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.
While the US media has exaggerated Ahmadinejad’s role and have charaterized him as the main power in Iran, he’s not. The nuclear program is not under his control, certainly not exclusively. We should be way of inflating Ahmadinejad.
When the last reformist president of Iran attempted repeatedly to reach out to the US, the neocon types insisted that his overtures should be ignored because Iranian presidents are nobodies who don’t control Iran’s intelligence or military etc.
When Ahmadinejad was elected, he was immediately characterized as the anti-christ, and the same neocons started referring to him as The Leader of Iran.
This is ultimately intended to create obstacles in any potential US-Iran rapprochement.
Finally note that Iran has repeatedly already offerred to operate its nuclear program under extra-tight limits and IAEA monitoring, only to have this dismissed by the Bush administration which insists that Iranians shouldn’t even have knowledge of nuclear technology.
He’s not the supreme leader, true, but he is the day to day leader of Iran’s government, and he has a lot of support among the radicals, including the Revolutionary Guard. I don’t think he would be heading to Riyadh under normal circumstances. This is a very high profile trip for Iran’s government, and one we must assume has the blessing of Ayatollah Khamenei, the current Supreme leader of Iran.
I’m not sure what “day to day leader” means in the Iranian context and Iranian officials regularly visit Saudi Arabia. Larijani, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator for example, just got back from KSA 2 weeks ago.
I would say that this is a ceremonial visit more than anything else.
And the idea that Ahamadinejad has some special support among “radicals” is also questionable – what exactly is a radical and it is also questionable that Ahmadinejad is much of a “radical” himself. His more intemperate statements are exaggerated worldwide (“wipe off Israel”) but when he came to the UN and offered (yet again) to operate Iran’s nuclear facilities as joint ventures with foreign companies that would thus ensure the program’s transparency, he was ignored.
Sure, he appointed many ministers who have a Revolutionary Guard background – but most of the Iranian officials of that age group have the same background (this was the generation that was fighting in the Iran-Iraq war, after all.)
Don’t buy into the hype about Ahmadinejad. He’s not the issue.
Just to clarify my last post – Iran’s top nuclear negotiator who recently returned from Saudi Arabia answers to the Supreme Leader who is himself appointed by the Assembly of Experts who are themselves elected by direct public vote.
The nuclear negotiator does not answer to the President Ahmadinejad.
If the US has already made clear to the Saudis that the only acceptable outcome is the end of Iran’s nuclear program, I just don’t see how a deal reached between the Saudis and Iran would be accepted by the US in any way.
Even if the Saudis manage to craft a pretty diplomatic arrangement, the US will simply reject it. We’re not dealing with rational people in the White House here, and they want war.
I’ve believed for some time that the final move by the Persians to checkmate American efforts to control Gulf Oil is to strike a deal with the Saudi’s. They have played this game superlatively up to now, having gotten the United States to eliminate the major obstacle to such a deal. The Iranians need to work out a modus for a mutual security agreement between themselves and the Saudi’s, extend it to the Gulf States and then get to work on a joint proposal for creating a Palestine State on the pre-1967 borders. It would feeze the US out of the region, which is probably a good thing for everybody at this point.
I think the nuclear issue is negotiable between the two parties. Whether the religious differences are a sticking point remains to be seen.