What About The Iranian Threat To Arabs?

In Muslims vs. Iran, Inestors Business Daily notes:

It is widely assumed that the biggest victim of a nuclear Iran would be Israel. In fact, freedom-loving Muslims in neighboring countries know they have at least as much to fear.

Let's put aside the question of whether freedom-loving Muslims have a monopoly on fear of Islam.

It is not only Jews in the Middle East who will tell you that Iran is a burgeoning monster. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak spoke for many Arabs and Muslims when he told members of the ruling National Democratic Party this week that "the Persians are trying to devour the Arab states."

In spite of limited political freedoms and continuous martial law since the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981, citizens of this most populous of Arab nations know they have a lot to lose. Mubarak has implemented privatization and abolished capital gains taxes, and the Egyptian stock market — shut for a quarter-century until Mubarak reopened it in 1986 — was outperforming all other emerging markets not too long ago.

Moreover, after a meeting between U.S. and European officials and Arab foreign ministers in Egypt last month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reportedly discerned worry among the Arabs that Western countries, especially Europe, did not appreciate Iran's regional ambitions.

But fear of Iran is not something new. Back in October 2006, The Chicago Tribune carried an article with the headline Arab leaders sweat Iran: Sunnis start to see Shiite state as a bigger threat than Israel:

In a recent opinion piece titled “For These Reasons We Fear Iran” in the pan-Arabic daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, the director of Al-Arabiya TV, Abdal-Rahman al-Rashed, argued that the most likely target of Iran’s nuclear weapons is the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf.

“It is incomprehensible that Iran will bomb Israel, which has a shield of missiles, tremendous firepower and nuclear weapons artillery sufficient to eradicate every city in Iran,” he wrote. “This means that if this destructive weapon is used, the only option for a target is the Arab Gulf.”

At the Dayan Center, Bengio said she wouldn’t be surprised if Arab countries at this moment are trying to persuade Washington to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.

If that is true, then the pressure the Bush Administration has been under must have been tremendous--as will be the pressure Obama will be under to extend the nuclear umbrella he has offered Israel to encompass not a few Arab countries as well.

And it is not just the Arab countries outside of Iran who have something to fear. The Arab minority within are living in fear as well. The Times Online, also in October 2006 reported about Tehran's secret war against its own people: The persecution of Ahwazi Arabs and the takeover of their land has led to accusations of 'ethnic cleansing':

“NEVER AGAIN” is, I fear, a phrase that we may hear again all too soon — but too late to warn people, let alone save lives. Under the cover of secrecy the fundamentalist regime in Tehran is waging a sustained, bloody campaign of intimidation and persecution against its Arab minority. These Arabs believe that they are victims of “ethnic cleansing” by Iran’s Persian majority.

Sixteen Arab rights activists have been sentenced to death, according to reports in the Iranian media. They were found guilty of insurgency in secret trials before revolutionary courts. But most of the defendants were convicted solely on the basis of confessions extracted under torture. Ten are expected to be hanged in a couple of weeks, after the end of Ramadan. Amnesty International says that two of those sentenced to die, Abdolreza Nawaseri and Nazem Bureihi, were in prison when they were alleged to have been involved in bomb attacks. Three others — Hamza Sawa- eri, Jafar Sawari and Reisan Sawari — say that they were nowhere near the Zergan oilfield the day it was bombed.

...Tehran’s latest tactic is to hold Ahwazi children as hostages. According to Amnesty International, children as young as 2 have been jailed with their mothers to force their fugitive, political-activist fathers to surrender to the police.

Read the whole thing.

This is a topic that has had little coverage. It was addressed this past April by Daniel Brett, Chairman of the British Ahwazi Friendship Society, in an article on Pajamas Media-- Iran's Occupied Territories

The Iranian regime’s claim to represent the interests of Arabs better than the Arab League is belied by the brutal persecution of indigenous Ahwazi Arabs living within its own territory, which have been under direct rule from Tehran since the end of self-government in 1925.

This week Iran cut off drinking water supply to Arab villages along the left bank of the Shatt al-Arab, causing social unrest and fears of an outbreak of disease in the indigenous population. Ahwazi Arabs are the  most deprived and persecuted ethnic group in the Middle East, with human development indicators at an African level and far below those of the Palestinians. This ethno-national group has been subjected to  forced relocation,  land confiscation,  cultural repression, state terrorism, mass executions and  economic disadvantage, despite their land being one of the most oil-rich regions in the world. In all, at least 300,000 hectares of Arab land have been stolen by Tehran since 1979.

...The intention behind the action is two-fold: to punish and intimidate the restive Arab population and to drive them off their traditional lands in order to strengthen the regime’s military presence in the region and bolster the economic interests of a predatory religious elite.

...Arabs living on Minoo Island, south of Abadan, have already  faced state intimidation and expulsion. Most Ahwazi Arabs believe this is in line with the government’s ethnic cleansing program, which was outlined in a  letter written by the then vice-president Ali Abtahi and leaked to the press in April 2005.

So when President Obama has those talks with Iran that he talked about during the campaign, will he find time to address the Persian threat that Arabs--both inside and outside of Iran--feel they face from Iran?

For all the talk in the media about pressure from the Israel Lobby on the US to address the threat of Iraq and Iran, apparently the Arab community in the US has been silent. Will that continue? Does CAIR feel beholden to Iran--after all they did defend Ahmadinejad's 2007 visit to the UN--or will they speak out on behalf of Arabs in the face of the Arab threat.

The Iranian threat against the Arabs is likely to increase, just as it grows vis-a-vis Israel. How will the Arabs, and Obama, react?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

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