Ideas can kill

Showcasing Iran as the ‘State of Supreme Evil in the World’ is the metaphor that defines contemporary politics in the Middle East. It is an image that has been crafted and propagated by the publicists of the west to undermine and curtail a country that refuses to acquiesce to the patron-client relationship that the US accepts as the only working model in the region and much of the world.
In as much as Iran is said to support militant offshoots in the region from which Israel – with all its might – feels threatened , the idea seems to serve as the cornerstone of the US and Israel’s foreign policy in the region. It is also an idea that has certainly found favour with Saudi Arabia as it helps it bolster its hegemony over the Arab-speaking world, a hegemony that Iran alone challenges.
The self-serving term, while assuring the Saudis political and economic supremacy in the Middle East, confers on them a religious sanctity that springs from the core Sunni belief that much of what is wrong with Islam today is the outcome of the Shia schism, historically a political rather than religious standpoint. Similarly, for the Americans, controlling Iran is also the logical and necessary first step towards gaining complete domination over the entire Middle East, which would ensure unchallenged capture of the natural energy resources and strategic land and sea routes of the region.
In contrast to the Saudi version, America lends moral credibility to its actions in the Middle East by projecting the chimera of its being a benign responsible sole-superpower, entrusted with the just cause of spreading the nebulous concept of democracy throughout the world.
A marriage of interests, therefore, between the Saudis and the Americans has largely been spontaneous throughout much of the 20th century, even as the Americans have dangerously cast aside any consideration of the nature of the Sunni-Shia schism and the cataclysmic repercussions that furthering it will entail for the entire region. That marriage of interests is possible through a power-sharing arrangement that ensures that both states continue to work in symbiosis to achieve their joint objectives in the Middle East. The political manifestation of that alliance and its objectives has been seen in American-Saudi cooperation in both the Gulf Wars, in the propping up of Saddam Hussein to spay and neuter the Iranian threat through his costly and pointless war with Iran; and cooperation, both economic and strategic, in bolstering, if not entirely manufacturing, the failed Arab Spring.
The fallout from this dangerous alliance is evident from the recent developments in Iraq, Syria and Libya in particular, as those nations have disintegrated into havens of anarchy and violence. It can be seen in the form of Isis which, anecdotal evidence suggests, enjoys covert Saudi support in its role as a buffer force between Iran and Basher al-Assad, a force that is therefore contained only to the extent that it does not emerge as a tangible threat to states neighbouring Syria and Iraq, in which it has principally acted thus far. In the context of Yemen, the American and Saudi combine has been pivotal to the post-Arab Spring deal in Yemen that brokered the quiet and quick exit of Ali Abdallah Al Saleh and enabled the installation of a Saudi puppet regime that was ultimately sent packing by the Houthis.
To counter the American-Saudi alliance, Iran has also taken measures to promote its strategic depth in the region – through nurturing the Hezbollah in Lebanon which has taken on Israel in occasional but deadly skirmishes that could spiral into wider conflagration in the region – to its support of Basher-Al-Assad in Syria, and now, as we are told, in funding the Houthis to enable them to emerge as a powerful and strategic Shia bulwark to Sunni Saudi Arabia. To a lesser but equally tangible extent, Iran’s covert support of the Shia majority in Bahrain is a source of Saudi nervousness, which the latter has also sought to crush with at least ideological support from its American ally.
The deal breaker in the American-Saudi alliance is increasingly seen in the Arab world as the partiality of the Obama regime to work out a peaceful solution of the nuclear issue with the Iranians. Israel has warned against this timidity of resolve, which it says will allow an essentially ‘rogue state’ to regroup to plan and perpetrate further mischief in the region; in this Israel, ironically, has become an ally in principle of the Saudis and the rest of the Gulf countries rallying to stop the Iran pact. Impatient with the Obama administration’s dilly dallying on the issue, the Saudis have, with widespread Arab support, declared the formation of an Arab military alliance. Saudi Arabia’s crucial Arab ally in this endeavour is Egypt with its strong military force.
Having never quite recovered from the failure to emerge as the successful leader of the pan-Arab nationalism of the 1960s, one senses that there is a bit of a chip on the Egyptian shoulder as it has, with an almost errant glee, hosted the meeting of Arab leaders on the formation of the joint military force in Sharam-Al Sheikh this week. Of course General Sisi also has much to thank his Saudi allies for, as it was their unequivocal support that led to his successful ouster of former president Morsi and the expulsion of the Islamic Brotherhood from Egyptian politics, much to the chagrin of America that had welcomed the Arab Spring in Egypt. There is also the matter of the millions of dollars of Saudi aid that forces Egypt to take a deeper bow in the face of Saudi requests for regional support against Iran.
This interplay of self-serving interests weaves a complex and intricate mosaic of power relations and antagonisms that define the modern Middle East, that have ensured that it remains in a state of violent unrest and that portends to plunge it into even deeper, and perhaps irreversible, conflict in the future. Metaphors can be dangerous. There is no logic in believing that a nuclear powered Iran will start a nuclear war in the region. Iran is not a country headed by illiterate rag-tag militias, champing at the bit to find a nuclear short-cut to Armageddon and hence paradise.
Iran’s seeking a nuclear deal with the US is a desperate bid to give the Iranian government a powerful bargaining chip to ensure it does not have to endure another decade of crushing economic sanctions, while also providing it with a deterrent to Saudi Arabia’s, and hence the rest of the Arab world’s, hostility. To this end the Obama administration has been wise in its policy of rapprochement with Iran, which has increasingly irked the neo-cons and hawks in American government, not to mention Israel.
Ideas symbolised in suggestive imagery inform the actions of individuals, groups, nations and armies. Ideas produce ideologies, and the history of mankind is packed with examples of the alarming scale of human destruction ideologies can cause. For Pakistan, while the promise of cheap aid is perennially a foreign policy driver and appears particularly attractive at the moment, unnecessarily entering the Yemen conflict would be courting disaster.
Joining the Saudi cause against Yemen will augment the disingenuous moral posturing of those groups that have perpetrated a cycle of genocide and violence against Shias in Pakistan with impunity. It may tragically lead to immediate cycles of further violence against minorities, something that our internally embattled polity would do well to avoid.
The writer is a freelance columnist.
Email: kmushir@hotmail.com
Twitter: @kmushir