The Islamic Republic of Iran’s Continuing Threat to Gulf Arabs 

The National reported Monday that “Dr Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to President Sheikh Mohamed, said the Gulf’s containment strategy towards Iran had ‘failed miserably’ and warned the country could pose a threat for decades to come.” Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum is actually the vice president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates.

Gargash is even more alarmed about the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran than Israel is, for two reasons. First, unlike Israel, the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf Arab states have much weaker defenses—when Iran began firing at the UAE, Israel moved an entire Iron Dome battery, together with IDF soldiers to operate them. Second, unlike Israel, the Gulf Arabs have no nuclear weapons that they could use as a second-strike response to any nuclear attack by Iran.

Abbas Araghchi, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s foreign minister, has been attempting in late April to reassure the Gulf Arabs, falsely claiming that Iran had been trying to hit not them, but only the American bases on their territory, and that Iran wants to be their friend. Gargash is having none of it; the Iranians not only have to forthrightly apologize, but most important, must agree to pay to repair the damages that its ballistic missiles and drones did to the infrastructure of the Gulf Arab states, amounting to tens of billions of dollars.

Gargash also said: “We are facing a profound crisis of confidence today, one that I believe will extend for decades to come.”

He’s right. Iran has repeatedly struck all of the GCC states — the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman — and caused enormous damage to these countries far beyond what was done to the American bases. How after such ferocious aggression can any of these countries trust Iran? From now on, they will be building up their defenses against only one country — Iran. And they will continue to demand reparations in full for damages the Iranians caused, with little hope of Iran agreeing. The only conceivable way that Iran could win back a modicum of trust from the Gulf Arabs is if the current regime in Tehran collapses, and is replaced by a new government run not by Shi’a fanatics, but by moderate Muslims and even secularists, who will commit to such reparations.

Anwar Gargash continues: “Trust, in my view, requires a great deal of work and will take many years. Until that happens, don’t be deceived by the statements you hear, statements that may contain a degree of courtesy.”

He’s well-versed in the wiles of smooth-talking Iranians. It was the Persian Shi’a, after all, who first practiced the art of taqiyya, the religiously-sanctioned deception that the Shi’a used in dealing with the Sunnis, denying their own beliefs so as to avoid persecution.

Unstated in Gargash’s remarks, meanwhile, is the fact that Israel, too, has become more important in the region. It is Israel that has borne most of the burden of weakening the Iranian military, destroying thousands of its ballistic missiles and drone factories, and with the American military, repeatedly hitting Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz, Fordow, and in Isfahan. It is Israel that transferred one of its Iron Dome batteries, and its soldiers to operate it, to the UAE. It is the IDF, in battering Iran , that has made the Gulf Arab states safer.

Gargash said: “We cannot allow anyone outside the Gulf region to dictate our security priorities. These missiles will not be aimed at them tomorrow; they will be aimed at us.”

I think he may be obliquely referring to the Palestinians, including those in Hamas and Hezbollah, who are alarmed at the growing defense ties between the UAE and Israel, and would like them not to develop any further. He added: “Therefore, there must be a Gulf vision, policy, and representation at the national level, and I hope at the collective level as well. National defence is very important but we must also say that Gulf solidarity was not up to the task.”

He surely has Saudi Arabia in mind. The Saudis have been actively trying to improve relations with Iran, out of fear that the Iranians might continue their attacks on the country’s oil production facilities. Gargash thinks that instead a united front of Gulf Arab states, they should agree on a single Iran policy, and demand first of all an end to all Iranian attacks anywhere in the Gulf, and second, for Iran to agree to reparations sufficient to repair the damage done by its ballistic missiles and drones.

Anwar Gargash is the most thoughtful of Gulf Arab analysts, and the one most wary of Iran. The president of the UAE, who is also the Emir of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, is listening to him. Let us hope that in Riyadh and Kuwait City, to start with, his views are given a respectful hearing for one reason — they make sense.