By
Jawed Naqvi
18 Aug 2020
IS the
UAE-Israel-US ‘historic deal’ truly the sensational event that President Trump
and Prime Minister Netanyahu say it is? On the face of it, there’s a story of
course. China has arrived in Iran and Israel has moved close to the event,
leaving the US to press on with its Pivot to Asia containment of China in the
Pacific. If that’s an explanation, why didn’t Netanyahu arrive in the UAE
without the fuss, and without sacrificing his proposed annexation of the West
Bank?
Israeli and UAE flags lined this road in the Israeli coastal city of
Netanya
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There’s a
compelling view he has used the deal to get out of a bad situation at home.
There were no takers for any annexation other than some Jewish settlers. For
Trump, it’s a means to win back the support of disgruntled Jewish voters for
the November elections.
I remember
meeting an Emirati soldier in 1990 who was ready to fight against fellow Arab
Saddam Hussein. He said Saddam was an enemy of the Gulf countries. It was all
right to befriend Israel to defeat Iraq. That was during America’s Desert
Shield operation from bases in Saudi Arabia. Let’s complicate this simplistic
picture, and consider the charges usually brought against Iran, the apparent
target of the UAE-Israel deal.
When Akbar
Khalili filed his situational report from Tehran to his colleague watching the
Iran-Iraq war at the foreign ministry in Delhi, he could not mask his fabled
humour. “Iran has indeed got the missile it claims to have, which covers half
the distance on its own steam and travels the rest by the grace of Allah.”
Where do
the Shia-Sunni theorists disappear when Shia Iran supports a predominantly
Sunni Palestine envisaging Jerusalem as its capital?
With his
unusual access to Tehran’s ruling fraternity of mullahs, which included a
special rapport with the pivotal Ayatollah Beheshti, Khalili wouldn’t spoil it
all by naming Israel as Iran’s arms supplier in its bloodbath with Iraq. Tehran
claimed it could target Baghdad with missiles it didn’t have in its quiver. The
surmise Khalili was hinting at was that the Iran-Contra deal had done the
trick. Ronald Reagan arranged it as a quid pro quo for Iran’s help in defeating
Jimmy Carter in 1980.
There were
other spin-offs. One involved Israel as conduit for US arms to Iran. And Israel
used Iraq’s degraded defences to bomb the Osiraq nuclear research facility in
1981.
A false
narrative successfully used to hide the Middle East’s evolving reality is the so-called
Shia-Sunni rift in its 20th-century avatar. It conjures images of the Saudis
and Iranians locked in a perpetual battle — (after the Iran-Iraq war ended in a
stalemate) — to underscore the supremacy of their respective Islamic orders.
The
falseness of the binary shows in the failed Arab League summit in 1981, on the
heels of the Iranian Revolution. The then Saudi crown prince had presented the
Fahd Plan that spelt out an Arab-Israel accord over Palestine by formally
recognising Israel and promising it collective security. Before this, Sunni
Egypt had befriended Jewish Israel. The three countries that opposed the Fahd
Plan on secular grounds were to be decimated one by one.
Libya and
Iraq were staunchly critical of Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia equally. Both
were destroyed and their leaders murdered under Western and Arab supervision.
Syria too opposed the Fez initiative, and see what’s become of it. Iran thus is
the last main challenger standing to speak up for Palestine. Where do the
Shia-Sunni theorists disappear when Shia Iran supports a predominantly Sunni
Palestine envisaging Jerusalem as its capital?
The Iran
narrative is not only stacked with inaccuracies, it pushes deliberate
distractions too. It purposely undermines the reality that Iran sees itself
more as a revolutionary entity, less as a Shia state. It didn’t stage a Shia
revolution but a means to forge an inclusive upheaval against the West. One can
differ with it, but that’s no ground for creating false religious disputes.
Some of
Iran’s closest allies at the height of the revolution were secular leaders of
the PLO. Subsequently, mainly Sunni Hamas and a vehemently Sunni Muslim
Brotherhood were embraced by Tehran. It has Sunni supporters in Southeast Asia
and notionally Sunni Central Asian friends too. It played host to arch puritan
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar from among the Afghan mujahideen. Above all, Iran remains a
steadfast ally of Venezuela and remembers Hugo Chavez as its hero.
The
exaggerated (though not always concocted) Shia-Sunni prism has successfully
damaged social equilibriums around the world, not excluding Pakistan, a former
ally in the RCD club with Iran and Turkey.
Pakistan’s
leap to embrace Saudi Arabia and other Gulf sultanates was, however, spurred
more by the exit of the Shah than the arrival of Khomeini. The Shah anchored
Western interests in the Gulf in tandem with Pakistan before Khomeini
overturned the furniture. For secular India, on the other hand, the Islamic
Revolution didn’t deter its bonding with Tehran even though New Delhi was
strategically closer to Iraq during the Cold War.
Prime
Minister Narendra Modi may not admit it, but it was a Congress government that
established groundbreaking diplomatic ties with Israel in 1992. Likewise,
Manmohan Singh hosted the Saudi king for the first time in 50 years as India’s
state guest. The Cold War was over.
In the
heyday of the Islamic Revolution, when Hashemi Rafsanjani addressed the weekly
Friday congregation at Tehran University, Kalashnikov in hand, four slogans
from the milling crowd would rent the sky. Death to Saddam. Death to the USSR.
Death to America. Death to Israel. The first two wishes have been fulfilled
albeit for reasons that had little to do with the crowd’s Orwellian chants. The
other two haunt Tehran.
The West hanged
Saddam after the Soviet Union collapsed. The cheering victors included the UAE,
Israel and the US. But why is Saudi Arabia, which bankrolled the anti-Saddam
operation, keeping a low profile? Perhaps it knows, wisely, that the tide could
turn in November and equations reset when a Democrat enters the White House.
Jawed
Naqvi is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
Original
Headline: Not Shia, not Sunni, not Jewish
Source: The Dawn, Pakistan
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-politics/uae-israel-deal-shia,-sunni,/d/122653