Saudis sensible to see Iran as ‘snake’

Boston Herald, 26 Oct 2013 – The Saudis have a point. Those words do not flow easily from my pen. For more than three decades, the Arabian royals have spent billions of petro-dollars promoting Wahhabism, a poisonously anti-Western interpretation of Islam, of which the most lethal expression is bin Ladenism.
But now the Saudis are angry with the Obama administration. The reasons include “inaction over Syria’s civil war as well as recent U.S. overtures to Iran , a source close to Saudi policy “told Reuters on Tuesday. “The shift away from the U.S.is a major one, “the source said.
The Saudis read in The New York Times that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is implementing “conciliatory international policies”. They read in The Wall Street Journal that Iran wants to end its “nuclear stalemate”.
The Saudis know that’s untrue. They know that Iran ‘s rulers, pragmatists and hardliners alike, are revolutionaries who intend to become nuclear-armed masters of the Middle East — a dire threat to Saudi Arabia and other nations in the region.
The Saudis may wonder whether we’ve forgotten that for more than 30 years, Iranians have alternated between negotiating with Americans and killing Americans. In The New Yorker last month, Dexter Filkins, among the top foreign correspondents in the world, wrote that in 2004, Iran’s Quds Force “began flooding Iraq with lethal roadside bombs that the Americans referred to as E.F.P.s, for ‘explosively formed projectiles.’ ‘There was zero question where they were coming from,’ Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who at the time was the head of the Joint Special Operations Command, told me.
‘We knew where all the factories were in Iran. The E.F.P.s killed hundreds of Americans.’”
This history — to say nothing of the slaughter of U.S. Marines in Beirut in 1983, assassinations and bombings from Berlin to Buenos Aires, and a foiled plot to blow up a swanky Washington restaurant while the Saudi ambassador was dining there — should cause American negotiators to be adamant about keeping economic sanctions firmly in place (or strengthening them) until Iran ‘s rulers agree to dismantle their nuclear weapons program. More likely: Iranian diplomats will offer insignificant concessions that the American side will be all too eager to reward in the interest of what is wishfully known as “confidence building”.
To avert that outcome, U.S. Sen.Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) has proposed a plan that would operationalize an idea first floated by Mark Dubowitz, the sanctions expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (the think tank I head).
Kirk’s plan would freeze Iran ‘s remaining overseas assets while giving President Obama the flexibility to allow Iran access to some of those funds — but only if it agrees to end uranium enrichment and reprocessing.
“If Iran were to cheat in fulfilling any of its obligations, the quarantine would be re-imposed,” Dubowitz said.
Years ago, the Saudis began pressing Washington to take serious action against Iran, to eliminate the Islamic Republic’s nuclear weapons facilities, to “cut off the head of the snake,” as the Saudi ambassador vividly phrased it. Here again, the Saudis had a point. Those words flow with surprising ease from my pen.
Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on national security.