• Leadership And The Middle East Crisis

In one generation our world has shrunk immeasurably, yet it has also exploded unrecognizably. The Internet and the social media superimposed on it has claimed responsibility for igniting revolutions and/or demonstrations throughout Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Oman and Bahrain.

Overthrown governments in Tunisia and Egypt are a problem, however, revolutions in countries such as strategically critical Libya and Bahrain present a whole different set of even more troubling uncertainties. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and United Arab Emirates are implementing measures to snuff out those potential fires of unrest by “buying” segments of their populations before they get out of control.

Saudi Arabia increased salaries to public employees by 15% and made claims that it will improve education, infrastructure and healthcare through the trickling of $36 billion down through Saudi society – from the top. The Saudi pre-emptive strike is a short-term plug in a leaky dyke holding back unrest it doesn’t understand, and blames on foreign disruptive forces. It’s king and ruling family lack the capacity to ignite the entrepreneurial or creative innovation required to build a country for long term success.

Countries that are currently home to 2/3 of known crude reserves are now unstable, and have escalating conflicts that will further the bloodshed in the streets. It doesn’t take a crystal ball to foresee continuing rises in oil prices which will in turn feed the monster of inflation to affect prices of most products and foods around the world.

Through the sandstorms of all uprisings there are religious forces influencing the fighting, particularly Shiites colliding with Sunnis. We should be particularly concerned with evolving conflicts on the streets of Bahrain, where a Sunni king rules a 70% Shiite population. Bahrain is the banking capital of the Persian Gulf. The U.S. Fifth Fleet, which is responsible for the naval forces in the Persian Gulf and the whole regions, is based on the island. Bahrain’s strategic importance is immeasurable. Shiite Iran which has long funded and armed insurgencies occurring amongst its Muslim neighbors is just a stone’s throw across the pond, while Sunni Saudi Arabia is a walk across the 16 mile causeway, but Saudi Arabia’s Eastern province with a Shiite majority, holds critical oil production facilities.

There are parallels in perspectives that exist between the House of Saud and the Administration in the White House, and should either or both continue to proceed in denial, there are outcomes that will negatively impact the populations of the two countries.

Both the House of Saud and the Obama administration are attempting to purchase support of their respective populations. Such measures are very temporary, stopgap solutions rooted in ignorance. Both ignore reality. King Abdullah heaving bushels of dollars out his palace windows, briefly quieting the simmering discontent he doesn’t understand, and Obama’s stubborn refusal to listen to the message bellowed from America’s streets through the midterm election bullhorns, suggests confusion at the top in both countries.

The current United States leadership appears conflicted between choosing the objective of championing America’s propensity to uphold principles of freedom and democracy, and maintaining stability in the region. Those are not mutually exclusive missions for the Middle East, yet any breakdown of decisive direction and action will provide Iranian leadership an opportunity to expand it footholds from which to spread its religious doctrine of hate and slaughter across the Middle East.

A majority of any population does not want handouts – this truism applies in America, and it applies in Saudi Arabia, as well as Bahrain. As we have witnessed, it also applies in the streets of Teheran. People seek safety, freedom, dignity, transparency, and justice, within which they can actuate the lives they pursue for themselves and their families. A transition to more open governance is inevitable. It will take decisive leadership from the West to ensure that such freedom is provided and maintained in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

We may soon reach a point when America will be forced to draw a line around Bahrain’s sands. American presence must not leave Bahrain’s shores, and Bahrain cannot fall to extremist interests. It certainly cannot be allowed to slide under an Iranian manipulated extremist thumb. Stability in these critical countries across the Middles East will have positive impact on the West, and the Obama White House will have to demonstrate some heretofore obscure measures of resolve.

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• Iran & A Solution To The Middle East

Iran presents the United States with the most potent opportunity for a comprehensive breakthrough in foreign policy affecting the whole of the Middle East. Current dissatisfaction of Iranians with their current President’s mismanagement of the country’s economy, and the upcoming summer elections, present the United States an exceptional opportunity. A relationship can be forged with Iranians, first, and their leadership, second.

There is much common ground between the two countries that gets all but ignored or lost in the noise of rhetoric by leadership, and misrepresentation in the media. The U.S. should focus some attention on the people of Iran rather than strictly addressing itself to the governing Mullahs and President. Iranians have more in common with the West than is generally accepted or admitted, and they should not be confused with the Muslim fundamentalism that permeates countries such as Saudi Arabia or Syria. Iranians are well educated, and unlike their current leadership, have a distaste for ideological governance. They are generally suspicious of most rulers in the Middle East, and it appears they now are having second thoughts about their own leaders.

Beyond the prying eyes of their leadership, Iranians dress in the latest fashions, and are as anxious to conduct business and build companies with the kind of fervor and enthusiasm that most in North America would readily recognize and applaud. One only needs to look at companies that Iranian expatriates have built in Western nations for further evidence of Iranian entrepreneurialism. They enjoy a beautiful country with sometimes subtropical climate, bordering the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea, and benefit from a wealth produced by such resources as oil, gas, coal, chromium, copper, lead, manganese, zinc and sulphur.

Although it is Muslim, Iran is not an Arabic country, which is a significant differentiation evidenced in its strained relationships with neighboring countries. Analysis of Iran’s fueling of Arabic insurgents in its Middle East neighborhood suggests that its participation in unsettling the Arab world is an inexpensive method of achieving self-security. Iran is really more concerned with its immediate neighbors than it is about the United States, or even Israel, nevertheless, under the current circumstances it’s leadership is taking actions that are in the nationalistic self-interest.

Afghanistan is a neighbor providing it with little other than a mountain of trouble, including heroin (Iranians have one of the highest rates of drug addiction), and a long history of hostile governments. On its Iraqi front, the West witnessed, even participated, in Iran’s war with a wayward and ruthless dictator. While Iran presently supports insurgencies in Iraq, those strategic gambits would come to an abrupt end if the U.S. were to build a broad based relationship with its population. The same goes for its arms sales to Hamas, and its support of Palestinian insurgents. Israel would have a much less aggressive neighbor, and a weakened capacity to launch terrorist attacks.

Some self proclaimed experts on Iran suggest that any overtures made to the Iranian government should include acknowledging the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic’s government, and make representations or commitments that the U.S. would not seek to change it. This would be a mistake. The U.S. should abstain from making such overtures, and leave that to Iran’s 66 million people to decide. The Iranian population in majority has little affection for its own leadership. Approach should be very public, and any “meeting” must be held under the glare of the media’s prying eyes. Any meeting should not be restricted to the “political” sphere. This would be a mistake. Rapprochement should include representatives from both U.S. and Iranian business communities even though much of economic activity in Iran is controlled by the state. As a comprehensive relationship becomes structured for the advantage of both Americans and Iranians, each stage should be shared through effective PR with the population.

The U.S. should also side-step the European Union in such meetings. Europe has little to gain by a normalization of relations between the U.S. and Iran. Iran presents a large market for European products. Its objective should be to lift sanctions, normalize bilateral relations including the opening of trade routes, and concluding some initial deals for goods and natural resources. This effort would be a forward step in the reversal of the ravaging effects that unemployment and inflation have administered on Iran’s economy, along with the heavy hand of a rigid and backward government.

If a threshold is built on such a basis, the people of Iran will quickly step into the fray, and the architecture of mutual respect will crystallize rapidly. From there it may well be a matter of months before the people of Iran replace the conservative clerics ruling them, with a secular government which is the preference of their vast majority. Once Iranians have developed the confidence that their security concerns are shared with a resilient partner, it can be expected that Iran will open its nuclear ambitions to more scrutiny. In time, it might even agree to the dismantling of the nuclear infrastructure. The tide that has created the “brain drain” of the past twenty years would reverse, and find many expatriates who now reside in places like Canada and Great Britain, returning in droves to enjoy their unique position as Persians in the Middle East, in from the cold of isolation.

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