Qatar And The New (Sort Of) Cold War

Although not a major focus of the MSM, there has been a Junior Cold War under way for several decades now. The roots of the silent conflict extend back in time over a thousand years, but the proximate cause occurred only thirty years ago.

Although fought primarily with words and money, the Junior Cold War between Iran and Saudi Arabia has grown in both size and intensity during the past few years. The growth hormone at work has been the intractable conflict between Israel and the Muslim Arabs of the mythical land called Palestine. The seeming forever war between Israel and its antagonists has served to draw more firmly and deeply the lines in the sand scribed by the religious and political dichotomies separating the Persian Shites of Iran and the Arab Wahhibist Sunnis of Saudi Arabia.

Neither the religious nor the regional hegemonic pretenses of the two Gulf contenders should be underrated or trivialised as some sort of "conservative" state versus a "radical" one. The stakes are high and growing higher as both the Saudis and the Iranians seek allies and influence both in the region and around the world.

When the awesomely ill-advised American invasion removed Iraq as a counterweight to the ambitions of both the House of Saud and the Mullahs of Tehran, the pint-sized Cold War moved out of the fringelands of unrealisable ambition. Without Iraq as a major regional player, the way was clear for both Iran and Saudi Arabia to seek wider and deeper influence in the Arab and Muslim states--and not simply those of the Gulf region or the Mideast.

Both Saudi Arabia and Iran brought a mix of advantages and disadvantages to the rapidly blooming game.

Saudi Arabia had (reasonably) good and productive relations with the Arab League states generally once the House of Saud got over its snit with Egypt. Of course, the Keeper of the Two Mosques represented the majority branch of Islam. With oil money pouring out of every spigot, the Saudis were in a position to spread Wahhibist Sunni doctrine throughout the world including the US and Europe. Saudi Arabia also had the not inconsiderable advantage of being seen by the US and most European governments as an indispensable agent in the "peace process."

The House of Saud also deployed a significant set of disadvantages in its struggle against Iran. It could easily be seen as the seven hundred pound gorilla of OPEC, a burnoosed bully boy which used its massive reserves as a club with which to bash the "club" into compliance. (The potency of Saudi Arabia's reserves as a tool of coercion was enhanced when the US and the UN removed Iraq as a serious competitor.) Generally, the Saudi government and ruling family acted in an entirely too haughty fashion to sit well with other governments who were just as afflicted as the Saudis with an easily bruised sense of honor and propriety.

Then, of course, there was the question of religious purity. Osama bin Laden was not the only Islamist who saw the House of Saud as irredeemably stained by the sin of apostasy. Contravening the strictures of Wahhibism seemed to many Islamists and Islamist-leaners as the primary characteristic of the Saudi Royal Family. More times than can be counted easily the Saudi Royals and their hangers-on were seen as talking the austere talk of Wahhibism but never walking the walk.

The Saudi disadvantages served to potentiate the handful of Iranian advantages. The starting point for adumbrating the Iranian position must always be the fact that Shia is seen by Sunnis as both a minority (which it is) and apostate (which it isn't--at least in Shiite eyes.) The Islam preached and practiced by the Mullahs of Tehran was every bit as austere and demanding as that preached but not necessarily practiced by the Wahhibsts of Saudi Arabia or the Salifism of other countries.

The critical advantage accruing to Tehran was that Iran followed the demands of a harsh version of Sharia to a very, very large extent. This may have rebounded against the mullahocracy in both Western Europe and the US but it was very much an advantage within the the Muslim community.

This advantage must be considered together with the indisputable fact that the Iranian Revolution occurred. The Ayatollah toppled the Shah. Islamist "students" humiliated the US for well over a year. The religious zeal of Iranians--primarily young Iranians--allowed Iran to fight the militarily superior and US backed Iraqis to a stand still.

In short, the Shias of Iran proved to Muslims throughout the world that Warriors of Faith could triumph over the infidels and apostates regardless of the apparent advantages of the latter.

(The successes of the Iranian Revolution constitute the sub-text to the later narrative emphasising the victory of Islamist Arabs and their Afghan co-religionists over the Soviet Union. This reality must never be ignored despite the success of Sunni Islamist propagandists in recurrently trumpeting the presumed victory of Islamist jihadism over the Red Army.)

Another completely undervalued advantage of the Iranian mullahocracy is contained in the person of President Ahmedinejad. In the West, particularly in the US, Ahmedinejad is seen as a large mouthed nut case spouting highly objectionable rhetoric which is often clearly disconnected with reality.

That negative view may be how the Iranian Orator-in-Chief may play in Peoria.

It is not how Ahmedinejad plays in much of the Muslim world.

When Ahmedinejad came to power in 2005 his mouth started running--with effects which were uniformly beneficial to the Iranians in their rapidly blooming confrontation with Saudi Arabia. The blustering defiance of Ahmedinejad (which was backed by the senior clerics of Iran or it would have been stopped quickly) laid the ground for the conclusion of successful alliances with Syria and the crucial non-state actors Hezbollah and Hamas.

Iran no longer stood alone. The conclusion of de facto alliances with Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas served as a powerful force multiplier. This multiplier could not be and was not quickly nor easily countered by Saudi Arabia and its closest partner, Egypt.

More recently the Iranian position was strengthened and the task faced by Saudi Arabia and its associates in the Arab League made more complicated. The reason for this was the de facto adherence of the Emirate of Qatar to the Iranian side.

Qatar, incidentally the country with the highest per capita income on Earth since 2007, is run by a man who can accurately be called eccentric. The eccentric Amir Hamid bin Khalifa al-Thani overthrew his money siphoning father back in 1995 in a bloodless coup. Since then his policies have been marked by a clever balancing between the demands of Islamist oriented Arab nationalism and the needs of assuring stability and pumping enough money from the ground to meet internal needs and popular desires.

From 2003 to date Qatar has both infuriated and pleased Washington.

The biggest source of pleasure was the Amir providing basing facilities at time when Saudi Arabia was tossing the US forces out of the kingdom. Aircraft operating from Qatar have provided support to US combat operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Bulging warehouses and depots have done the same on the logistics side of the house.

Washington has not been so pleased with the Amir's television enterprise, al-Jazeeria. The W. Bush Administration tossed al-Jazeeria out of Iraq because its coverage of the Great Adventure in Regime Change was less, much less, than laudatory. Overall this very popular and equally influential television outlet has pumped enormous quantities of provocative and often highly anti-Semitic views for years now. While its English language coverage of Mideast and American news can be remarkably objective in appearance (and even reality) the same cannot be said of its Arabic language programming. Al-Jazeeria is anti-Israel, anti-Saudi, anti-Egyptian, anti-American, pro-Islamist, pro-jihadist, and pro-Iranian.

The Amir most clearly tossed his lot in with the Iranians earlier this month in a controversial and perhaps illegal meeting of the Arab League states held in Doha. The Amir made so bold as to invite Ahmedinejad to the "Arab" conference. As a result some Arab states did not attend with the result that the meeting lacked the requisite quorum.

The upshot of the Doha conference was a communique which went over the edge in damning the Egyptian role in seeking a diplomatic settlement for the Israeli incursion and demanding unwavering support for Hamas. Implicit criticism (to put it mildly) was directed at Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Arab states for failing to rush to the aid of the embattled "liberation fighters" of Hamas.

Given that the US can find replacements for the facilities it currently uses in Qatar there seems to be no real national or strategic interests in play there. Considering that the Obama Administration has a very full plate of domestic and foreign policy conundrums there seems to be no need for much attention to be paid to the "whither Qatar" question.

Unfortunately any marginalisation of Qatar, any ignoring the seeming smaller matter so that attention might be paid to the larger problems will have the effect of making the larger problem less easily solved. It is essential to get a firm grip on two interlocking realities.

The Junior Cold War is not going to end quickly nor easily.

Iran is not going to toss over its ambitions for either regional hegemony or being the starting point of the final march to a global caliphate.

Saudi Arabia is neither a constant nor effective "ally" in the struggle between the US (and to some extent, Western Europe) and the Islamist movements. Quite the contrary, it is part, even a large part, of the Islamist threat. Beyond that, it is an unpleasant associate as well as an economic threat.

Iran is even worse.

Which means that the most viable course of American action is not unlike that followed by the Reagan Administration during the Iran-Iraq War or Theodore Roosevelt during the Russo-Japanese War. This course is simply that of taking all necessary actions to assure that neither Iran nor Saudi Arabia comes out ahead in their version of a cold war.

How do we go about doing this?

The Geek admits it is much easier to reach a conclusion in principle than it is to put that conclusion into effective practice. It's all the harder when putting the principle into practice demands some very unpleasant changes in both foreign and domestic policies.

It's even harder to turn conclusions into action when the two first, most basic questions have not yet been asked at the policy level--let alone answered.

What are you getting at, Geek?

Simple, fifteen years or so too late we finally have to ask ourselves, "What did the end of the US-USSR Cold War really mean for us?"

Simple, thirty or so years too late we finally have to ask ourselves, "What do really mean with the buzz phrase, energy independence?"