The news that U.S. President Barack Obama is planning on putting forward a proposal to the leaders of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf at the summit in Washington and Camp David on May 13–14, 2015 to help set up a region-wide missile defence system has spread like wildfire across the global media. It is interesting that Arabic news agencies and internet resources have circulated the message without actually commenting on it. It would seem that the situation is clear – the U.S. missile “umbrella” is designed to protect its allies on the Arabian Peninsula from the expected missile “rain” from Iran.
The news that U.S. President Barack Obama is planning on putting forward a proposal to the leaders of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf at the summit in Washington and Camp David on May 13–14, 2015 to help set up a region-wide missile defence system has spread like wildfire across the global media. It is interesting that Arabic news agencies and internet resources have circulated the message without actually commenting on it. It would seem that the situation is clear – the U.S. missile “umbrella” is designed to protect its allies on the Arabian Peninsula from the expected missile “rain” from Iran.
Talking to U.S. diplomats and military personnel who have been working in the Middle East for a number of decades, as well as regional experts and political scientists, helps us reconstruct a picture of the world as it appears in the minds of those who determine U.S. policy in the region. They are not interested in resolving the conflict, care little for human rights violations (unless they provide a convenient excuse for intervention) and don’t care about the fate of the region. Everything these people say and do is geared towards a single goal, namely, serving the interests of the United States – interests that they themselves helped to formulate. In this respect, Obama’s proposal to bring this somewhat exhausted idea back to life could not come at a better time. The most obvious thing that he could do in response to the harsh criticism being thrown in his direction from the Persian Gulf states with regard to the agreements made in Geneva on Iran’s nuclear programme was to offer them yet more protection. The U.S. administration has symbolically placed the Arab states in the same camp as the European countries, which it already “protected” from Iran, having set up its missile defence systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. Considering the Russian leadership’s negative reaction to U.S. rockets being placed at Russian borders, one can only imagine Iran’s feelings about this most recent ploy. And a ploy it most certainly is, as Obama’s proposal will only heighten tensions between Iran and its Arab neighbours, steering them away from a “thaw” in their relations.
It is quite obvious that the political elites of the Persian Gulf states have an irrational fear of Iran. In April 2015, the United States made steps towards rapprochement with Iran, a move that unnerved its allies in the region even more. This was followed in May, when Washington promised those same allies protection against the so-called “Shiite threat”, thus sucking them further into its sphere of emotional domination. It should not escape our note that the biggest threat to security in the region is actually ISIS. Recent reports in the Saudi media, for example, mention the arrests of hundreds ISIS supporters and the discovery of significant weapons caches, explosives, electronic communications and numerous leaflets calling for Saudi nationals and foreigners living in the country to oppose its “criminal and corrupt regime”. No U.S. missile defence programme can kill this idea.
The U.S. President’s words on strengthening military cooperation and supplying expensive new weapons systems to Persian Gulf states were curious in their timing and pragmatism, coming after the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Development of France had announced that negotiations would be taking place regarding projects whose total cost would come to “tens of billions of euros”. And it just so happens that Laurent Fabius and French President François Hollande are currently in Saudi Arabia as guests at the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf summit, where they are discussing new arms deliveries. Could it be that Barack Obama was hinting to potential buyers that they should hold on to their money until “real” goods become available? It’s just business!
