Top Iranian lawmakers and military officials fired back with a volley of criticism against Saudi rulers that included a veiled warning about a possible Bahrain-style uprising in the Saudi kingdom.
“Saudi Arabia may come under invasion for the very same excuse,” Maj. Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, a senior military adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Monday.
Middle East and North Africa in turmoil
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who rarely misses an opportunity for heated rhetoric, has remained relatively restrained. Two weeks after Saudi armored personnel carriers rolled in to the Bahraini capital, Manama, he denounced the crackdown as “an ugly thing.” Ahmadinejad has also cautioned against what he calls a U.S. conspiracy to create divisions among Muslims along sectarian lines. “Don’t be fooled by them,” he said recently, referring to the West. “Iran is a friend of all nations.”
In the past two weeks, a variety of lower-ranking Iranian officials have lashed out repeatedly against Bahrain and the Gulf Cooperation Council. The six GCC countries — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman — earlier issued a joint statement accusing Iran of fomenting plots, hatching conspiracies and running spy rings. The statement demanded that Iran “stop interfering” in the affairs of its gulf neighbors.
U.S. officials have been generally skeptical about claims that Iran was behind the Bahrain uprising, although Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, during a visit to the gulf this month, said he had seen “evidence that the Iranians are trying to exploit the situation in Bahrain.” He did not elaborate.
Defending his country’s crackdown on protesters, Bahraini Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmad al-Khalifa said Monday that the troops would remain on the island until Iranian “threats” have been eased. Bahrain and Iran have a long history, with Iran at several times laying claim on the island. Relations have been cold in the past decade, with very few Iranians being able to obtain visas for the country.
Within hours of Khalid’s remarks, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman fired back with a statement dismissing the GCC complaints, saying it was the Arabs who were doing all the interfering in the region.
“The military forces of some members of the council have disregarded international law and conventions, interfered in the internal affairs of their neighboring country and cracked down on defenseless men and women,” the spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, told reporters.
Some factions with the Iranian government — including prominent allies of Ahmadinejad — are demanding a harder line against Saudi Arabia, tacitly backing the actions of students who attacked the Saudi Embassy compound with rocks and Molotov cocktails before being driven back by riot police.
Rouhollah Hosseinian, an Ahmadinejad supporter in parliament, has called for Iran’s forces to be prepared for war. “We should not allow Saudi Arabia’s borders to get closer to us,” Hosseinian told the Khabar Online Web site.
An influential Shiite activist, Hossein Allahkaram, said Sunday that Iran has a range of methods to drive the Saudis out of Bahrain, with the ultimate option being suicide bombings.
Other factions have sought to tone down the rhetoric, noting that the wave of unrest spilling through the Middle East has already strengthened Iran’s hand at the expense of longtime rivals Egypt and Iraq.
“Let’s face it: Saudi Arabia is hugely unstable and now tries to create a mythological enemy to cover up its increasing weaknesses,” said Mohammad Marandi, a professor of North American studies at Tehran University. He said domestic unrest combined with the regional uprisings are increasingly making Saudi Arabia’s rulers nervous.
“Iran does not need to react or give any excuses or pretexts for the Saudis,” Marandi said. “In the end, it is them who are really in trouble.”
Despite past antagonism toward Iran — the Saudis briefly banned Iranians from making religious pilgrimages to Mecca after Iranian groups staged protests against the Saudi royal family in the late 1970s — Saudi Arabia has in recent years refrained from openly criticizing its Shiite neighbor, said David B. Ottaway, a Middle East expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and author of “The King’s Messenger,” a book on U.S.-Saudi relations.
Ottaway characterized the deepening conflict over Bahrain as the start of a “political and religious cold war.”
“They have always wanted to keep things friendly, saying that today’s enemy may be tomorrow’s friend,” Ottaway said. “Now for the first time, you hear Saudi diplomats talking about ‘red lines.’ And for them, Bahrain is a red line.”
Warrick reported from Washington.
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