Democracy bug is travelling fast in the extended Middle East. Within a short time has it reached Bahrain from the Mediterranean tip of North Africa. While public uprisings are changing the political landscape, forces of status quo have also spun into action to halt the healthy trend. As Iranian government bluntly spells out its conflicting positions about various uprisings in its Middle Eastern neighborhood, the Saudi troops have driven into Bahrain to silence predominantly Shiite population. Yemen offers a complex challenge to the United States, which has fully backed the trigger-happy ruling family so far.
Most protests may be resulting from a snowball effect after Ben Ali’s humiliating exit from Tunisia; the biggest challenge to these self-respecting people comes from within. Since its own revolution in 1979, Iran has perceived the United States as a sworn enemy that supported an unpopular monarch in Tehran and still continues to do so in Saudi Arabia and other nations stretching up to Morocco. Saudi Arabia finds Iran as an intrusive state with an agenda to export Shiite Islam elsewhere in the Middle East and Central Asia while the Islamic republic denies due rights to its own Sunni population. Riyadh too is struggling to deal with its restive oil-wealthy eastern province.
Whereas Israel’s illegitimate stockpiling of nuclear weapons ring no alarm bells in Washington, Brussels and Riyadh, Iranian nuclear program irks its influential opponents. Saudi Arabia-Iran enmity is rooted in centuries ancient Arab-Persian tensions further complicated with Sunni-Shiite tussle. Saudi Arabia has stood firmly with the United States not only during and after the Cold War but also decade-long War against Terror.
Since January 2011, the two heavyweights of Muslim world have stretched their proxy wars of influence from Afghanistan to Lebanon to Morocco. Emergence of the Shiite Iraq after the invasion of the United States too has proven challenging for Saudi Arabia. Over the last three decades, Iran has been maintaining close ties with the opposition leaders.
Caught in this power struggle are the oppressed people of the Middle East. Bahraini protestors have paid a heavy cost of overt Iranian state and media support for the uprising. Bahrain matters more for Iran due to the presence of 5th Fleet of the US Navy in the strategically located Island. US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' fresh tour to the Gulf State, which received $20million last year in military assistance, would clearly be seen as a provocation.
While the ruling dynasty may be Sunni and allied to Saudi Arabia, Bahrainis predominantly practice Shiite Islam. Moreover, Bahrain matter more for Iran due to the presence of 5th Fleet of the US Navy in the strategically located Island.
To influence balance of power favorably, both the oil-rich Muslim nations are looking at the ongoing uprisings through the sectarian prism. As much as Saudi Arabia protects the regime in Manama and Sana’a, Iran is going any lengths to safeguard the status quo in the states ruled by likeminded tyrants. Except Tunisia and Egypt, while regimes may not have been toppled elsewhere in the Middle East or North Africa, their iron grip has weakened at varying degrees.
The Muslim nations in the (Arabian or Persian) Gulf have two choices for change; the democratic way or the Osama bin Laden way. The world powers, Saudi Arabia and Iran have no right to manipulate the outcomes of the self-motivated movements for democracy. Any covert or overt intervention runs the risks of bloodshed and instability, the least of which the world can afford no more.
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