Rooyesh

Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi called on the Islamic Republic on Monday to suspend sensitive nuclear activities to avert a ”serious” threat of a U.S. military attack. ”The drum beat of war can be heard very loudly,” Ms Ebadi told a conference of her rights group called ”No to war, Yes to peace and human rights”, urging all Iranians to support a national campaign aimed at preventing possible U.S. military action.

Speculation has grown that the United States may launch air strikes against Iran over its refusal to suspend sensitive nuclear activities, which the West fears is a cover to build nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear work is peaceful. ”Iran should respect U.N. Security Council resolutions and it means suspending uranium enrichment and resolving the dispute (on the nuclear issue) through talks,” Ebadi told reporters in Tehran after the conference. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has defied international pressure on Iran to suspend enrichment and branded Iranian critics of his nuclear policy as ”traitors”. Ebadi, a human rights lawyer who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, warned of an escalating crisis with the international community, saying ”the threat of conflict is serious”.

Her call on the Iranian leadership to review its hardline nuclear policy, echoed similar statements of the growing number of moderate leaders who believe Iran should return to suspending enrichment, the policy under former President Mohammad Khatami. Domestic criticism of the handling of Iran’s nuclear policy is sensitive because it is considered a matter of national security. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has the last say on all state matters, including the nuclear issue. Iranian officials have dismissed the threat of U.S. military action and Ahmadinejad has called it a U.S. ”dream”.

Iran says it is fully prepared to defend itself, warning Washington of a ”quagmire deeper than Iraq.” Ebadi called on Iranians to join a ”national peace campaign” to stop the war. ”This campaign will pressure the (Iranian) establishment to prevent a war by accepting international commitments … and respecting U.N. resolutions,” she said. ”We should show the world that Iranians are peace-seekers and want to live in peace not war.” Ahmadinejad has called two sets of U.N. sanction resolutions against Iran ”a piece of torn paper”. Ebadi said the government should not ”sacrifice” people’s other rights for Iran’s right to nuclear technology. ”Nuclear technology is Iran’s right. But we have other rights that should be preserved, including living in peace,” she said. Leader of Iran’s Freedom Movement, a banned liberal party, Ebrahim Yazdi, also warned of the consequences of U.S. military action against Iran.

”We should mobilise people against the war and put pressure on the government to change its nuclear policy,” he told the conference. ”By suspending enrichment, we can avoid war.” Yazdi, who was a close aide to the Islamic revolution’s founding father Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and served as foreign minister in the first post-revolutionary government, said enrichment ”was not a matter of national security for Iran”. ”The government should consider people’s will and avoid a war,” he said.

Source: Reuters

Not content with taking on the world, the president picks a few fights at home THE president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has shown no signs of backing off in his confrontation with his critics abroad. Now, it seems, the gloves are off at home as well. 

In recent speeches, Mr Ahmadinejad has not only vowed to pursue Iran’s nuclear programme, despite growing international pressure. He has also dismissed UN sanctions and brushed off the chances of an American attack. Iran’s president has long scorned the reformists who ran the country under his predecessor, Muhammad Khatami, as weaklings who sapped the vigour of the 1979 Islamic revolution. But on November 12th Mr Ahmadinejad lashed out at fellow conservatives too, denouncing those who counsel greater caution as traitors, threatening to “expose” them. And on November 14th the government did just that, openly accusing a former nuclear negotiator, Hossein Mousavian, of spying for the British.

The harsh words and actions appear to come as a response to a groundswell of criticism from powerful establishment figures in Iran. Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president said to be close to Mr Mousavian, recently gave warning that the danger of American attack was serious. The mayor of Tehran, Muhammad Qalibaf, seen as a likely conservative candidate for presidential elections in 2009, has been even blunter. He has said that officials should act with more “maturity, intelligence and cunning”, adding that the cost of Iran’s diplomatic grandstanding has been unnecessarily high. Given that most Iranians believe that their nuclear programme is peaceful, and that the world treats them unfairly, such sparring may seem to be just a squabble over tactics.

But the factional antagonism runs deeper than the nuclear issue. Ordinary Iranians are painfully aware that the sanctions that have mounted in response to the president’s abrasive rhetoric help fuel inflation that is running at 16%. Businessmen complain that, with foreign banks reluctant to handle Iranian accounts, trade gets more tricky and costly. And while liberals chafe at growing restrictions on individual freedoms, even religious conservatives protest that Mr Ahmadinejad has diverted resources to wasteful projects and replaced competent administrators with ideologues. Mr Ahmadinejad’s tireless speechmaking, religious fervour and nationalism still inspire many poor Iranians. But within the establishment, which is to say among the educated class elevated politically by the revolution, doubts have spread as to whether the president’s hardline populism could lead to a dangerous polarisation. With a combination of business interests and some senior conservatives increasingly ranged against him, the president may feel forced to rely on more repressive tactics.

Source: Economist

The next five days will show whether President Ahmadinejad gets what appears to be his wish: a growing row with the West over Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Despite deep unease within the regime about his taste for confrontation, the chances are that he will.

There is good news for those who want Iran to back down: factions within the top leadership are now fighting with each other about whether to risk defiance of the United Nations Security Council. The bad news is that none of them, even the so-called moderates, appears to want to give up uranium enrichment, the work that could give Iran nuclear weapons.

The worse news is that the countries trying to curb Tehran are even more divided among themselves than are Iranian leaders. On Monday a meeting in Brussels of the five permanent members of the Security Council may well show that the US, Britain and France do not have support from China and Russia for more sanctions, and will have to try their best alone.

That meeting will follow reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN watchdog, and Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief. They are about to say whether they think Iran has disclosed as much as it is obliged about its nuclear work. Both are expected to say that it has not, Solana the more bluntly.

It is no surprise that the divisions within the Iranian regime, always there, and getting noisier, have burst into the open under the pressure of these deadlines. On Monday, Ahmadinejad railed at critics who wanted Iran to take a less inflammatory approach. He didn’t name his targets, beyond calling them “domestic elements”, but it would be fair to take this as a gibe at Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former President, and his allies.

Rafsanjani, a figure so deeply woven into business and political life that Ahmadinejad has been unable to brush him away, is often described as a moderate, but that is only in comparison with Ahmadinejad. But whether out of desire to protect his commercial interests from sanctions or the loftier pursuit of national interest, as he claims, he has urged him to take the heat out of this row.

He has had some support. A month ago Ahmadinejad pushed out Ali Larijani, the chief nuclear negotiator and another moderate (in tone at least), but Larijani was reinstated within days. That is a sign that the President does face constraints. He may be the single, belligerent face of Iran abroad, but clerics and pragmatic politicians have been alarmed by his eruptions.

Nor is his popular base as strong as it was. He was elected in June 2005 for promising to put the rewards of the oil boom on the tables of the poor, but many feel he has failed. Iran’s inability to refine enough of its own oil means that it imports 40 per cent of its petrol, and rising oil prices are a mixed blessing. Its lack of refineries reflects the bite of past sanctions and offers hope that its nuclear work will not go smoothly either.

But none of Ahmadinejad’s critics is pushing the regime to drop enrichment entirely, still the West’s target. They have little reason to make that concession; in the past week China has reaffirmed its support.

Chinese officials said yesterday that their drive to invest in Iran’s biggest undeveloped oilfield in return for gas had been slowed down by tough negotiations, not the prospect of more sanctions. If China continues to resist the push for sanctions, led by the US, Britain and France, then those three countries, perhaps joined by Germany, may have to go it alone.

The Bush administration’s predictable reaction to this week’s report by the International Atomic Energy Agency has been to say that it demonstrates conclusively that Iran’s nuclear cheating continues, and that there will be consequences.

Israel has been even more severe, while Britain, France, and Germany all support the American line to one degree or another. One has to hope that, in private, there are at least elements of a more nuanced understanding of the situation. If not, we could soon find that the consequences for us are every bit as serious as any that may be borne by Iran.

The danger is not yet of an immediate American or Israeli attack, but of a sundering of the lines of communication between the various countries concerned, and a loss of control over events in a region already primed for reckless acts. If the US government took a step backwards to assess the scene coolly, instead of pressing on toward a deadly date with Iran, what would it see? Pakistan’s future, and with it the whole western effort in Afghanistan and the Pakistani border region, in the balance; Turkey ready for military action in northern Iraq; Israel bombing a Syrian target in what can be seen as a warning to Tehran that the same, writ large, could happen to Iran, even if the US itself does not attack; the Annapolis peace conference discredited in advance, while the conflict between Fatah and Hamas worsens, with many in the region discerning an American hand in that deterioration.

And, outside the region, a parting of the ways over Iran looms for western countries with Russia and China, which could lead to a broader alienation. This is a bad direction. When things are slipping, a big power should not add to the confusion in which anxious and fearful governments are taking decisions - decisions on which they increasingly may fail to consult not only other countries, but wiser heads in their own countries.

That is clearly as true of Iran as it is of anywhere else. A serious argument over nuclear policy, and over foreign policy generally, is under way in Iran. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who - in the absence of positive achievements in other fields - has made a talisman out of nuclear defiance of America, is not necessarily the winner. It is probably true that there are few in the ruling elite who do not want Iran to have at least a nuclear weapons option; but there are senior figures ready to go slow and to push the issue into the future when, if relations with the United States were on a better basis, there might be less reason to pursue it. The supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, may soon have to take a bigger hand in the internal power struggle, and where he will come down is of critical importance.

The last thing outside powers should be contemplating is any action that makes the most desirable internal resolution less possible. And we should be taking public note of what Iranian dissidents are repeatedly saying, which is that they “categorically reject a military attack on Iran”. Whatever happens, America and its supporters need to consider, reconsider and then consider again their long view. Would it be absolutely disastrous if Iran acquired a few nuclear weapons a few years earlier than would be the case if its facilities were bombed now? For that is what the issue comes down to - a delay, and maybe a pretty short one.

The Israeli military analyst Martin van Creveld recently noted that there has hardly been a year since 1945 in which there has not been heated talk of the terrible consequences of additional countries going nuclear. But the countries in question have either not done so or, when they have, the consequences have proved bearable.

Source: Guardian

Sadegh Kharazi, Iran’s former deputy foreign minister and ambassador to France, was one of many Iranian diplomats forced to resign by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he came to office in 2005. Considered too liberal for the new leader, Kharazi remains critical of Ahmadinejad—and blames Washington for creating the conditions that brought him to power. 

Kharazi, now an adviser to Iranian former president Mohammad Khatami, spoke to NEWSWEEK’s Maziar Bahari in Tehran about Iran’s nuclear program, misconceptions about his country and the U.S. race for the White House. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: In a press conference with French president Nicolas Sarkozy, President George Bush insisted on a diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear program. Why do you think he adopted a milder tone than before?
Sadegh Kharazi: Because of the disastrous results of American unilateralism in Iraq, they are looking for an international support of their initiatives vis-à-vis Iran. Everyone knows that an American military attack will not only damage Iran but also other countries in the region as well as American interests in the Middle East. It is interesting that Bush and Sarkozy insisted on a diplomatic solution, but we have to wait and see what they mean by diplomacy: new sanctions or new negotiations.
 
Do you think Iran-U.S. relations can ever improve?
The Americans say that Iran’s nuclear program is a threat against the international community. But I think what they are really worried about is Iran’s influence in Iraq and Afghanistan, where almost 200,000 American soldiers are stationed. By insisting on Iran’s nuclear threat they portray Iran as a threat against their national interests. Unfortunately, it is not only the American government that is doing it but also some of the presidential candidates. I think this way of thinking will have tragic results. The United States has much more in common with Iran than any country in the region, or some European countries, including France. We have almost zero differences of opinion about the stability and the future of Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, instead of working with Iran, America has allied itself with the dictatorships in the region. Americans say that they want to promote democracy in the region. Which one of America’s allies in the Persian Gulf region is a democracy? Look at what is happening in Pakistan. After many years of supporting a pro-America dictator, most Pakistanis support Al Qaeda and the Taliban. This policy will inevitably have catastrophic results. Americans should change their view of the realities in the Middle East. The United States is under the illusion that it has a monopoly on truth. As long as it is an idealist and ideological view, they can’t have the right policies.
 
How about Iran’s ideological views and monopoly on truth?
We may have the same illusion. In either case it’s wrong. Both sides should put aside the smear campaign against each other and populist slogans and adopt more pragmatic policies.
 
Do you think Americans know Iran?
Americans in general have misperceptions about Iran. The Americans’ main source of information is the Iranian opposition in the United States. The opposition is mainly composed of people who haven’t been to Iran for the past three decades. They present the facts for the American government with their own interests in mind and customize the information according to what Americans like to hear. There is also the Israeli lobby, which is very strong in the Congress. The third [source] is the Arab lobby, which regards any rapprochement between Iran and the U.S. as against the interests of Arab governments in the region. If Iran and the United States normalized their relations, that relationship would overshadow the one between Arab countries and the U.S.
 
So what is the way out?
There is a wall of mistrust between Iran and the United States. But until Americans designate a budget to change the government in Iran, we cannot have normal relations with the United States. Americans can take four steps to gain Iran’s trust: 1) Recognize the Islamic Republic as the legitimate government of Iran and cancel all the programs for regime change. 2) Return frozen assets of Iran in the United States. 3) Stop its support for anti-Iranian terrorist organizations like the MKO cult based in Iraq, the Kurdish separatist group PJAK, and pro-Taliban Baluch separatists, Jondollah. 4) Annul previous sanctions against Iran and do not impose new sanctions.
 
But you can’t seriously think that either the Bush administration or any of the presidential candidates will take these initiatives.
In diplomacy everything’s possible and nothing is impossible. I think both countries should lay all the issues on the table and discuss their problems. There is no problem that cannot be solved. If both countries recognize each other’s rights, then they can collaborate on many issues, including Iraq, Afghanistan and smuggling of narcotics. They can have differences of opinion, but there is no reason for the current hostility. America has its own differences with China, Russia and even Europe, but that doesn’t mean that they cannot talk.
 
One of the main problems for foreigners is that they don’t know who runs Iran and who they should talk to. Is it the foreign ministry? The president? Pragmatic politicians like former president [Ali Akbar Hashemi ] Rafsanjani? Or the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei?
The government of Iran executes foreign policy decisions made by Iran’s supreme leader. Americans should not try to circumvent the supreme leader and talk to other people in the government. Talking to the Iranian government means talking to the supreme leader. He is informed about every word exchanged in the negotiations. Iran’s domestic politics may be decentralized, but the foreign policy is highly centralized. Americans shouldn’t think that they can use the internal factionism to their advantage.
 
But Ayatollah Khamenei is vehemently anti-American.
Even though Iran is ready to defend its interests by any means necessary, the first priority of Iran’s supreme leader and the government of Iran is stability of the region. They don’t want war and tension. That is why Iran cooperated with the United States to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam in Iraq. Under the leadership of Ayatollah Khamenei Iran has normalized its relations with many countries who were our enemies in the past.
 
You were forced to resign from the foreign ministry by President Ahmadinejad. What do you think about his self-proclaimed aggressive foreign policy?
I belong to a generation of Iranian diplomats who believe in rapprochement and diplomacy. I may not like some of our current government policies and may think they are against our national interests, but this government and its policies are a result of wrong American policies.
 
What do you mean?
What our current government is doing is a reaction to years of Americans ignoring Iran’s positive gestures. During the presidency of Mr. [Mohammad] Khatami, whenever we wanted to have a rapprochement with the United States they demanded more. We cooperated with them in Afghanistan and we were called a member of the Axis of Evil. On the eve of the invasion of Iraq we sent them a letter with a package of proposals, but they chose to ignore it. Extremism breeds extremism.
 
What do you think about Ahmadinejad’s comments about wiping Israel off the map and denying the Jewish Holocaust?
I don’t want to justify what President Ahmadinejad says, but Israel has been threatening Iran with military action for more than a decade. So it is Israel that has created the tense atmosphere—and as we say in Persian, you don’t exchange terms of endearment in a brawl. Israelis are using the president’s comments about the Holocaust in their smear campaign against Iran. We, Iranians, have to be more careful about what we say and be more sensitive to the grief of other nations. The Jewish Holocaust was a crime against humanity. But I also believe it was not the first crime against humanity and neither the last one.

Which presidential candidate in the United States would be able to improve Iran-U.S. relations?
Iran has been an issue in American presidential debates for the past three decades. We cannot cheer for one candidate against the other, because the foreign policy of the United States is made by different parts of the American government and not only the president. Some of the worst sanctions were imposed against Iran during Democratic administrations. But I think the current Democratic candidates are not warmongers like their Republican counterparts. A democratic presidential candidate would be more rational than a Republican one. But it’s just a guess.

Iran’s hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hit back at his critics, saying they were less intelligent than goats in comments carried by a reformist newspaper on Sunday. 

Ahmadinejad “has harshly criticised ‘the ones who mock the popular approach of the government and the president with an intellectual attitude’,” Etemad Melli reported. “Ahmadinejad described these people’s understanding as less than a goat’s,” the report said, adding the president had made the comments during a trip this week to northeastern province of South Khorasan. Ahmadinejad, who ran on a bread-and-butter platform to distribute Iran’s oil riches more evenly, has come under fire from both reformists and conservatives over his economic policies and his government’s handling of Iran’s nuclear dossier.

Many economists in Iran have accused Ahmadinejad of stoking inflation by ploughing windfall revenues from high oil prices into local infrastructure projects promised on provincial visits. Ahmadinejad, who has started a second round of visits to Iran’s 30 provinces, was seen handing out dolls and bicycles to children in South Khorasan where he also held hours of one-on-one meetings with local people.

In his previous provincial tour, he reportedly pledged 1,700 billion rials (180 million dollars) in direct aids or loans to people. The latest criticism has come from his reformist predecessor Mohammad Khatami who accused the government of “ignorance and lack of expertise.” But the government insists it is merely fulfilling Ahmadinejad’s election promises of making ordinary people feel the benefits of oil wealth and has inflation under control. Since Ahmadinejad was elected in June 2005, Iran has been slapped with two sets of UN Security Council sanctions as well as unilateral US sanctions over its refusal to halt sensitive nuclear work, which the West fears is a cover for atomic weapons development.

Source: AFP

The US military said on Tuesday that it would release nine Iranians being held in Iraq, including two of the so-called “Arbil five” arrested in January on suspicion of supporting armed militia in the country. 

“It is our intent to release nine Iranians currently in custody in the near future,” Rear Admiral Greg Smith, a US military spokesman, said at a press conference. “These individuals have been assessed to be of no continuing value, nor do they pose a further threat to Iraqi security,” he said. Another US military spokesman said that there were 20 Iranians held by the US-led multinational coalition in Iraq, including the nine who will soon be released. The US periodically reviews the cases of militant suspects in detention and may release them if they are deemed not to pose a security risk and do not have useful intelligence.

The arrest of the five, whom Iraqi officials said were employees at an unofficial Iranian consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil, was a large source of contention between Iran and the US. Tehran insisted that they were diplomats. The US military said that the five were not accredited diplomats and were members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard who were suspected of aiding Iraqi militants. Iranian diplomats complained about the detentions numerous times in talks with US diplomats in Baghdad earlier this year and the grievance may have contributed to Iran’s seizure of 15 British military personnel in March.

The US, in turn, accused Iran of providing arms and other support for Iraqi militia groups, a charge that Tehran denied. Recently, however, US officers said Iran might have cut back such support. “We hope to confirm in the coming weeks and months that Iran has been honouring its pledge [to improve security in Iraq and confirm] through further verification that the flow of munitions has indeed stopped,” Admiral Smith said yesterday. In another sign of a possible easing of tensions, an official in the northern Kurdistan region said yesterday that Iran had formally opened a consulate in Arbil. “Today the Islamic Republic of Iran opened its consulate office, after getting the approval of the federal government in Baghdad,” said Falah Mustafa Bakir, the regional Kurdistan government’s head of foreign relations. Meanwhile, US, Iraqi and Iranian diplomats are expected to meet again in the near future for the latest in a series of talks between the three parties on security in Iraq.
 
Iran’s government should hold direct talks with the US to avoid possible military action against the Islamic Republic, the country’s top dissident cleric said in a speech, Reuters reports from Tehran. Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, an architect of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, was among Iranian leaders who endorsed the 444-day occupation of the US embassy shortly after the revolution. The event led Washington to break diplomatic ties, which Grand Ayatollah Montazeri – who later fell out of favour for criticising Iran’s rulers – reportedly said should now be restored.
 
Source: FT

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday said she felt a moral duty to protect Israel and would stand firm in the face of Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its threats to wipe the Jewish state off the map.

After receiving a prestigious award from the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Merkel said the prize gave her a responsibility to fight racism and to foster close ties between Germans and the Jewish community. “It means intervening to protect the safety of Israel today and in the future, as well as our common values of democracy and the rule of law.” The chancellor, who received the Leo Baeck Prize in Berlin, said Germany only fully accepted its role in the Holocaust after reunification because the communist East German regime rejected moral responsibility for the crimes of the Nazis.

“It took more than 40 years for Germany as a whole to accept the responsibility it carries to ensure the safety of Israel,” Merkel said. “Only by accepting Germany’s past can we lay the foundation for the future. Only in as far as we acknowledge our responsibility for the moral catastrophe of Germany’s history, can we build a humane future.” She said the country pay could not merely pay lip service to these principles but will be judged on how firmly it reacts to breaches inside its borders but also beyond them. “How firmly do we react when the Iranian president wants to destroy Israel and to belittle the Holocaust?” Merkel said Germany would celebrate the upcoming 60th anniversary of the creation of the Jewish state with joy but not without fear. “I believe that in the face of the threat Iran’s nuclear programme poses to Israel, our responsibility must be more than empty words.

These words must be backed up by deeds. My government will follow its words with action.” She reiterated her support for tougher UN sanctions against Iran if it fails to comply with the demands of the international community to halt sensitive nuclear work. “We and our partners are working towards a diplomatic solution. Part of this process is a readiness on the part of Germany to agree to wider, stricter sanctions if Iran does not comply.” Merkel flies to the United States later this week for talks with US President George W. Bush expected to focus on how to resolve the Iranian crisis. Iran denies Western accusations that its nuclear programme is a cover for developing atomic weapons.

Source: AFP

Iranian authorities have arrested student leader Ali Azizi, who is a senior member of the main Islamic students’ association, his mother told the ISNA news agency on Tuesday.

“Agents came to our house on Sunday and arrested my son,” she said. “I have had no news of my son since his arrest”. No reason was given for the arrest of Azizi, who belongs to the Unity Consolidation Bureau. Dozens of Iranian students held a new protest on Sunday calling for the release of three detained colleagues and shouting slogans against officials, ISNA reported.

The demonstration at the management faculty of Tehran University was the third since the three students from Amir Kabir University were given jail sentences of up to three years last month. The three were jailed on charges of printing anti-Islamic images in four student newspapers, accusations they vehemently deny. The ISNA report said the latest protest was also aimed at the arrest of another three colleagues at a similar demonstration the previous week at Alameh Tabatabai University in the capital. The demonstrations come after students held a rare protest against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he gave a speech at Tehran University last month, likening him to the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Source: AFP

A polished silver Spitfire on the desk of Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa recalls two centuries of close and cordial ties between Britain and Bahrain.

But even its most powerful friends cannot guarantee the security of this strategic island caught in the Gulf between worsening Iranian threats and “deadly serious” talk of a US military strike.

It is not a position from which to mince words. In an interview with The Times the Crown Prince has become the first Arab leader to jettison the language of diplomacy and directly accuse Tehran of seeking nuclear weapons.

“While they don’t have the bomb yet, they are developing it, or the capability for it,” he said – the first time one of Iran’s Gulf neighbours effectively has accused it of lying about its nuclear programme.

that “the whole region” would be drawn into any military conflict and called on India, as well as Russia, to help find a diplomatic solution. “There needs to be far more done on the diplomatic front,” he said. “There’s still time to talk.”

If there is a front line in the looming confrontation between Iran and the Arab world, Bahrain is on it.

The US Fifth Fleet is based here, its main carrier battle group tasked with securing the Strait of Hormuz. The King Fahd causeway to Khobar makes Bahrain a gateway to the richest oil reserves on Earth in eastern Saudi Arabia.

The Iranian coast is ten minutes away by fighter or medium-range missile. And this week a senior Iranian general said that suicide bombers were ready to strike at targets throughout the Gulf “if necessary”. Such rhetoric will focus minds in Qatar, Riyadh and the United Arab Emirates. But its effect is especially chilling in Bahrain as the only Sunni-led country with a Shia majority that is not at war or on the brink of war.

“We are a country like Iraq and Lebanon, and we are the only one that is functioning properly,” said Sheikh Khalid al-Khalifa, the Foreign Minister.

Bahrain’s Shias – and the carnage in Iraq to the north – make the kingdom a vital experiment in sectarian coexistence. So far the Shias have repaid the Royal Family’s efforts at political reform with consistent professions of loyalty. That could change overnight in the event of an attack on Iran.

Already, large-scale demonstrations are not unusual. When the Golden Mosque in Samarra was bombed by al-Qaeda in Iraq last year, and again when Israel invaded Lebanon, “Bahrain turned yellow with Hezbollah flags”, according to one Western diplomat.

Since then a reform process that started with the release of all political prisoners in 2000 has largely stalled and leading Shia figures have complained about “systematic discrimination” by the Sunni Establishment. A scandal over alleged plans to end the Shia majority by granting fast-track citizenship to tens of thousands of foreign-born Sunnis has proved so inflammatory that an otherwise relatively free press has been banned from covering it.

The Crown Prince rejected claims of discrimination but acknowledged that the broader sectarian issue had become “so politically charged that nobody is really willing to have a rational discussion about it”.

Iran has not helped. In a newspaper editorial this summer, a close associate of President Ahmadinejad rekindled an old claim on Bahrain as Iran’s 14th province, with echoes of Saddam Hussein’s designs on Kuwait in the late 1980s that were picked up from London to Washington. The claim “touched on the legitimacy of our country”, the Foreign Minister said.

There is no suggestion – yet – of an Iranian invasion of Bahrain. But even as the kingdom throws up skyscrapers to compete with Dubai and Abu Dhabi for regional financial dominance, its security forces are on high alert for evidence of Iranian-backed “sleeper cells” that could bring them all tumbling down.

Between Bahrain’s two tallest office towers three giant wind turbines are suspended in a brave vote of confidence in a future of eco-friendly peace and prosperity. Without a diplomatic end to the Iran crisis, that confidence may soon look misplaced. But the alternatives – a military strike on Iran and a regional nuclear arms race – are too bleak to contemplate.

Source: Times (UK)