Date: 12 Mar 2000
Time: 18:07:50
Remote Name: 24.30.137.96
3/10/2000 Mideast Mirror (Copyright 2000)
* Iran 's Saudi-chaperoned shift to the moderate camp in OPEC confirms that the Khatami government is seeking to mend ties with the U.S., says al-Quds al-Arabi
- Yaser al-Zaatra explains in al-Hayat why Arab Islamists greeted the Iranian reformers' election victory with a mixture of joy and apprehension
Iran 's shift from the hardline to the moderate camp in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) confirms that President Mohammad Khatami's government is working for a thaw in ties with Washington, pan-Arab al-Quds al-Arabi writes in its main editorial Friday.
Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say that the Khatami administration is sending "oil messages" to its American counterpart after engaging it in soccer diplomacy, the paper says. Unsurprisingly, U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson got the message, promptly welcoming word that Iran will go along with an increase in oil output when OPEC oil ministers meet in Vienna on March 27.
It is no longer a secret that the Clinton administration is pressing for an output hike that would bring down the price of crude oil, which broke through $34 a barrel earlier this week for the first time since 1990. President Bill Clinton did not hesitate to hint that he would release oil from America's Strategic Petroleum Reserve and engineer a glut on the world market if OPEC failed to pump more crude, al-Quds al-Arabi remarks.
Saudi Arabia, Washington's closest ally in the region, stepped in to spare the U.S. president such a confrontation, spearheading a campaign -- along with Venezuela and [non-OPEC] Mexico -- in favor of an output hike, and earning warm applause from Richardson. Not least, the kingdom's oil minister held a meeting with his Iranian counterpart in Riyadh on Wednesday during which they agreed on an output rise.
[In another sign that OPEC is likely to increase output soon, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdallah said on Thursday that the gap between oil demand and supply was not in the interests of producers or consumers.
"We always affirm the importance of stability of oil supplies and prices at reasonable levels and any imbalance between supply and demand would not be in the interests of producers or consumers," he told the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA).
"We will strive through collective action, as we did in the past, to restore balance to the market to safeguard the interests of exporting countries and at the same time not harm the world economy."
Abdallah said volumes and prices would be discussed at OPEC's meeting in Vienna, where the "appropriate" decisions would be taken to restore balance to the market.]
The Saudi- Iranian "oil rapprochement" is the cornerstone of the growing political accommodation between the leaderships of the two countries, al-Quds al-Arabi writes. These closer links explain why Saudi Arabia has toned down its criticism of Iran 's occupation of the UAE's three mid-Gulf islands, triggering an undeclared crisis between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.
In short, says al-Quds al-Arabi, Iran is presenting certificates of good conduct to "the Great Satan." Tehran is steadily proving that it is moving toward moderation and abandoning past hardline policies calling for the expulsion of U.S. forces from the Gulf region and for fair oil prices.
The United States is still waiting for "the big diploma" -- an end to Iranian support for Lebanon's Hizbollah and an effort by Tehran to convince the group to suffice with political activity and refrain from attacking targets in Israel proper if and when Israeli troops withdraw from South Lebanon.
Following the victory of reformers in last month's Iranian parliamentary elections, it is likely that Iran will do just that. After all, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi has said more than once that Hizbollah is "part of the Lebanese political fabric."
History is repeating itself, al-Quds al-Arabi remarks. "The Shah's Iran stood in the American oil camp, alongside Saudi Arabia. Two decades after the revolution, revolutionary Iran is entering that camp through the Saudi gateway."
LET'S DO BUSINESS: Foreign Minister Kharrazi said on Thursday his government sought better trade relations with the United States, particularly the removal of bans on Iranian goods.
"We would welcome the lifting of U.S. sanctions on Iranian goods and would consider it a positive move," he told a news conference in Tehran.
He was responding to this week's Los Angeles Times report that Washington was considering lifting its ban on Iranian carpets, pistachios and caviar -- its three biggest exports after oil and gas - - following the reformists' victory at the ballot box.
"We have always said Iran is interested in trade with U.S. firms. When the United States eased sanctions [last April] to allow sales of wheat and medicines to Iran , we made that conditional on the opening of the U.S. market to Iranian goods. Trade is a two-way street," Kharrazi said.
In Washington, State Department spokesman James Rubin told reporters on Wednesday that Iran has been trading with the United States.
" Iran has been purchasing U.S. agricultural and medical products since [April]," he said.
Rubin declined to comment on the newspaper report, but said "we're looking at ways to engage Iran in a dialogue and to recognize the important changes that are taking place there."
Kharrazi said if U.S. trade sanctions were to be lifted, "it would be a big victory" for Iran
JOY AND FEAR: Writing Friday in pan-Arab al-Hayat, Jordanian commentator Yaser al-Zaatra focuses on the reaction of Arab Islamists to the Iranian reformists' stunning election victory, which he describes as a mixture of joy and fear.
It should be pointed out, Zaatra says, that Arab Islamists had in recent years been increasingly tending to perceive Iran as part of the "Islamist model," despite the sectarian [Shiite] dimension of the system it established in the wake of its 1979 Islamic revolution. The emergence of Hizbollah as a political and military force in the Lebanese arena undoubtedly helped "market Iran " in the predominantly Sunnite Arab world, especially in terms of curbing the sectarian dimension which some sides exploited in order to turn the Arabs against Iran during its 1980-1988 war with Iraq.
America's get- Iran campaign obviously earned Iran additional sympathy from an Arab public which sympathizes with anyone targeted by Washington -- in addition to being Moslem.
In examining the mixture of joy and fear with which Arab Islamists greeted the recent developments in Iran , Zaatra writes, it is essential to mention the accusation that is consistently levelled at Islamists -- namely, that they seek to exploit democracy only to turn against it later and establish "theocratic" rule which is intrinsically incompatible with pluralism.
Citing the Marxist maxim that "there can be no freedom for the enemies of freedom," the Islamists' adversaries found plenty of "evidence" to substantiate their claim -- from the Iranian example to Hassan Turabi in Sudan, passing by remarks attributed to an "anonymous" preacher from Algeria's Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) on the eve of the group's aborted victory in the December 1991 parliamentary elections.
It may be pure coincidence that the shift toward genuine democracy occurred simultaneously in the Iranian and Sudanese cases -- especially with regard to Turabi, whom secularists see as the symbol of the Islamists' dubious attitude to democracy. Commenting on the Iranian polls, Turabi said the Iranian experiment had become "THE" Islamist model, an attribute he consistently denied it in the past.
Unearthing the wares he peddled when he was in opposition, Turabi called for genuine pluralism, provoking a collision with [President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's camp] which found itself compelled to outbid him in calling for pluralism and an opening up to the opposition -- though the [Bashir camp] appeared to be consolidating the status quo, with backing from external powers, chiefly Egypt, for fear that genuine pluralism would lead to the secession of southern Sudan and thus threaten Egyptian national security.
Where Iran is concerned, Arab Islamists were heartened by the pluralistic model established by the Islamic Republic, earning it the admiration of many quarters and prompting them -- or some of them at least -- to rethink the claim that pluralism and Islam are incompatible (others saw what happened in Iran as the beginning of the end of the Islamic system).
There's no doubt that the so-called "conservatives" in Iran could have found a way of getting around the democratic game and sufficing with its external trappings, Zaatra continues. But this did not happen. Instead, they chose to abide by the public's choice and new orientations without this meaning the abandonment of the Islamic terms of reference and the Islamic identity, which were safeguarded by influential and powerful institutions.
This shows that it is not impossible to have an Islamic system where power is rotated between believers in this system who hold different views on domestic and foreign policies.
It is in this sense that developments on the Iranian scene were a source of joy for the Islamists, especially in light of the global interest in the latest elections, the massive voter turnout and the transparency and fairness of the vote.
As to the Islamists' fears, they pertain mainly to Iran 's upcoming role in the region and its policies on that all-important issue for them, i.e. the conflict with the Zionist enterprise, says Zaatra.
Most Arab Islamists were undoubtedly heartened by the Arab- Iranian rapprochement as a counterweight to the Turkish-Israeli alliance and its plans to redraw the map of the region and crown Israel as the region's hegemon through an Arab-Israeli settlement on U.S.-Israeli terms.
In this context, some of the so-called Iranian reformists' rhetoric was a source of concern for Arab Islamists. They seemed inclined to wash their hands of the conflict with the Zionist enterprise and to favor a resumption of ties with Washington -- not to speak of their harking back to Iran 's Persian character, as transpired from remarks by Khatami a few weeks before the legislative elections.
These factors spoiled the Arab Islamists' joy, and had it not been for their confidence in the conservatives' ability to check some reformist inclinations, they would have expressed their apprehensions more loudly. Needless to say that the Israeli-American applause for the outcome of Iran 's elections fuelled those fears.
It can thus be said that the Islamists will continue to waver between pride and fear pending clarification of the picture in Iran , Zaatra says. They will be particularly keen to see that "reform" is not conducive to the abandonment of the [Islamic] nation's constants in its conflict with colonialism, or "arrogance" -- at a time when Moslems are not the only ones to complain of American blackmail.
Copyright 2000 Mideast Mirror