06 December 2007
The Gulf States and Iran
There are at least four reasons to dismiss Max Boot’s call for the Gulf Arab states to take part in a tough sanctions regime or even military action against Iran in his OpEd in the December 5, 2007, Wall Street Journal:
1) These Arab states don’t really feel threatened by a nuclear neighbor. Saddam didn’t need WMD to invade Kuwait, and the Gulf States are used to living under the gun—Israel has, in their minds, always been a menace, and the West always dominated their political life, even when they have oil as their counterbalancing weapon.
2) Leading families, including the royals, in the Gulf States have made a lot of money on Iran’s mullah-provoked Diaspora. This is particularly true of Dubai whose oil brings less and less revenue each day.
3) Most of these states’ landowners will have large capital losses if the mullahs are overthrown and the expatriate Iranians return home for good.
4) Any autocracy across the Gulf, religious or monarchical, is better for the Arab princedoms than a more participatory system of government there. What would the Middle East look like today if Mossadegh had not been ousted by the CIA? How long do we think the Arab royals would have lasted with an orderly secular democratic model next door for their educated youth?
The Gulf States are ruled by a closed society of wealthy merchants and landowners, with their appointed royal families, who realize that having a menace to the West for a neighbor has benefits that outweigh its dangers. They didn’t expect Saddam to break their regional rules of coexistence and, unless Iran does so, they won’t support U.S.-led regime change in that country either.
