allies in the region.
Iranian officials close to the Revolutionary Guards are known to travel regularly to London for “international conferences”, but spend most of their time meeting Arab dissident groups plotting to overthrow some of the area’s more stable regimes. As one Arab commentator remarked last week: “The Iranians are using London to plot unrest in countries that are important allies for Britain. Where’s the sense in that?”
Nor are the Iranians shy about declaring their true intentions while visiting “Londonistan”. At one recent diplomatic function, a visiting Iranian official, a close relative of a senior Revolutionary Guard commander, boasted that Iran had so many sleeper cells in Britain that it could “set the country ablaze” in the event of the Government supporting military action against Teheran.
In fact, the Iranians’ attempts to set up sleeper cells in Britain and in the Gulf are part of a calibrated plan by Teheran to be prepared for any eventuality in its long-running stand-off with the West over its nuclear enrichment programme.
In one of Teheran’s more ambitious projects, Ali Larijani, formerly the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, recently proposed improving Iran’s trading ties with Beijing so that Teheran could exert more leverage over China at the UN Security Council. Iran is one of China’s major oil suppliers, and only this week signed a new oil deal with Beijing.
According to the report, Mr Larijani submitted a proposal to Iran’s elite group of security officials that, in the event of the UN attempting to extend the sanctions regime to cover Iran’s oil exports, Teheran should immediately slow its oil supplies to China as a “reminder” to Beijing of the economic implications of supporting the UN.
Whether the Chinese will be influenced by that crude ploy is another matter. Beijing has already approached Russia about making up the shortfall if the sanctions regime against Teheran is tightened, which illustrates one of the immutable laws of modern diplomacy: it is just as important to know who your friends are as it is your enemies.
