Are Arab Leaders Really So Unhappy to See Ahmadinejad Re-elected?

Posted by abutters Sunday, June 14, 2009 at 4:38 pm

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So far most Arab leaders have reacted to the Iranian electoral crisis in typical Middle Eastern fashion: they haven't. Amir Moussa, the head of the Arab League, took one for the team and made this non-statement statement: "We hope that the next term will witness progress on the relations between Iran and the Arab world and co-operation in establishing peace in the Middle East." Other than such empty formalities, there has been an awkward silence from most Arab capitals.

Which is no doubt pragmatic. Tensions between Iran and much of the Arab world are already bad enough. Ever since the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, America's Arab allies -- especially Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia -- have been ringing the alarm bell about the rise of Iranian power in the Middle East. Besides the age-old animosity between these mostly Sunni Muslim countries and their ethnic and sectarian rivals in Shia Muslim Persia, they worry that Iran's support for radical anti-Israeli and anti-American groups in the region is destabilizing their hold on their own countries, who populations are less moderate than their governments.

So on the surface at least, the surprise victory of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would seem to be a blow to the Arab countries circling the wagons against Iran. But it may actually make their job much easier.

Like the Israeli right and neo-conservatives in America, the leaders of moderate Arab states have been concerned that the Obama Administration's plans to engage Iran would leave them out in the cold. But with Ahmadinejad returning to power, it's going to be much easier for them to keep their fingers pointed at the Islamic Republic. Although the policies of the defeated reform candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi would not have been much different from Ahmadinejad's, and though Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei controls foreign policy, Ahmadinejad, with his Holocaust denials and his outspoken support for Iran's nuclear program, is the poster boy of the Persian threat.

And in fact, an Ahmadinejad victory tainted by allegations of fraud by Iran's defeated reformers may be the best of all outcomes. One of the reasons that Saudi Arabia and other Arab governments are afraid of Iran is that for all the flaws of the Islamic Republic's clerical democracy, Iran's citizens have much more of a voice and effect on their country's power structure than do the citizens of Arab dictatorships, according to Mohammad Al-Qahtani, a reform advocate and economics professor at the Saudi foreign ministry's diplomatic training institute, whom I met today. "Iran's power comes from its democracy," he said. Watching Iran's democracy self-combust is enough to make an Arab oligarch smile.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Riyadh