Shibley Telhami, who has made a career of interpreting polling data from totalitarian regimes, tells us today that “It’s not about Iran.”(If your leader, through the media and other apparatuses of state, makes clear that the Israeli “occupation” of Palestine is of utmost importance to his regime, you’re not going to tell a person of uncertain affiliations that you think that the restrictions of freedom of assembly is a more pressing matter.)
In truth, I don’t disagree much with the conclusion of the article: that the Arab world isn’t really focused on the Iranian threat, I’m just skeptical of how Telhami reached that conclusion.
And even though Gulf Arab governments need the U.S. military umbrella for their security, their publics view the United States as a far greater threat than Iran. It is a challenge for these governments to have to continually depend on an America whose foreign policy is rejected by their own publics and whose record in recent years has been more of failure than of success.
Their own publics? The Arab world is not populated by regimes who abide by the consent of the governed. It’s the other way around.
While America’s policy in the Middle East hasn’t been perfect, even now there appears a bit of the American push for democratization in the Middle East. Whether or not it ill take hold is uncertain, but would the president’s outreach to democratic elements in the Gulf be possible if Saddam were still in power? It’s not as if President Clinton’s appeasement of Arafat led to better results.
The Arab/Muslim world indeed seems to be embracing Iran. But it’s disingenuous to attribute it to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The conflict is real, but even if it were resolved, the Arab world would be no more friendly to the United States and its interests than it is now. Right now Iran seems to be have the certainty of purpose so it will have more friends in the Arab world. And the Iranian path, frankly, is the path to take for despots who wish to hold on to their power.
It’s also ironic the Telhami focuses on the conflict, because a recent poll of Palestinian shows that the “occupation” is far down the list of their concerns.
The focus on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is a way of allowing rulers who care nothing about the views of their own subjects to pretend to respect democracy. It’s perverse, but this is what Prof. Telhami promotes. His CV says that he’s “Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at University of Maryland.” What he promotes isn’t “peace and development” but extended terms for tyrants.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
