The WikiLeaks dump of State Depart ment cables confirmed what practi cally every foreign-policy analyst not named Stephen Walt already knew: that Israel is hardly the only Middle Eastern country worried about Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
From Cairo to Riyadh to Abu Dhabi, Sunni Arab leaders have repeatedly singled out Iran as the greatest threat to regional stability — in private. But they refuse to speak out publicly, telling US diplomats that they’d face a tremendous domestic blowback if they were seen as siding with the West against a Muslim country.
Yet this is a dilemma of their own making. Even as they have repressed every other political ideology, Arab leaders have spent decades encouraging the proliferation of anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiments to divert attention from their authoritarian ways.
Consider Egypt. Despite getting $2 billion a year in US foreign aid, President Hosni Mubarak’s regime has competently crushed every opposition movement to emerge in the previous decade — except when those movements dedicated themselves to protesting the West.
When Egyptians took to the streets in the spring of 2005 under the banner of Kefaya (“Enough!”) to demand fair elections, the regime held carefully manipulated contests before launching a violent crackdown. According to reports, state-security officers raped female Kefaya activists in public while arresting many other activists.
Three years later, when a group of young dissidents used Facebook to organize anti-regime protests, the regime responded by arresting a female organizer, obtaining her Facebook password and using it to infiltrate the group’s activities. The pro-democratic April 6th Youth Movement was quickly quashed.
But when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, organizers suddenly had no problem taking to the streets. That February, the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood organized an anti-war rally of 140,000 at Cairo’s main stadium, while many smaller protests took place in mosque courtyards, university campuses and major thoroughfares nationwide.
Similarly, when Israel took aim at Hezbollah in 2006, protesters gathered at venues throughout Cairo, including a 5,000-strong demonstration at the historic Al-Azhar mosque.
This hate-them-not-us strategy is typical. The Qatari monarchy severely limits domestic criticism of its policies but funds the Doha-based al-Jazeera satellite-news network, which broadcasts the vitriolic statements of al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas leaders throughout the region. The Emirati monarchy punishes its critics with harsh fines and imprisonment but happily fanned the flames against Denmark during the 2006 controversy over the infamous Muhammad cartoons, when it ordered the removal of Danish goods from supermarket shelves.
The Saudi regime similarly keeps a tight lid on free speech to insulate itself from domestic opponents, but indoctrinates its youth to hate the West through state-published textbooks that revive “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
It’s tempting to think that America’s relationship with long-lasting Mideast dictators can ensure regional stability. But this ignores the extent to which Arab regimes have nurtured an anti-Western political culture that prevents them from cooperating publicly with America even against severe threats.
Iran is exactly this kind of threat. It funds terrorist groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen. It’s a vital support for the Syrian regime, which regularly undermines other Arabs’ efforts at diplomatic moderation. It’s pursuing nuclear capabilities that will cement its domination of the Persian Gulf.
In a better world, all of the countries Iran threatens would unite under US leadership to resist it. But the anti-Westernism these regimes have long cultivated has caught up with them; they now face the unappetizing choice of either siding with America and Israel at the expense of domestic stability or tolerating Tehran’s ascendance at the expense of regional stability. So they’ve chosen double talk as a third way — complaining about Iran in private while lambasting Israel in public.
With “allies” like these, who needs enemies?
Eric Trager was a Fulbright fellow in Egypt in 2006-07.