Led
by Saudi Arabia, the Arab Gulf states claim that their fears of Iranian
ambition are existential. It is certainly true that Tehran is locked in
a regional balance of power struggle with Saudi Arabia and that Iran
seeks greater influence. But Iran does not seek the destruction of Saudi
Arabia or the overthrow of Arab world's political order. In spite of
claims to the contrary by the Saudi and Bahraini governments, Iran's
revolutionary imperative is a relic of the past. Israel expresses a
similar anxiety about Iran as a security threat. And Iran's leaders have
played their part in fostering Israeli uncertainty. Iran's potential
acquisition of nuclear weapons is a source of concern, of course, as is
its support for Hezbollah and Syria. The challenge of how best to deal
with Iranian ambition, however, is mainly a political problem, one that
has for too long been treated almost entirely through the lens of
security and militarism.
The presence of the American military in the
Gulf has not only done little to deter Iran's ambitions, it has
emboldened them. Surrounding Iran militarily and putting it under the
constant threat of American or Israeli military action has failed to
deter the country. Instead this approach has strengthened hardliners
within Tehran and convinced them that the best path to self-preservation
is through defiance, militarism, and the pursuit of dangerous ties
across the Middle East. The rivalry between Iran, the U.S., and its
regional partners has turned into a political and military arms race,
one that could easily spin out of control.
Less obvious, the
United States' military posture has also emboldened its allies,
sometimes to act in counterproductive ways. Saudi Arabia and Bahrain
justify their brutal crackdown of Bahrain's pro-democracy movement by
falsely claiming Iranian meddling. While American policymakers support
democratic transitions in the Middle East rhetorically, their
unwillingness to confront long-time allies in the Gulf during the Arab
Spring is partly the product of the continued belief that the U.S. needs
to keep its military in the Gulf, something that requires staying on
good terms with Gulf monarchies. The result is that Saudi Arabia and its
allies have considerable political cover to behave badly, both at home
and abroad.
If the Arab Spring has demonstrated anything, it is
that the old political order is vulnerable to domestic political
pressure. The Middle East is moving to an era of mass politics, in which
mobilized publics demand greater rights and greater influence. While
many observers believe
that the oil states are less susceptible to such pressures, this seems
far from certain. In fact, Saudi Arabia, the world's most important oil
producer, shares many of social and political-economic characteristics
of its beleaguered neighbors, including high unemployment, widespread
poverty, popular disillusion with corruption, and an increasingly
sophisticated network of grassroots organizations committed to political
change. Even flush with considerable oil revenue and the capacity to
throw money at its many internal problems, Saudi Arabia has still been
forced to unleash its police and security forces to quell unrest. The
United States, because of its relationship with Saudi Arabia and Bahrain
and its apparent preference for preserving the political status quo in
the Gulf, is increasingly seen by the region's citizens as conflated
with the violent forces of counterrevolution. Should revolutionaries and
would-be revolutionaries in the Gulf force political transitions in the
future, the United States could pay a political price for its
long-standing military entanglements.