Many have questioned the presence of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council in Bahrain yesterday. Their feelings are due to her call on Arab states not only to upgrade diplomatic relations with Iraq and deliver on promises of aid but also to take a stronger line against Iran.
However, just as the GCC needed to hear Iranian President Ahmadinejad at the GCC summit last December, so too it needs to hear what the Americans have to say on Iraq. Both are regional powers — the Americans through their unwanted military presence over the border — and the GCC is first and foremost about regional peace and stability.
The Arab diplomatic presence in Baghdad and more aid are primarily practical problems rather than political ones and will almost certainly be addressed at the Kuwait conference. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki also has called on Arab governments to reopen embassies in Baghdad and to cancel the country’s debts as a show of support for the country.
GCC governments positively want to help Iraq. One day it may well become a member of the group. The Kingdom has already taken part in a previous similar conference on Iraq and there have been promises of aid from virtually all GCC members. But there have been problems. Arab diplomats in Iraq have been particularly targeted by terrorists and will need to be assured of absolute security if they are to return. And helping Iraq is wholly dependent on what sort of Iraq it is. The GCC wants an Iraq in which all Iraqis — Arabs and Kurds, Sunnis, Shiites and Christians — are equally valued. Institutional discrimination by certain Iraqi ministries and institutions against Iraq’s Sunni community certainly did not help. That may be changing. The Iraqi government crackdown on Moqtada Sadr was clearly intended to send a message both to Iraqi Sunnis as well as to Arab governments that Al-Maliki now runs a national government rather than one that favors Shiites. There will therefore be a degree of convergence in Kuwait on Thursday. But Iran is another matter. Rice is wasting her breath calling on the GCC to rally against it. GCC states are not going to join an anti-Iranian coalition, no matter how loudly the Americans call for one.
We may have differences with Tehran on a number of issues but they can be best resolved through engagement and dialogue. Iran is part of the Middle East and we have to get on with it; it is our neighbor and when neighbors fall out, the consequences are always bad. We have differences with Washington too — serious differences — but that does not mean that we sign up to an anti-American coalition, which would be following the logic of Washington’s argument. Again, our differences are best addressed through dialogue, not confrontation, no matter how difficult or seemingly impossible the task.
There will be no GCC coalition against Iran. Washington had best accustom itself to that fact.
