Perfecting the art of unwise provocations

Ali Akbar Natiq Nouri's comment earlier this month that Bahrain should be considered the 14th governorate of Iran has provoked an unprecedented solidarity campaign among the island state's Arab neighbours.

Nouri, the former head of the Iranian Shura council and private adviser to the Supreme Guide of the Islamic revolution, also questioned the Arab identity of Bahrain in the latest of a series of well-publicised comments by Iranian officials and journalists aimed at undermining the sovereignty of Bahrain.

Iranian Ambassador, Hussain Amir Abdul Ahyan, was swift to deny that his country had designs on Bahrain - especially when Bahrain pulled out of talks regarding a multi-billion dollar contract to import natural gas from Iran in response.

Off the record, Iranian officials blame the recent relaxation of regulations on the country's press - which reported the controversial comments in the first place.

However, Nouri is not a loose cannon and he would have understood the impact of his remarks. The damage to Iran's relations in the region had already been done. Arab leaders proceeded to rally around the beleaguered mini-state. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak spent several hours in Manama on February 16, followed by Jordan's King Abdullah II two days later. On February 22, Riyadh hosted a GCC meeting with the matter ranking high on the agenda.

Bahrain's independence was established by a plebiscite in 1971 and endorsed by a UN Security Council resolution. Iran subsequently relinquished all its former claims to Bahrain and established full diplomatic relations with the new-born state in recognition of its sovereignty.

Why then is Iran provoking a crisis at this time? I believe there are several answers: first, it is possible that Iran is seeking to deflect international interest from its nuclear programme - February 25 saw a successful test run of its first nuclear plant, built with Russian assistance, in the southern port city of Bushehr (across the Gulf from Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, thereby causing legitimate anxiety about safety in the event of an accident).

Secondly, creating controversy over Bahrain could be an additional card for the Iranians to play in any negotiations with the United States which has been sabre-rattling with the Islamic republic for some time. President Barack Obama has intimated that he is open to talks with Iran, but then, the US Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain where it secures the safe passage of much of the world's oil through the Straits of Hormuz.

Third, the affair hints at threatened Iranian expansionism and contains a veiled warning to the Gulf states not to co-operate with the United States in the event of military aggression against the Islamic republic.

Iran may believe it is playing a clever game of diplomacy but its present course is ill-fated. It provokes the United States and Israel whilst alienating the very support (that of the Arab countries) that would be indispensable if it were to engage such powerful enemies.

Iran is building military capability that poses a real threat to US hegemony in the region. It has the right to be a nuclear power to counter-balance Israel which already possesses an arsenal of nuclear weapons - a subject the international community, including Arab regimes, refuses to discuss (thus providing the Jewish state with the advantage of free publicity).

The United States already has a raft of measures at its disposal with which to weaken Iran. These include economic sanctions, fomenting ethnic divisions within the country, and resurrecting secessionist tendencies.

To provide the United States with the pretext to invade Iran and destroy it at such a time - the very trap Saddam Hussain fell into when he decided that Kuwait was the 19th governorate of Iraq - is being foolhardy to the extreme.

Iran has long supported the resistance movement in Lebanon and was behind the Arabs' first-ever victory over Israel in 2006. Iran stands beside the Palestinians in their struggle to restore their legitimate rights and was instrumental in the steadfastness of the Palestinian resistance against the latest Israeli aggression in the Gaza Strip.

This could have brought Iran and the Arabs closer together, it could have seen a decline in the Sunni-Shiite tensions so easily exploited by the region's enemies.

The recent show of Arab unity in defence of Bahrain is commendably gallant. Yet these states have failed to develop any military capability for themselves, despite trillions of dollars of oil revenue.

Instead they preferred to invest that wealth in Europe and the United States, losing an estimated $3 trillion (Dh11 trillion) in the recent economic downturn.

It is to be hoped that those Arab states who are now so vociferous in their support for Bahrain would not turn away, as they did in Gaza, and pretend not to notice the inevitable blood bath.

Abdul Bari Atwan is editor of the Pan-Arab newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi.