US Arms Sales to Middle East May Backfire

The US has announced a rather big arms deal for five Gulf Arab states (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and the UAE), about $20 billion worth of weapons over the next 10 years. In addition, Egypt will get $13 billion, and the Israelis $30 billion. Any sale must be approved by Congress. Of course, the Administration will sell the idea as a check on Iranian Shi’ite adventurism in the region. Further, the White House has made the Gulf States promise that the weapons won’t be used against Israel, nor should they be. One just wishes the Busheviks had extracted a promise that the weapons wouldn’t be used against the people governed by those states as well.

First, it is necessary to understand an awkward demographic fact about Saudi Arabia. Despite the regime being the Sunni protectors of Islam’s holy places, 20% of the population is Shi’ite, and in the main oil producing area, that rises to 75%. Matthew Mainen of the Institute for Gulf Affairs recently noted, “Shia books, education, music, and art are banned in Saudi Arabia. Shias are further barred from playing any political, social, or religious role in Saudi society, and are not even allowed to provide testimony in courts of law.” The US State Department agrees, “Members of the Shia minority are subject to officially sanctioned political and economic discrimination.” Sounds like just a matter of time before those weapons are going to be needed to keep internal order. The other Gulf States have the same arrangement with varying degrees of intensity.

In Egypt, there is a much smaller Shi’ite community, which doesn’t fare much better. The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights reports, “Every time Shi'a Muslims in Egypt have been arrested, political justifications were put forth for the arrests. The random charges were always similar to those leveled at the arrestees of ‘religious organization’ cases in Egypt: forming an unauthorized organization, contacting foreign countries or organizations, or receiving funds and/or training from abroad, or attempting to spread extremist ideologies, and so on in a familiar laundry list.”

From a Washington point of view, it may simply be a case of arming those regimes that will best be able to respond should the Iranian theocrats do anything unwise. Or given this administration’s passions, they may be used to pre-empt an Iranian move. However, from the King’s palace in Jeddah, the Iranians pose less of a problem to the regime that the local Shi’ites, who may be perceived as a Fifth Column.

If those weapons do wind up supporting thrones of the Sunnis at the expense of the Shi’ites, America is going to get the blame. That is all well and good if the Shi’ites continue to remain at the edges of the Gulf State polities. However, one ought to recall what happened when America’s great friend the Shah of Iran was overthrown despite the use of American made weapons to maintain power. A quarter of a century on, America is still trying to settle the matter.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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