The Osterley Times: U.S. Plans New Arms Sales to Gulf Allies

Saturday, July 28, 2007

U.S. Plans New Arms Sales to Gulf Allies

There's a report in today's Washington Post about US plans to increase weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman. With massive increases in military aid packages to Israel and Egypt as well.

Why are they doing this?

U.S. officials said the common goal of the military aid packages and arms sales is to strengthen pro-Western countries against Iran at a time when the hard-line regime seeks to extend its power in the region.

You'll notice that the article carries no proof that "the hard line regime seeks to extend it's power in the region", nor that it seeks to do so through a policy of invasion, which would be the main reason why Washington would want to increase the defence capability of so many of Iran's neighbours.

It's yet another attempt to portray Iran as a regional threat without Iran having to do a thing. There is no question that Iran has emerged as a regional superpower since the fall of Saddam, but then any first year Secondary school student familiar with history could have told the doughballs in the White House that this would have been the natural outcome of ousting Saddam. Indeed, it was exactly to prevent such an outcome that the US backed Saddam in the Iran-Iraq war and Henry Kissinger loudly lamented, "It's a shame that they can't both lose".

Cheney and Bush upturned decades of US policy in the region when they frog-marched into Iraq and it now appears that they did so without fully thinking the matter through.

Even their newly minted plan to militarily increase the power of Iran's neighbours highlights one glaring hole in their thinking: Israel. Since when has it been in Israel's interests to have all of it's Arab neighbours strengthened militarily? One can only imagine that this is the reason for the promised $30.4 billion in military aid over the next decade to Israel and the increase to Egypt for remaining friends with Israel.

However, something else is going on here and it's something that we heard about briefly a couple of months ago. This is also part of the realignment which Rice spoke of, the decision by this administration to favour Sunni regimes over Shi'ia regimes in the Middle East as "centres of moderation".

This realignment came about because the Bush regime, and this really is almost impossible to believe, thought that a Shi'ite government in Iraq would provide a pro-American balance to the Sunni extremists.

They ignored warnings from the intelligence community about the ties between Iraqi Shiite leaders and Iran, where some had lived in exile for years. Now, to the distress of the White House, Iran has forged a close relationship with the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

So what we are now witnessing is a doubling of the bet, with the US throwing money at Sunni allies with the purpose of, once again, portraying Iran as some menacing regional threat. I can't actually remember the last time Iran invaded a neighbour but it's got to be at least a couple of hundred years ago. And what makes this particular White House strategy so bizarre is that it is happening at a time when the US are facing a Sunni insurgency in Iraq - an insurgency, part of which the US has recently started arming to fight al Qaeda.

This is all actually part of a larger picture, no doubt dreamt up by Dick Cheney, of provoking some kind of reaction from Iran which could be used to justify a US strike on that country.

Flynt Leverett, a former Bush Administration National Security Council official, told me [Seymour Hersh] that “there is nothing coincidental or ironic” about the new strategy with regard to Iraq. “The Administration is trying to make a case that Iran is more dangerous and more provocative than the Sunni insurgents to American interests in Iraq, when—if you look at the actual casualty numbers—the punishment inflicted on America by the Sunnis is greater by an order of magnitude,” Leverett said. “This is all part of the campaign of provocative steps to increase the pressure on Iran. The idea is that at some point the Iranians will respond and then the Administration will have an open door to strike at them.”

Now, even though the Israelis would love nothing more than for the US to attack Iran, it's a very large gamble that the Bush administration are asking them to take. After all, the White House could arm Israel's neighbours to the teeth and Iran might not react at all. Which would hardly suit the Israelis.

So I suspect that Israel's many friends in Congress might examine these plans very carefully indeed.

In addition to promising an increase in American military aid to Israel, the Pentagon is seeking to ease Israel’s concerns over the proposed weapons sales to Saudi Arabia by asking the Saudis to accept restrictions on the range, size and location of the satellite-guided bombs, including a commitment not to store the weapons at air bases close to Israeli territory, the officials said.

The package and the possible steps to allay Israel’s concerns were described to Congress this week, in an effort by the administration to test the reaction on Capitol Hill before entering into final negotiations on the package with Saudi officials.

One can only wonder how the arming of her Sunni neighbours and, indeed, the arming of components of the Iraqi Sunni insurgency itself goes down with Maliki's government. It can hardly be seen as a positive step. But then, I get the feeling that Cheney has his eyes on Iran and doing something about that before he leaves office, rather than worrying about the opinions of those ungrateful Iraqis.

And to that end, he doesn't care who he's annoying. However, the whole thing does have more than a whiff of policy being created on the hoof, and it'll be very interesting to see how Congress reacts to this latest plan. I say this because of one line in an article in today's Ha'aretz newspaper: