Saturday, 14 May 2011
UAE businessman Khalaf Al Habtoor. (File photo)
Mr. Habtoor has asked United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his Arab League and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) counterparts, Amr Moussa and Abdullatif Al-Zayani, in a letter obtained by Al Arabiya to officially refer to the Gulf as the Arabian Gulf.
In making his request, Mr. Habtoor appears to be seeking to rekindle a long-standing dispute between Iran and the Gulf states over the correct reference to the region. The dispute has persuaded much of the world over the years in deference to the controversy to back away from calling the region the Persian Gulf and instead simply referring to it as the Gulf.
Mr. Habtoor argued in his letter that reference to the region as the Persian Gulf was obsolete. “I think most members of the council agree about this,” he wrote. “We rely on present facts and realities that reflect history. The vast majority of Gulf people are Arabs, both from the Arab countries overlooking the Arab Gulf or from the areas controlled by Iran,” he added in a reference to the Iranian province of Khuzestan that is predominantly populated by Iranians of Arab origin.
Mr. Habtoor’s proposal is likely to be politely rejected by Mr. Ban. The United Nations has enough Middle Eastern issues on its plate, including Iran’s nuclear development and the brutal suppression of anti-government protests in various Arab states, to want to take on another hot potato.
The UN would also not want to take sides in what is a political dispute between two parties.
Similarly, the GCC is likely to shy away from recasting itself as the Arab Gulf Cooperation Council as Mr. Habtoor proposes.
Ironically, the GCC itself seemed to want to avoid semantic differences and keep its lines to Iran open when it chose at its founding in 1981 not to use the word Arab in its name.
GCC leaders like Mr. Habtoor are well aware that terminology in the Middle East almost always reflects a political view. If the identification of the Gulf is controversial so is the naming of Palestinians territories: to Palestinians the West Bank is occupied territory and part of Palestine; to many Israelis it’s Yehuda and Samaria, names that indicate that Israel too has Biblical claims to the land.
As a result, GCC leaders despite their charges that Iran instigated the turmoil in Bahrain and ran a spy ring in Kuwait may not want to expand their dispute into the realm of semantics.
In his letter, Mr. Habtoor argues, however, that that is the very reason why the GCC should take semantic action. It would constitute a response to “Iranian ambitions that exceed the bounds of reason,” he says.
Mr. Habtoor argued that identifying the Gulf as Arab was “necessary to confront Iranian ambitions and reveal some truths and intentions of Iran to control the region and interfere in Arab countries’ domestic affairs and damage their social fabric.”
Mr. Habtoor’s suggestion certainly taps into a widespread emotion across the Gulf. Yet, if adopted, it is unlikely to persuade Iran to change its views or policies. If anything, it would spark a war of words that would more likely than not clutter debate about the real issues that divide Iran and the Gulf states. The Gulf has sufficient burning issues that need to be resolved and is better off without distractions that may produce a feel good effect but no real solution.
(James M. Dorsey, formerly of The Wall Street Journal, is a senior researcher at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer. He can be reached via email at: questfze@gmail.com)
No comments:
Post a Comment