Bridge over Troubled Waters
The inter-faith conference – championed by Saudi King Abdullah – that took place last week in New York, the return to the international agenda of the Arab-Saudi peace initiative during the course of the meet, and the West's courtship of Syria are all stirring much discontent and concern in Iran. And a review of official Iranian statements and actions during and after the conference once again exposes both Tehran's dogmatic and uncompromising positions vis-à-vis a resolution to the conflict with Israel, and also Iran's desire to offer an Islamic alternative to the lack of leadership in the Arab world. Iran is stressing to the "Arab nations" that contrary to their compromising leaders, and in light of the ousting of "the last of the Arab action heroes [Saddam Hussein]" and the absence of a worthy Arab leader to lead the "struggle," Tehran and its emissaries in the region, such as Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, are the true alternatives for the option of the fight against Israel. And this Iranian viewpoint was clearly illustrated this week during the course of meetings Iran President Ahmadi-Nejad held with Hezbollah prisoners from the Second Lebanon War and their families and in the statements he made (like those of other senior Iranian officials) in favor of an armed struggle and the Ashura heritage.
"Rescuing Israel"
Most Iranian spokespersons chose to emphasize the Arab haste towards normalization and compromise, while Israel continues to commit "crimes in the territories." Speaking at the inter-faith conference, Iran's ambassador to the UN said that "representatives of the regime whose short history has been characterized by aggression, occupation, assassinations, political terror and the tormenting of the Palestinian people – under the pretext of a divine religion – have tried to exploit the conference for the purpose of achieving narrow political objectives." According to the Iranian diplomat, "The participation in the conference of a regime like this not only fails to promote the meet's goals, but undermines it and diverts attention away from the effort to improve the dialogue among the various religions."
The Iranian ambassador also refrained from heaping praise on the Saudi king, who won much from other sources during the conference for his initiatives – the convening of the meet and the Saudi peace initiative, thus illustrating the huge rift and bitter rivalry between Shia Iran, which is striving for regional hegemony, and Sunni-Wahhabist Saudi Arabia, which seeks a similar status. The Conservative-affiliated Iranian daily, Kayhan, wrote in this context that Saudi Arabia decided to hold the "inter-faith dialogue" in New York with the purpose of "rescuing Israel" and bringing about the normalization of relations between Israel and the Arab governments.
Furthermore, on November 18, a number of Iranian lawmakers released a special statement denouncing the meet and calling on the Muslim states to oppose "the demonic move." The statement also charged that Israel had "a black history" and that its actions in the Gaza Strip constituted "another chapter in this history." Therefore, the statement continued, participation in the conference alongside "the leaders of the criminal regime" was tantamount to recognition of Israel and promoted normalization with it. The statement stressed, too, that the Saudi king was behind the initiative, charging that he also took advantage of the occasion to revisit the Saudi peace plan, "while occupying the same room as Israel President Shimon Peres."
On the very day of the statement's publication, Iran's ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Mohammad Hosseyni, chose to announce that January 2009 would witness a meeting between Iranian religious figures (headed by Judicial Authority chief Shahroodi) and Saudi counterparts. Contrary to the wind that was blowing from Tehran this week with respect to Saudi Arabia's "destructive" role in promoting inter-faith dialogue, Hosseyni noted that "the Zionists, the United States and a number of the Arab states are trying to sabotage the good relations between Tehran and Riyadh" by stirring an atmosphere of "Iranophobia and Shiaphobia."
Friday's prayer leader in Tehran, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, known for his ultra-Conservative viewpoints, also noted that the inter-faith dialogue was designed to normalize relations with Israel. Khatami questioned the presence of Peres and Israel Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who are not religious, at the so-called inter-faith conference, stressing that "the era in which Israel was able to conduct political maneuvers has come to an end."
"A struggle until destruction"
Out in the "field," Iranian students from various universities around the country staged demonstrations outside the embassies of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Arab states that participated in the UN inter-faith meet. The students condemned the alleged move towards closer ties with Israel and charged that "the position of some of the countries does not fall in line with that of the Islamic nation." Placards brandished by the students included slogans such as: "No to compromise;" "No to capitulation;" "A struggle until destruction;" and "Israel must be wiped off the map of the world."
During the course of the UN conference, Conservative-affiliated newspaper Siyaset-e Rooz assessed the political situation in the region as follows:
"In recent days, the Middle East has witnessed a number of significant developments concerning the Palestinian problem… the main one being the participation of a number of Arab states in the [inter-faith] dialogue alongside representatives from the Zionist entity… under the sponsorship of the United States and in the name of the peace process… The Arab leaders are forgetting their previous obligation to confront the Zionist regime until the liberation of the occupied lands, including Jerusalem, and the return of all the refugees.
"While the Arab states conduct a policy of forging closer ties with Israel in the framework of the Mediterranean Union (at which Syria was also present!), through the Sharm al-Sheikh conference that was attended by representatives from Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and the member-states of the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council, and also via the inter-faith dialogue in New York, Israel continues its aggression in Gaza, expels Palestinians, and builds synagogues on the ruins of Islamic centers.
"In light of Israel's intensification of its operations, while exploiting the Arab states' move towards closer ties with it, one should expect the Arab leaders to support a struggle against Israel and not to participate in conciliatory summits… One thing's for certain, the Palestinian people will never agree to a compromise, and the day will come when they liberate their land… And on that same day, the Arab leaders and their compromises will achieve nothing but disgrace."
The common denominator
Israel is not at the forefront of the concerns of the Islamic revolutionary regime in Iran, but ties in from many aspects to the wider context of the ambitious-messianic Iranian vision of Islamic hegemony. In the complex web of Iran's striving for regional hegemony, the State of Israel plays a central role. The negation of Israel's existence in the Arab-Islamic expanse allows Iran to demonstrate an active approach that derives from nationalist motives and, since the election of Ahmadi-Nejad, more and more from religious and ideological motives too.
Tehran's attitude towards Israel allows Iran to practically implement the principles of the Islamic revolution from the house of Ayatollah Khomeini – by means of preaching to and actively assisting terror groups, and stressing resistance to diplomatic solutions "of compromising and weak leaders, thus reaching out to wide audiences in the Arab and Islamic world above the heads of their leaders. Israel allows Shia Iran to bridge increasingly fierce religious-ethnic differences (Sunni-Shia, Arab-Persian) and offer a single common denominator to these diverse audiences – the struggle against Israel.
From Iran's perspective, the struggle against Israel does not stand alone, and instead constitutes a significant and central part of a wider campaign – a historical campaign between Islam and the West, which "planted Israel in the heart of the Muslim world" as part of its own struggle and efforts to weaken Islam. Iran believes that under the current circumstances, and particularly in light of the progress it has made in its nuclear program despite the pressures of the West, Tehran is well on the road to implementing a historic turnaround in the trend of the Muslim world's capitulation to the West, with the low oil prices only being able to slow things down but not divert it from its course.
Proven success
Iran is challenging the Saudi-led Sunni hegemony; and, therefore, Saudi Arabia and the Arab peace initiative are a thorn in its flesh; and it is taking advantage of the fact that since the fall of Saddam Hussein, the Sunni Arab world has failed to recreate a real, or even symbolic, center of power like the one offered by the former Iraqi ruler and that posed a challenge both to the West and also to Iran and Shia Islam. Tehran is striving to fill this void with activist-political pan-Islamic content and a new Shia Islamic identity of its teaching, and to successfully, as demonstrated by the Shia Hezbollah organization, eradicate the State of Israel, the West's representative in the Middle East – a task at which secular Arab nationalism has failed time and again.
For both ideological and utilitarian reasons, Iran believes that by offering a revolutionary Islamic model that has proved successful (its nuclear program, and the success of its emissary, Hezbollah, in the Second Lebanon War) in combating Israel, it has the ability to revive and reconnect with the primeval yearnings and instincts of the Arab and Islamic nations – the hatred for Zionism, the establishment of the State of Israel and the West that was behind it, the importance of the issue of Jerusalem and the Palestinian problem, and the desire to avenge their defeats.
As Iran sees things, these primeval yearnings and instincts are not foreign to the Arab nations, but have undergone a process of erosion and suppression among the leaders of the Arab states following the wars with Israel – either due to Israel's strength over the years and its qualitative edge, or due to the "defeatist and treacherous" approach of the moderate Arab rulers and their willingness to recognize and forge ties with Israel – an approach that as far as Iran is concerned, finds expression, inter alia, in the Saudi-initiated inter-faith dialogue at the UN.
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