GULF STORM

A second US Navy aircraft carrier strike force is being sent to the Persian Gulf, according to many media reports. At the end of February the American aircraft carrier, the USS John C. Stennis, and its accompanying strike group will join the US Navy's first aircraft carrier strike force, which is already in the region. US destroyer Gladiator has already entered the Persian Gulf, the Daily Mail reports. Another five ships of this class, including two British ships, will soon arrive to search for mines in this strategically important stretch of water. On 11 January US President George Bush announced that the US aircraft carrier and Patriot rocket systems would be sent to the Persian Gulf area as part of his administration's "steps to strengthen Iraqi security and defend American interests in the Middle East". "We will expand the exchange of intelligence and deploy Patriot anti-aircraft defence systems to support our friends and allies," Bush said.

As might have been expected, most analysts linked the dispatch of an aircraft carrier group with the increase in tension around Iran, for all the USA's insistence that it's not yet war and no-one is planning a fight. The US under secretary of state for political affairs, Nicholas Burns, said directly that the redeployment of the American fleet was a warning intended to make Iran give up attempts to establish its own hegemony in the region. "Iran will not dominate the Middle East. The Persian Gulf must not be controlled by Iran. This is why the USA has sent two aircraft carrier strike groups to the region," Burns explained. "Tehran will have to realise that the United States will defend its interests in the case of an Iranian threat," Burns added.

Tehran is also flexing its muscles. Iran conducted military exercises on launching the Zalzal rocket, which has a radius of 350 km, and the Fajr-5 with a radius of 70 km. "The aim of the manoeuvres is to assess the rockets' defence and attack potential," the Iranian news agency Fars reported, quoting a representative of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. The rocket launch was successful, the Revolutionary Guards representative said. Iran conducted similar manoeuvres three times in 2006, testing the Fajr-3, a so-called "ultra-horizon" rocket, because of its flat trajectory that cannot be detected by radar, armed with multiple warheads for the simultaneous destruction of several targets, according to the Associated Press. The Revolutionary Guards' five-day war games are held in the north of the country near the town of Garmsar in Semnan Province, 100 km southeast of Tehran. This was the first test-firing of a rocket since the UN Security Council imposed sanctions on Iran at the end of December 2006 over its nuclear programme.

While analysts are concentrating on the disagreements between the USA and Iran, most are losing sight of the disagreements between Iran and its Arab neighbours.

Today when the political fashion for discussing the "clash of civilisations" and "the USA's war with Islam" (no less!) is in full swing, it is not easy to imagine that the "Muslim world" is far from monolithic and has its own serious disagreements.

Before the second aircraft carrier strike group in the Persian Gulf became topic No 1 in the international news, the United States of America and eight Arab countries had appealed to Iran "not to interfere in the internal affairs of Iraq", according to various media reports. The appeal was made in Kuwait during Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's meeting with the foreign ministers of six oil monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council and of Egypt and Jordan. Rice's visit was intended to ensure their support and cooperation in the implementation of the new American strategy in Iraq. All the participants agreed that Iran's interference is a significant destabilising factor in the region. The desire expressed in the final communiqu? to spare Iraq from clashes between "regional and international powers" is testimony to the United States' fear that these countries will be turned into a theatre of war in the light of the conflict between Washington and Tehran. The conflict is linked to Iraq itself, to Iran's nuclear programme and to Tehran's support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, Le Monde writes. There is no need to add that Iran is relying heavily on "Muslim solidarity". "All the states of the region are Muslim and all Muslims must unite today as never before to resist the outsiders (the Americans), the occupiers who are trying to sow discord to justify their own presence," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday evening in an interview to the satellite channel Al-Arabiya. Forty-eight hours before this the Islamic Republic's security adviser, Ali Larijani, had given a message to the king of Saudi Arabia, Abdullah Bin-Abd-al-Aziz, which was similar in content  to a letter given a week earlier by the Iranian foreign minister, Manuchehr Mottaki, to the United Arab Emirates. Beware of the "trap", threatening the "disintegration of the Muslim umma", Mottaki said. These remarks were a pale copy of the speech given at the end of December by Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran's spiritual leader. In an address to Muslim pilgrims at the beginning of the haj, he described as "venal criminals" all who join the Americans against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, "the Iraqi government elected by the people", and all who fear the strengthening of the "Shia crescent".

The issue is, however, that Iran's Arab neighbours are seriously worried about its increasing power. Moreover, many tend to see the increasing Sunni-Shia violence in Iraq as competition for influence between the mainly Sunni Arab countries and Shia Iran. It is not difficult to divide Iraq into its constituent parts, but then the Sunnis would receive the central desert "triangle" where there isn't a drop of oil, and such a "distribution" does not suit anyone.

An excursion into history

Iranian-Arab disagreements in the Persian Gulf have reached boiling point before. At that time Ba'athist Iraq led by Saddam Hussein was expressing "common Arab interests".

In 1971 Iran and Iraq were already on the verge of war: a political mine laid by the British was having its effect, a territorial dispute for control over the islands of Abu Musa and Tunb in the Straits of Hormuz. The history of the islands' ownership is complex: first they were part of Persia and Iran, in the 19th century the British drove out the Iranians and created their own naval base there to combat pirates and, when the United Arab Emirates were granted independence, the new state was given the right to these islands. The Iranians seized, or if you prefer returned, these territories two days before the withdrawal of British troops and the formal declaration of UAE independence. As it officially had a powerful army Iraq took upon itself the "dirty work" for the rich but weak Emirates, but it was seriously worried about control over the strategic Straits of Hormuz through which most of the oil extracted by the Persian Gulf states was exported. Once Iran had established its sovereignty over the islands, Iraq broke off diplomatic relations. After a long period of tension war was avoided at that time; in 1975 Iraq and Iran concluded an agreement under which Iraq received from Iran a number of territorial concessions and privileges in exchange for the normalisation of bilateral relations. 

However, in autumn 1980 the situation changed again. Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who was already unpopular with the political elite in the west, was no longer in power in Tehran, while Ayatollah Khomeini was holding hostage more than 50 American diplomats. The Iranian army had been weakened; the "mullocracy" had begun a battle against "pro-American elements" with all the inherent consequences, of which one was that Iran was deprived of arms supplies from the USA. And on the Arab streets it was decided that the time had come to settle the problem of Iran in one fell swoop; on 22 September 1980 the Iraqi army entered Iranian territory. Its main aim was control over the province of Khuzestan and its main city Khorramshahr. The province's population is mainly Arab, not Persian. Iraq described it as its own "captured territory". And Khuzestan is very rich in oil.

The Islamic Republic of Iran straightaway called the war with Iraq "jihad". In Iraq it was dubbed the "Kadisiya" after the historic battle when Arab cavalry destroyed the Persian army. The war proceeded with intermittent successes and the sides changed tactics. At the height of the war 12-14 year-old teenagers were called up into the army in Iran and given plastic "passes to paradise". During the initial stage Iraq had several victories on the central sector of the front around Qasr-e Shirin and significant victories in the southern sector where the Iraqi army occupied part of the Iranian province of Khuzestan and seized the major city of Khorramshahr. However, Iran's general mobilisation helped to stop the Iraqi assault. From December 1980 the war entered a positional phase. Iran counterattacked in September 1981. With their significant human resources Iran managed in spring 1982 to inflict several serious defeats on Iraq and liberate Khorramshahr. After this Saddam Hussein said he was ready to begin peace talks. However, Ayatollah Khomeini announced his intention to continue the war until the regime in Iraq was overturned. In June 1982 the Iranian army entered Iraq.

It was at this time that the sadly notorious "tanker war" began in the Persian Gulf, which many businessmen remember as a nightmare to this day. Both Baghdad and Tehran announced at the very start of the war that civilian vessels had no immunity from military attacks. The Iraqis struck tankers going to Iranian ports, while the Iranians struck tankers taking oil from all the Arab ports. Around 400 vessels were destroyed or damaged from September 1980 until the cease-fire in the Persian Gulf! Oil platforms, fields and industrial centres were struck. The tanker war reached its peak in 1984 when attacks began on the vessels of third countries. Then Iran turned on Kuwait which had been giving substantial help to Baghdad. The Iranians not only sank vessels entering and leaving Kuwait, but also made at least five rocket attacks directly onto Kuwaiti territory. These Iranian rocket attacks made Kuwait ask the United States in November 1986 for protection for its transporters (although the American ambassador in Kuwait later said that he passed on this request from Kuwait in summer 1986) and Kuwaiti tankers did in fact sail in the Gulf with an American escort and under the American flag.

Today history is, alas, repeating itself. Iranian analysts are already looking for "American spy centres" operating against Iran from UAE territory and accuse Arab leaders of "betrayal" and "a conspiracy with the USA". And at the same time they are holding exercises to block shipping in the Straits of Hormuz, where the tanker war flared up in 1984.