"Sometimes, you just feel like Iran is about to repeat the same mistakes that Iraq has made under Saddam," opined Ghassan Charbel, the editor-in-chief of the pan-Arab daily Al Hayat. Saddam used to believe that the weak have no place in this world and that constant threats to strike Israel will earn him popularity. Iran may have the same convictions, but has more cunning too.
The Iranian regime is not suicidal; it has dealt with the post-September 11 world order with a great deal of realism. Iran hailed the abolition of the Taliban rule in Afghanistan and facilitated the ousting of Saddam, which has long impeded its ambitions to "permeate" the region. Iran now wants to become the most prominent state in the Middle East. It certainly does not want to scrape Israel off the map but wishes to curtail its power. Tehran is not seeking to confront Washington; it is rather aspiring to seal a partnership with it over regional matters. It is precisely this aim, however paradoxical it may sound, that pushes Iran to issue threats against Israel and generally act like the enfant terrible of the region. What we are witnessing between Iran and the US are not preliminaries to war but a fierce courtship towards talks.
It seems that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states are yielding to their internal, if periodic, geopolitical crises, further complicating the diplomatic scene in a Gulf region that already suffers from significant power imbalances, wrote Abdullah Khalifa al Shayji, political science professor at Kuwait University, in the Emirati daily Al Ittihad.
"The divergences between all six GCC states are due to a lack of mutual confidence, poor co-ordination and even competition," the writer said. "Bilateral discord is unfortunately recurrent as well." Some lingering issues between GCC states have, indeed, been already solved, like the Qatar-Bahrain islands question; others are still unsettled, leaving the Arab political body as a whole in a weakened state.
The latest episode of internal frictions within the 28-year-old GCC occurred when Saudi Arabia recently suspended Emirati citizens' right to enter Saudi territories using only their ID cards; now they need to show their passports. Saudi authorities said the UAE map on Emirati ID cards did not correspond to the 1974 border delineation treaty. On the strategic level, these minor divides do not serve the GCC joint security interests amid ominous terrorist threats. "Now, we must imperatively tidy up the interior of the GCC home [?] so it remains the most successful bloc in the region."
"We know neither the ethical nor military premises that prompted Mr Nouri al Maliki, the current Iraqi premier, to escalate the tone with his Arab neighbours, particularly Syria, threatening that whoever harbours 'criminals' will pay for it." Thus opened a comment piece by Abdelbari Atwan, the editor-in-chief of the London-based daily Al Quds al Arabi.
The system that really hosts criminals is that which has brought Mr al Maliki to power, Mr Atwan wrote. The Iraqi premier has filed a formal request with the United Nations to set up a special committee to investigate "Bloody Wednesday" events - last August 19 bombings in Baghdad which left about 100 people dead and more than 600 wounded - accusing Syria of harbouring leaders of the Iraqi Ba'ath party who have planned and carried out the attacks.
"Indeed, the Iraqi premier's request should not be a bother to Syria or any other Arab state, because the very first person this committee will have to interrogate is Mr al Maliki himself; first, for his party's involvement in bombings that killed innocent Iraqi civilians before the US invasion, then for his collaboration with US forces after the occupation." Mr al Maliki must not forget to sue George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Tony Blair et al while he's at it.
It is well-known that the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations are predicated on the land-for-peace principle, but peace has not come yet while land is disappearing under the Palestinians' feet, commented Mazen Hammad in the opinion pages of the Qatari daily Al Watan. Likewise, worthwhile initiatives are slipping through the hands of the US president Barack Obama who, in the face of Israeli obduracy, is slowly getting used to being "sheared of wings, wishy-washy, backstabbed and incapacitated".
Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet decision to carry on building hundreds of new housing units in the West Bank settlements is a serious setback to Mr Obama's general policy aimed at instituting peace in the Middle East. True, Washington has reacted to the Israeli decision, saying that it stalls efforts towards the resumption of talks, but how is that enough? What about the Palestinians who want the settlements freeze to last throughout the negotiations until an agreement is signed?
"This situation leads one to believe that the Obama administration lacks willingness, and perhaps the ability, to force the Israeli government to halt all settlement activity, as per the stipulations of the road map signed with Israel in 2003." * Digest compiled by Achraf ElBahi aelbahi@thenational.ae