It’s not exactly Nixon goes to China, but it’s still highly significant, in light of all the talk that the Saudis have tacitly approved a strike against Iran by the United States later this Spring:
BEIRUT — Iran’s president heads to Saudi Arabia tomorrow for discussions with King Abdullah, an indication that weeks of talks between their envoys on simmering conflicts in Iraq and Lebanon have made some headway.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Riyadh comes as the United States is pushing for harsher UN sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, and it may reflect that he is looking for a way out of a tight corner. […]
The visit will culminate weeks of diplomatic activities spearheaded by Saudi Arabia, including talks between Iranian and Saudi diplomats, a meeting between Abdullah and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and the accord reached in the Saudi city of Mecca to form a unity Palestinian government.
It also precedes a conference on Iraq in Baghdad on March 10, which will include its neighbors, Iran and Syria, as well as the United States and Britain. At the end of the month, an Arab summit is planned in the Saudi capital.
What’s the unstated reason for Ahmadinejad’s trip? I think it should be obvious. He’s looking to avoid a war, and he knows that direct talks with the Bush/Cheney regime on that point aren’t going to happen. So he’s doing the next best thing — he’s going to Riyadh in the hope that he can strike a deal with King Abdullah to get the Saudis to abandon their support for a US strike. He knows that if the Saudis reverse their current diplomatic course, the chances of a military strike against Iranian targets by those American naval task forces in the region decreases dramatically. Only the Saudis with all their oil reserves have the power and influence to get Bush to back down. It’s really that simple.
(cont.)
What Ahmadinejad can offer the Saudis to obtain this “boon” is an open question. Certainly he can lend Iran’s support to whatever the Saudis propose vis-a-vis the stabilization of Iraq and an equitable sharing of that country’s oil revenues at the March 10th meeting in Baghdad. He can also offer to rein in Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Badr Brigade in Iraq, the two principle Shi’ite militias/political movements in the region which most depend upon Iran for financial and military aid. And he can also suggest the possibility of further concessions on matters that are in America’s interest, such as increased assistance regarding Al Qaeda, greater diplomatic involvement in the Israeli/Palestinian peace process, and perhaps even a security pact with Israel whereby both countries agree that neither will attack the other.
One thing he will not do, however, is agree to shut down Iran’s nuclear program. He may be willing to accept various limitations, including a heightened regime of IAEA inspections and scrutiny, but too much of his personal political prestige is tied to developing nuclear power for him to offer to surrender it at this point. Frankly, in light of the Bush administration’s stated policy toward Iran, I don’t blame him. Absent some sort of security arrangement between the US and Iran, whereby America agrees to abandon regime change as one of its policy goals, Ahmadinejad has no incentive to make any concessions regarding the Iranian nuclear program. It’s his ace in the hole, and he isn’t going to give it way for anything less than a blanket assurance that the US will give up it’s dream of overthrowing the Isalmic government in Tehran.
Whether that is a “deal breaker” for the Saudis or not remains to be seen.