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Iran Roundtable Discussion

Date & Time

Wednesday
Jul. 1, 2009
12:00pm – 1:00pm ET

Overview

Iran's Reach in the Gulf

On July 1, 2009, the Middle East Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars hosted a roundtable discussion with a group of experts to assess Iran's influence in the Gulf States by examining its political, social, and economic weight in these countries. The following topics were discussed:
• Iran-Gulf relations and the impact of the US-Iraq War
• Sources of conflict in Iran-Saudi relations
• Gulf States' security reliance on the US
• Gulf perceptions of the US vis-à-vis Iran
• Economic ties between Iran and the UAE
• Effects of Iran's post-election turmoil in the Gulf

On the surface, Iran has excellent relations with most of the Gulf States, but it is also perceived as a dangerous neighbor with inauspicious political ambitions. While the participants reaffirmed that Gulf States consider Iran a regional power posing a threat, they argued that this perception is exaggerated. Nevertheless, they recognized that historical precedents and security concerns contribute to Gulf States' insecurity about Iran. One speaker recalled the words of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, "All rulers are afraid of their own people and will follow the example of Iran. I hope other Islamic countries, which are bound by other worldly values, will rid themselves of these bonds and join their Iranian brothers in this great crusade so that they can become victorious in their fight against the superpowers."

The participants noted that Iranian foreign policy over the past decade has been substantially different than it was in the two decades immediately following the Islamic revolution, when Iran was ideologically driven and harbored territorial as well as Shi'a-Islam expansionist ambitions. Although Iran has since pursued a policy of détente towards its Gulf neighbors, the Gulf leadership remembers a time when Iran, already perceived as a hegemonic power by nature, aimed to provoke Shiite passions throughout the region.

According to roundtable discussants, Iran paranoia in the Gulf is also rooted in the fact that the economies of most small Gulf States are based along shorelines. Iran's easy access to key Gulf ports via the Persian Gulf and Sea of Oman induces a deep sense of vulnerability in these smaller states. One speaker explained that these small states are unable to think in terms of second-strike capacities as deterrents because they will not survive a first strike. Furthermore, the participants believe that the disunity of the Gulf States contributes to their insecurity, explaining that there is a very acute perception in the Gulf of the imbalance of power between the Gulf States and Iran. The sense that, politically, the Gulf States collectively recognize that they do not present a united front against Iran contributes to their feeling of having a built-in political disadvantage. It is important to recognize that the perception of Iran as a power is real and that, as such, the Gulf States will continue to let their fear guide them when considering security policies. The fear, real or perceived, is an actuality and, therefore, must be treated as a fact when dealing with the issue of Iran's role in the Gulf and in prescribing US and Gulf policy towards Iran. One speaker described the fear of Iran in the Gulf as a narrow continuum ranging from a state of "high concern" to "paranoia."

The discussion then moved to analyzing the relationship between Iran and Saudi Arabia and their rivalry as the two preeminent forces in the Gulf. This rivalry has two key elements: ideological competition and concern over security and influence. The implications of both Shi'a-Sunni religious rivalry and Persian-Arab ethnic rivalry were discussed.

Concerning the religious rivalry, roughly two million Shi'a Muslims live within the Kingdom, collectively accounting for 10 to 12 percent of the total population. Significantly, these two million Shi'a are largely concentrated in the Eastern Province where the Saudi oil and gas fields are located. For this reason, the Saudi Shi'a community has long been regarded by its Sunni counterpart as a potential risk to the oil industry as well as national security. Several speakers explained that current Saudi leadership, including the King himself, is highly suspicious of the Kingdom's Shi'a contingent; an attitude, they posited, indoctrinated by certain ethno-religious precepts intrinsic to the Saudi ruling system. In particular, Wahhabism - the governing Sunni-Salafi sect in Saudi Arabia - is extremely hostile to Shi'ism, and has historically deemed this Muslim sect as apostates. Hence, the Wahabi religious establishment has always worked to limit and suppress the spread and influence of Shi'ism in the Kingdom. Meanwhile, however, this disdain for Shi'ism is always in contradiction with the larger sense that the Saudi-Sunni clerical establishment, as the self-appointed "guardians of the Islamic faith," must represent all Muslims.

Relations between the Saudi Shiites and Sunnis within the Kingdom and Iran have undergone a sharp deterioration since early 2009. In February, Saudi police clashed with Shiite pilgrims for several days near a cemetery in Medina. In reaction, Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, a firebrand of the Saudi Shi'a community, publicly threatened Shiite secession from the Kingdom. In April 2009, the Saudis declared that they would not participate in the Islamic Solidarity Games scheduled to be held in October in Tehran, unless Iran removed the term "Persian Gulf" from all game medals, brochures, and other event-related literature and merchandise. Iran reacted by cancelling the games altogether. Subsequently, in May of 2009, the Imam of the Grand Mosque, Sheikh Adil Al-Kalbani, proclaimed that Shiites are heretics and that they have no right to representation on the Saudi Supreme Council of Ulama. His pronouncement came in defense of King Abdullah's February 2009 decision not to promote Shiites in the government or religious establishment, to which at least one-tenth of the Kingdom's population took umbrage.

Most participants who spoke on this issue expressed concern that the bad blood between the two Muslim communities creates ideal conditions for the recruitment of Saudi Shiite dissidents for terrorist activities – a sub-populace seen as most susceptible to such advances. According to one speaker, there have been several reports that Saudi Hezbollah, dismantled following the 1987 Khobar Towers bombing, has been revived, relatively unnoticed, in recent years. While Saudi Hezbollah has yet to launch any known attacks, there is still high concern about Iranian-sponsored terrorism inside the Kingdom. Today, the US is assisting the Saudis create a new force of 35,000 security guards to protect the oil installations, particularly in the eastern part of the country.

There was a consensus among the participants that the historically rooted Persian-Arab rivalry plays an elemental, if not intrinsic, role in the Iranian-Saudi rivalry, which should not be underestimated. One participant recalled a conversation with a senior leader in the UAE who reportedly told him, "You don't understand, the Iranians have only been Shi'a for 500 years, they've been Persians for millennia." This anecdote was raised to suggest that ethnic tensions outweigh religious rivalry. One speaker suggested that the Saudis, who consider themselves the unequivocal leaders of the Arab world, are concerned that Iran is "out-Arabizing" the Arabs with its unabashed public support of militant Islamic extremist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. Another speaker argued that Iran has been driven to go "ideologically crazy," as it has become the most outspoken leader in anti-Israel campaigns, having also made inflammatory comments about the West in order to achieve strategic depth in the region in the face of Saudi and American efforts to create an alliance against them.

In discussing the history of Iran-Saudi relations, the speakers specifically examined why efforts in the 1990s to improve relations failed. Offering the Iranian perspective, one participant explained that the Iranian leadership, in an effort to discourage foreign presence in the Gulf, made a deliberate decision to mend relations with the Saudis under the presidencies of Rafsanjani and Khatami. Another participant countered that the Saudis were, in fact, always willing to improve relations with Iran, until 2003, when Iran's secret nuclear program was discovered, thus shattering the trust of Saudi, as well as Western, leadership. The internal repercussions in the Gulf as a result of the US invasion of Iraq were also examined. For example, in April 2003, forty-five Saudi Shiites, both men and women, sent a petition to the King entitled, "Partners in One Nation," in which they outlined their grievances and called for a greater role for Shiites in the Kingdom's institutions. To the surprise of many, King Abdullah, then the Crown Prince, responded to this request by holding a series of national dialogue meetings in which he invited all religious minorities to participate. This resulted in brief period of smooth internal relations within Kingdom.

The participants concurred that the 2003 Iraq War and 2005 presidential election of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran further contributed to the decline of Iran-Saudi relations. Participants familiar with Saudi royal court politics explained that King Abdullah takes his politics very personally. According to these participants, the King had civil and fairly close personal relationships with both Khatami and Rafsanjani; on the other hand, he does not care for Ahmadinejad. The cool relationship was traced back to 2005, when Ahmadinejad visited Mecca for a conference of Organization of the Islamic Conference heads of state organized by King Abdullah. The King made an important and, in many ways, unprecedented speech in which he deplored the recent actions of some Islamic extremists, also highlighting the historic and future significance of scientific achievement in the Muslim world. Yet, he was blown out of the headlines by Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial and "Israel should be wiped off the map" statement. This was an embarrassment to King Abdullah's unity conference, especially as it occurred on his home soil with the world watching.

The Gulf perception of the United States was another important theme touched on by the roundtable, honing in on how those perceptions affects the dynamic between the Gulf States and Iran. Many participants emphasized that the Gulf States do not fully trust the United States. Regardless, most agreed that US foreign-policy decisions are of great import in both the short- and long-run. According to many participants, Saudi concerns about US intentions were exacerbated by the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and its aftermath – with consequences still arising - which, for the Saudis, had the unwelcomed effect of changing the power balance in the region by putting Iran's "friends" in power in Baghdad, effectively putting the Gulf States on the frontline of the confrontation with Iran. There was also a general consensus that the presence of a pro-Iranian, Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad generates concerns that Iraq has become a channel for the spread of Iranian influence and Shi'ism into the Sunni Muslim world and, therefore, a direct challenge to them. One participant explained that Iraq had previously been the bulwark of the eastern front – "the gateway." However, since 2003, that gate has been opened, if not shattered. One speaker argued that the reason why Gulf leaders express such concern over Iran, in private, is because their national security strategies rely on having a powerful external guarantor – the United States; they feel that the only way to keep the US interested in the region is to play off the Iranian issue.

The question of how heavily the Gulf States rely on the US for their own security was a point of contention. Some participants argued that Gulf security has many layers and that the US is only their last layer or "last resort." However, many disagreed, arguing that because of their size, Gulf States are unable to provide their own security and almost by definition require an external guarantor. Furthermore, the absence of any serious deliberation on a new type of regional security system and the refusal to integrate weapons systems on an operational level shows the Gulf's lack of commitment to collective security. They noted that the perception of Iran as an existential threat has not contributed to confidence building and regional cooperation and that Iraq may now be playing a negative role and becoming a burden. Finally, the speakers agreed that the Gulf leadership is beginning to recognize that having a security strategy based on an external guarantor does not protect them from the threat of internal unrest. For these countries, protests similar to those in the aftermath of the June 12 Iranian Presidential Election would be more debilitating than a foreign threat.

The dynamics between Iran and Gulf proliferation, beginning by exploring the background of nuclear programs in the region, was examined during the discussion. To date, the Middle East has no declared nuclear weapon states. Israel is an undeclared, albeit acknowledged nuclear weapons state. Israel's acquisition of that capability triggered nuclear flirtation by Egypt before the 1967 War but did not precipitate catalytic proliferation in the region. Iraq, Libya and Iran had covert weapons programs motivated, not by the need to counter an existential threat, but by the desire to secure preponderant security status in the region. In 2003, two important precedents were set with two of those programs. In Iraq there was coercive non-proliferation resulting from a change of regime. In Libya there was non-proliferation through change within a regime. In the Libyan case, the crux of the deal was a tacit but clear security assurance from the United States that it would eschew a regime change as an objective if Libya agreed to transparent weapons of mass destruction disarmament. The consensus among the roundtable participants was that the Iranian nuclear program is determined and incremental; it is not a crash program to get a weapon as quickly as possible in the face of an existential threat, to the extent that Iran perceives a regime-changing threat arising from the United States. They also noted that Iran's interest in nuclear weapons is not specific to the current regime, dating back to the Shah's period. Participants agreed that, although North Korea has a more advanced nuclear weapons program, Iran is viewed as a more dynamic threat because of its oil revenues and its assertive ideologically driven foreign policy.

Given this context and the fact that Iran has already mastered a uranium enrichment technology, the participants agreed that Iran is unlikely to pursue either reversal or weaponization. In the absence of an emergent threat, they agreed that Iran is likely to continue a nuclear hedge strategy indefinitely. Given the possible regional reaction to an overt weapons program in Iran, a hedge strategy might suit Iran's interests. To make this point, one speaker quoted former President Rafsanjani saying, "As long as we can enrich uranium and master the fuel cycle, we don't need anything else. Our neighbors will be able to draw the proper conclusions." Of course, an Iranian hedge strategy could generate comparable hedging strategies by other countries exploring nuclear energy for reasons pertaining to both security and climate change.

While in agreement over the nature of Iran's nuclear program, there was disagreement over the impact that a nuclear Iran would have on relations between Iran and the Gulf States. Some participants said that a nuclear Iran, intensifying Saudi insecurities, would serve as a catalyst for a nuclear arms race in the region. They suggested that a nuclear Iran would move the Gulf States to pursue a nuclear weapon – either by developing it themselves or buying it from Pakistan or another country with nuclear capacity. Others argued that Saudi Arabia is less concerned about Iran acquiring nuclear capabilities than they are with the possibility of US exit from the region. One speaker explained, "If someone has a gun pointed to your head, it doesn't matter if they have a cannon pointed at your back." Offering what they called a "counterintuitive hypothesis" on the nexus of the Iranian nuclear program and the Gulf Arabs' rising interest in nuclear energy, one participant suggested that pursuing a nuclear energy program may be one way that the Gulf States are positioning themselves in the nuclear game vis-à-vis Iran. Explaining that Iran doesn't want to be singled out as having some exceptional rules imposed on it for nuclear energy, the speaker suggested that the Gulf Arabs may be looking to create a larger discussion that would save face for Iran if Iran were to be persuaded to go the international fuel bank route. The Gulf Arabs could then be seen as having facilitated or contributed to that outcome.

The economic relationship between Iran and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries was addressed while participants debated whether or not it was a significant factor in the Iran-Gulf equation. Many speakers said that the significance of the economic relationship between Iran and the Gulf States is exaggerated and that it plays little or no role in their overall relationship. In the past ten years, the GCC share of Iran's total exports has increased. However, because Iran is not a major exporter, its exports to GCC countries make up less than 2 percent and are therefore relatively insignificant. On the other hand, Iran's imports from GCC countries, when measured against total imports of Iran, are somewhat significant, at almost 12 percent in 2009. These figures indicate that the GCC block is important to Iran. Most speakers also agreed that Iran is interested in expanding economic ties with Gulf States in hope of using trade leverage to discourage GCC countries from closer cooperation with the US. One participant noted that in 2006 and 2007, whenever a high delegate group from the US visited a GCC capital, within a short period of time, a group from Iran visited the same capital, "You could see them almost tracing one another and competing in trying to influence the policies of GCC countries."

While the overall consensus was that the economic trade between Iran and these countries is not a significant factor that might prohibit further deterioration of relationships between the two groups, some suggested that specific elements of Iran-GCC economic relationship are significant, like the Iran-Saudi Arabia relationship. One speaker suggested that even though the relationship between Iran and Saudi Arabia is not one of reciprocal reliance as it stands today, this may be subject to change in the future because natural gas is becoming a hot commodity as a result of the rapidly expanding petro-chemical industry, and the Saudis have been trying to purchase natural gas from Iran. This could be one motivation for Gulf States to expand economic relations with Iran.

The participants then explored economic relations between Iran and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), focusing on Iran-Dubai in depth. There was a consensus among the speakers that trade with the UAE through Dubai is critical to Iran because Dubai has become an important re-export center for Iranian goods since the economic sanctions imposed on Iran limit their own capacity for trade with many countries. There was disagreement over the importance of Iran to the UAE and Dubai. This is not a reciprocal relationship, citing data showing that Iran makes up a fraction of UAE trade. However, others argued that Iran is significant, if not to the UAE as a whole, very much so to Dubai. They pointed out that Iran brings investment, jobs, tourism, and workers (through migration) to Dubai; meanwhile, Dubai businesses have profited from the inflow of Iranians. Of significance to this relationship, however, is the impact of the recent global economic downturn on Dubai. It is yet unclear to what extent this downturn has affected Dubai's economic ties to Iran and how it will affect those ties in the future.

In the end, all agreed that the UAE's relationship with the US is most important to them and that the Emirati leadership would be willing to terminate trade with Iran if the US applied pressure on them to do so. Among these participants, there remained disagreement over whether this would require strong or extreme US pressure.

Finally, the possibilities of the UAE emirate Ras al-Khaimah becoming its new center for trade were discussed. The speakers explained that the increased trade in and out of Ras al-Khaimah is mostly an initiative of that emirate, understanding that Iran will try to find an alternative for Dubai. One speaker explained that the Ras al-Khaimah phenomenon was a strategic decision in Abu Dhabi that started before the economic crisis to cut Dubai down to size because Abu Dhabi did not like the model of development: too fast, too much, over saturated in Dubai. They suggested that it is likely that it will continue because there is quite substantial financial support from Abu Dhabi for Ras al-Khaimah. However, the participants agreed that it is hard to imagine that Ras al-Khaimah could ever become a complete substitute for Dubai, in part because the large Iranian community in Dubai is important in facilitating that trade.

The final issue explored at length was the effect in the Gulf of the protests following Iran's contentious June 2009 presidential election. Some participants stressed that the internal unrest in Iran was a positive force for Gulf countries because it damaged Iran's image and revealed its instability. However, others argued that Gulf leaders were very concerned about the protests because they fear internal instability, and they are worried that the events in Iran will inspire their own populations, who have been relatively quiet in the past, to rise up. In countries like Saudi Arabia, where 60 percent of their population is under 18, the protests in Iran are especially troubling.

All participants agreed that the outbreak of post-election protests have delivered a serious blow to Iran's regional posture. One participant explained that Najaf and Sistani pose a serious alternative clerical hub to Qom and that Iranians may be concerned that their internal unrest will result in a transfer of Shiite Islam religious power. Speakers also discussed what effect the internal unrest will have on Iranian foreign policy: will Iran try to distract attention and become more aggressive or will retrench and focus on uprisings at home?

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Middle East Program

The Wilson Center’s Middle East Program serves as a crucial resource for the policymaking community and beyond, providing analyses and research that helps inform US foreign policymaking, stimulates public debate, and expands knowledge about issues in the wider Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.  Read more

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