26 April - 2 May 2007
Issue No. 842
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/842/op12.htm
What the moderate Arab world is
In the second of two pieces examining Iran's rising regional role, Amal
Saad-Ghorayeb* argues that attempts by "moderate" Arab leaders to whip up
popular fear of Iran are US-orchestrated and aimed to keep in-check regional
resistance to US-Israeli plans
Not only does the notion of an Iraq-inspired model of Shia empowerment fail to
stand up to scrutiny, but the so-called "Shia crescent" that Iran allegedly
seeks to fashion out of it is an equally unsound proposition denoting a
sectarian enterprise defined by an exclusively Shia alliance, an all-Shia
constituency, and a regional agenda that caters solely to Shia communal
interests.
Judged by these criteria, the regional alliance of which Iran and Hizbullah are
part, bears little, if any, resemblance to a Shia crescent and much more to a
cross-sectarian strategic front, consisting of state and non-state actors,
which commands the support of the vast majority of both Shias and Sunnis in the
region based on its political and military confrontation to the US and Israel.
This quadripartite alliance is not confined to Shia actors such as Iran and
Hizbullah, but also incorporates the Sunni movement Hamas and a predominantly
Sunni Syria, led by a secular Baathist state. Although many proponents of the
Shia crescent theory insist, nonetheless, on counting Syria as a Shia state on
account of its Alawite regime, such an attempt is an overstretch given the
highly disputable classification of Alawism as Shiism among Shia clerical
circles. In fact, it was not until 1973 that Alawites were deemed to belong to
the Shia sect by Imam Musa As-Sadr, who did so as a political favour to
President Hafez Al-Assad. The inclusion of Hamas and Syria in this alliance,
means that it cannot be considered Shia or even Islamic in character and
composition, but more accurately regional.
Yet, this has not prevented Arab leaders from trying to stoke fears of an
Iran-led Shia power grab in the region. Besides the now infamous "Shia
crescent" spectre raised by Jordan's King Abdullah, Egypt's President Mubarak
accused Shias of paying allegiance to Iran before their own nation-states while
Saudi officials have also publicly expressed concern over Iran's cultural and
political influence in the region. To a large extent, this scare-mongering
rhetoric has failed to strike a chord among Arab Sunnis, despite reports to the
contrary in Western and some Arab media. Though Sunni-Shia tensions cannot be
discounted, they are far less the product of the ascent of a Shia power in the
region like Iran, or the looming threat of a Shia crescent, than of concrete
crises in Iraq, and to a much narrower extent, Lebanon.
The current Sunni-Shia rift is fundamentally a political one that has been
fuelled by the ouster of Sunni leader Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the
institution of an American-backed, Shia- dominated state. Sunni rage was
further ignited by the Iraqi government's highly incendiary execution of
Hussein in December last year. While Iran is not feared as a Shia power as
such, its support for the Iraqi government and its alleged links with Shia
death squads in Iraq has earned it the reproach of many Sunnis and soured
Sunni-Shia relations overall. In a similar vein, the crisis in Lebanon between
the Siniora government and the Hizbullah-led opposition, has been interpreted
by some Sunnis in the region as a flagrant Shia-instigated power struggle which
has derailed Hizbullah from its loftier campaign of resistance to Israel.
Having said all this, the scope and intensity of sectarian tensions should not
be exaggerated. Even in Lebanon, where the Sunni-Shia divide is only second to
Iraq in its rancour, two-thirds of Sunnis do not support Sunni attacks against
Shias in Iraq, while almost three-quarters of them do not view the Shia
crescent as a reality, according to the findings of a Beirut Centre for
Research and Information (BCRI) poll. In the region as a whole, Sunnis do not
appear to be anywhere near as concerned as their leaders about Iran's rise as a
regional powerhouse and its attendant sectarian implications. A joint survey
conducted by Shibley Telhami and Zogby International in November 2006, revealed
that only six per cent of a general sample of respondents from the
predominantly Sunni countries of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and UAE,
in addition to Lebanon -- states dubbed as "moderate" by the Bush
administration -- regarded Iran as the greatest threat to their security,
despite the fact that significant majorities in each of these countries viewed
Iran's role in Iraq as negative. What these findings imply is that while the
vast majority of Sunni Arabs are highly critical of Iran's policy on Iraq, they
do not draw generalisations about Iran's Middle East policy on this basis. In
other words, they do not see Iraq as the lynchpin of an incipient Shia crescent
led by Iran that imperils their security. In fact, any misgivings Sunni Arabs
may have about Iran and Hizbullah appear to be outweighed by the perception of
these two strategic players as bulwarks against US hegemonic designs and
Israeli territorial ambitions in the region.
As reported by the Telhamy-Zogby poll, 80 per cent of respondents see Israel
and the US as posing the greatest threats to their security. Such fears have
been prompted by the Bush administration's "war on terror," that is defined in
part by doctrines of pre-emptive war and regime change that aim to reshape the
face of the Middle East region. The US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, with
threats to do the same in Syria and Iran, have combined with its orchestration
of the Israeli onslaught against Lebanon last summer and the international
embargo it organised against the Palestinians, starving them of needed funds,
to create an image of the US as not merely a civilisational threat to Arabs and
Muslims, but increasingly an existential one.
In this connection, Iran's right to nuclear power is supported by 61 per cent
of Arabs, according to the results of the Telhami-Zogby poll, although half of
all respondents in the survey suspect that Iran's nuclear programme is intended
for weapons manufacture. For the majority of "moderate" Sunni Arabs then, a
nuclear- armed Iran is a desirable counterweight to US and Israeli military
dominance in the region. This is further evinced by the fact that President
Ahmadinejad was ranked the third most popular leader in the Sunni Arab world,
as reported by the Telhami-Zogby survey, in light of his renowned defiance of
the US and his highly inflammatory anti-Israel rhetoric, which, while not
sitting well with all Iranians back home, wins him much kudos in the Arab
world.
Support for Iran also owes itself in large part to its longstanding sponsorship
of popular Islamist resistance movements in the region -- Hizbullah and Hamas.
Although Arab regimes castigated Hizbullah for its abduction of Israeli
soldiers in July 2006, with Saudi Arabia condemning Hizbullah's actions as
"irresponsible adventurism", popular Arab support for the movement reached its
zenith in last summer's war, given the scale of the Israeli offensive and the
resistance's ability to defeat the militarily superior Israeli army. As a
consequence, the stature of Hizbullah's secretary-general, Sayyid Hassan
Nasrallah, was elevated to heroic proportions in much of the Sunni Arab world,
earning him the title of the "new Gamal Abdel Nasser" for his showdown with
Israel. In the Telhami-Zogby poll, Nasrallah was ranked the most popular leader
by Arab respondents, while in a BCRI survey commissioned by Kuwait's Al-Qabas
newspaper in December, Nasrallah emerged as Sunni Kuwait's preferred leader,
with 40 per cent of Kuwaitis expressing their preference for him over other
Sunni leaders.
In keeping with the growing tide of anti-Israel sentiment, Sunni Islamist
movements, including Muslim Brotherhood wings in Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere,
lent their full support to Hizbullah's war effort, while Al-Qaeda's second in
command, Ayman Al Zawahiri, jumped on the anti- Israel bandwagon in support of
the resistance. In turn, Arab regimes, which had previously underestimated
Hizbullah's endurance and military strength, were compelled to considerably
tone down their earlier rhetoric in a desperate bid to salvage what remaining
legitimacy they had left with a staunchly pro-resistance Arab public.
What facilitates the appeal of Shia Islamic actors like Iran and Hizbullah to
an Arab Sunni audience is their embrace of the core principles of a once
predominately Sunni Arabist movement. Arabist slogans such as resistance to
occupation, the liberation of Palestine and the struggle against imperialism
for regional independence, resonate well with the Sunni Arab street. While
Hizbullah's Arab nationality somewhat mitigates its Shia identity, the notion
of a Shia-Persian power becoming the standard bearer of Sunni Arab causes,
appears more paradoxical. But judging from the level of Sunni Arab support for
Hizbullah and Iran, it appears as though the perceived restoration of Arab
pride and dignity that these two strategic players have bought about overrides
national and sectarian considerations.
In effect, the much promoted "Shia crescent" theory appears to be far less of a
political reality, or widespread social concern, than a card played by
"moderate" Arab regimes to whip up fears among their Sunni publics within the
context of a wider, US-orchestrated campaign to enlist the support of Sunni
Arab regimes in demonising and isolating Iran. Since these regimes are
unwilling to forgo their alliances with the US, they feel compelled to invent
an enemy to counter- balance and deflect attention away from the US- Israeli
threat, on which they cannot deliver, with the purpose of winning back some
popular legitimacy via an imagined threat called "Shiism".
While the spectre of a Shia-Iranian security threat is one concocted by Arab
leaders, the Iran- Hizbullah model is a very real political threat to the
popular legitimacy and regional influence of Arab regimes. What the "moderate"
regimes of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia fear is not so much the strategic
threat posed to them by a nuclear-emboldened Iran, or even a Shia conversion
campaign in their Sunni heartland, but rather, the model of political
empowerment represented by Iran and Hizbullah. Arab alarmism is therefore not
directed at the export of religious or cultural Shiism but, more significantly,
at political Shiism as defined by its anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist,
pro-resistance identity. That the US supports Saudi efforts to play a more
active role in resolving regional disputes, in a last ditch attempt to eclipse
Iran's regional soft power, is indicative of the recognition by both parties of
the extent of Iran's influence and appeal among Sunni Arabs. And it is
precisely because Iran does not act like a Shia power, with distinctly Shia
objectives, that makes it such a formidable challenge to the US and its Arab
allies. For the US-allied moderate states, the gravest threat to the longevity
and stability of their regimes is a strategic regional alliance that cuts
across the Sunni-Shia, Persian-Arab and religious-secular divides.
In effect, the new fault lines dividing the region are not between Arab-led
Sunnis and Persian-led Shias, nor between democrats and autocrats, a la
yesteryear's Bush doctrine. Nor is the now fashionable "extremists" versus
"moderates" schema an apt depiction of reality. Today's fault lines centre on
ideological and strategic orientations. On one side of the divide lie Arab
regimes, such as Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as well as recently
elected governments, all of which have earned their "moderate" epithets by dint
of their alliances with the US and their moderation vis-à-vis Israel. Whether
authoritarian or democratically elected, these governments are fully buttressed
by the US, and are therefore widely accused of ceding their nation's
sovereignty and lacking popular legitimacy.
On the other side of the divide sits the strategic front represented by Iran,
Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas, formed in response to the US- Israeli axis and thus
essentially a reactive alliance. As a defensive front, whose central objective
is to actively resist US and Israeli political intervention,
security/intelligence infiltration, and military occupation with a combination
of cultural, political and military means, the most suitable designation for
this coalition of forces is the "resistance and mumanaa front". While only
Hamas and Hizbullah are currently engaged in military resistance, the term
mumanaa -- derived from the Arabic word "to prevent" and which connotes all
forms of non-military resistance, confrontation and rejection -- refers to the
politically confrontational stands assumed by Iran and Syria. Though none of
the actors that constitute this front actually label themselves as such, they
often characterise themselves as being part of a "resistance camp", " mumanaa
front", or "circle of steadfastness" that "rejects hegemony and defeat" and
seeks "justice" and "dignity".
In the final analysis, a potential wide-scale attack by the US on Iran -- which
would most likely involve Israel and engulf Lebanon, the occupied Palestinian
territories, and possibly Syria as well -- would only serve to further unify
Sunni-Shia ranks, as exemplified by the July 2006 war. In such a scenario, Iran
would unleash the Shia Iraqi resistance in full force, thereby eliminating the
main source of Sunni antagonism towards it. For Hizbullah, greater
participation in strategic decision-making would become of negligible
significance in the face of a US-Israeli offensive on the movement and its
regional allies. Unfettered by concerns for national unity and internal
stability -- which would cease to exist in the midst of a regional war --
Hizbullah would devote itself exclusively to its "resistance priority", thereby
regaining any Sunni support it recently lost. Thus, the launching of yet
another chapter of the "war on terror" would only serve to radicalise the
people of the region beyond the level achieved by the so-called "Iraq effect",
while promoting the popular standing of a resistance and mumanaa front in the
Arab world and beyond.
* The writer is a leading Lebanese expert on Hizbullah and a visiting scholar
at the Carnegie Endowment Middle East Centre. She is the author of Hizbullah:
Politics and Religion, Pluto Press.
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