Arab states — and Israel — are watching intently as Iran’s political convulsions continue, seeking clues to how the unfolding crisis will affect the strategic picture in the Middle East, especially the key issue of the Islamic republic’s nuclear ambitions.
In a region where democratic politics are the exception, there is nervousness about the implications of people power on the streets of Tehran. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is deeply unpopular — but mass protests worry all autocrats.
ISRAEL
Officially and in public, at least, Israeli officials have spoken of their deep concern about Ahmadinejad’s apparent re-election. Israel’s rightwing government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has made a priority of challenging Iran’s nuclear ambitions. On Sunday night, Netanyahu said the world’s greatest challenge today was “the nexus between radical Islam and nuclear weapons.”
However, in private, Israeli officials appeared to be hoping for an Ahmadinejad victory even before the polls opened, despite his vitriolic criticism of Israel, his denial of the Holocaust and his apparent eagerness for a nuclear weapons program.
Israeli newspapers quoted several senior officials anonymously saying a win for Ahmadinejad would help Israel because, as they saw it, none of the candidates differed very much on policy and Ahmadinejad’s strong language and blunt actions made him easier to criticize internationally.
“Considering the circumstances, he is the best thing that ever happened to us,” one foreign ministry official was quoted as saying in the popular Ma’ariv newspaper last Friday.
Ben Caspit, a Ma’ariv columnist, put it even more bluntly that morning: “If you have friends in Iran, try to convince them to vote for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today ... There is no one who will serve Israel’s PR interests better.”
Far fewer were the voices who questioned that line of thinking. Among them was Aluf Benn, a Ha’aretz columnist who dismissed the support for Ahmadinejad as a “blatant manifestation of the narrow horizons of Israeli strategic thinking.”
LEBANON
Recently emerging from their own political upheavals, savvy Lebanese see much of themselves in the people politics unfolding in Tehran.
“It reminds me of our protests,” said Haitham Chamas, an activist who helped organize protests in 2005 that brought 1 million Lebanese to the streets calling for democratic reforms and the fall of the government.
Just as in Tehran, that opposition was swiftly answered by a huge rally in support of the incumbent regime, organized then by Hezbollah, which is allied with Iran and Syria.
Chamas and friends have spent the last week talking of little else but what the historic events unfolding in Iran could mean for Lebanon, where Iranian financing of Hezbollah has divided opinion like never before.
The Western-backed government, known as March 14, recently beat Hezbollah and its allies in undisputed elections.
“I think if [defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein] Mousavi’s supporters stay on the streets for a week the regime will fall and that will seriously affect Hezbollah,” Chamas said.
Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, was quick to congratulate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his disputed re-election, saying it represented “great hope to all the oppressed people.”
In the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut, men and women speak admiringly of Ahmadinejad as a true leader of the Shiite cause and brand Mousavi “Iran’s March 14 candidate.”
But for those who see Iran as meddling in Lebanon’s affairs, the turmoil in Tehran brings a certain satisfaction.
“Now the Iranians are arranging their own house, so perhaps we can expect a little less interference in ours,” said Sawssan Abou Zahr, a journalist with An Nahar newspaper.
IRAQ
Iran’s near neighbor and former arch-foe has remained largely silent in the wake of the post-election revolt.
The Iraqi street is paying little heed to the contested result and national leaders have passed only cursory congratulations to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the tumultuous days since.
Lawmakers from the Shiite parties have mostly refused public comment to Iraqi media. Many maintain close links to establishment figures in Tehran and some owe their careers to the patronage of Shiite Islamic clerics and supporters.
However, with elections just over six months away, Iraqi MPs are keen to distance themselves from the perception of foreign sponsorship and to concentrate on shaping a sovereign state.
On the streets, people were ambivalent.
“This is the Middle East,” said a woman from Baghdad. “Wars and revolutions happen all the time.”
GULF STATES
In Saudi Arabia, Iran’s main Arab adversary and leader of the conservative US-backed camp, the government has made no public comment. But there are signs of concern about the effect of the unrest on the Shiite majority in the kingdom’s oil-producing eastern provinces.
“The Saudis are watching this upheaval and internal divisions with satisfaction,” said political analyst Mai Yamani. “It weakens the aggressive ambitions of Iran as they see it. It also damages the prospects for talks between the [US President Barack] Obama administration and Iran, which they feel would be at Saudi expense if they succeeded.”
The United Arab Emirates, which has a long-running dispute with Iran over three tiny Gulf islands, congratulated Ahmadinejad. Dubai, home to a large Iranian expatriate community, banned election-related protests.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS