Gulf States Buy Arms With Wary Eye on Iran

Hosting U.S. Forces Seen as a Vulnerability

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 4, 2007; A12

CAIRO, Aug. 3 -- Arab nations in the Persian Gulf are snapping up new U.S. arms offers partly out of fear that U.S. military installations on their territory would make them targets in any American war with Iran, regional experts said.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice discussed the prospective weapons sales for Saudi Arabia and five other Gulf nations this week as she toured the Middle East with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. The two sought to win support for U.S. peace efforts in the region and reassure Arab allies worried about fallout from U.S. policies toward Iraq and Iran.

Bush administration officials said they expected the arms deals for the Gulf states -- Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates -- to total at least $20 billion.

Saudi Arabia, with Israel and Egypt, is one of the United States' most powerful allies in the region. The United States pulled most of its forces out of the Saudi kingdom by 2003, but the five other Gulf countries host armored brigades, air-refueling sites and other installations of the U.S. Central Command. All told, Gulf bases host an average of 40,000 U.S. troops, with an additional 20,000 American troops afloat offshore.

For the Gulf hosts, "this makes them vulnerable. It's quite clear that if the U.S. is going to have any military strike against Iran, then they are going to use these military bases. . . . I don't think Iran will miss any chance to impose damage on the region," said Ibrahim Saif, director of the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan, in a telephone interview from Amman.

Rice said the Gulf arms package would "help bolster forces of moderation and support a broader strategy to counter the negative influences of al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran."

The governments themselves were more guarded. Qatar's foreign minister already had announced that his country would not take part in any attack on Iran, and the Emirates' president ruled out use of his country's territory.

"Of course they have to say it, because Iran is a big gorilla, the 800-pound gorilla," in their neighborhood, said Thomas Mattair, a Washington area author on the Middle East and former research director of the Middle East Policy Council. "But genuinely, their preference is that we don't use force."

"They're concerned about Iran's capability to retaliate against them, to inflict damage on them," Mattair said by telephone. "They've been asking us not to do it. Obviously, they've been getting mixed signals from this administration, as everyone else has" regarding preemptive strikes on Iran.

Arab leaders this week gave scant public acknowledgment of the U.S. arms offer. Rice was the central player in an Arab summit at Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, but photos on many front pages here showed only Arab leaders smiling and holding hands with Arab leaders, with no U.S. official in sight.

Syria, an ally of Iran, called the arms deals "dangerous." In a statement about the arms sales on his official Web site, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, "All U.S. efforts are for the creation of differences among our brothers in the region to impose its ideas and hegemony."

Gulf states, with their tiny armies, hope to buy deterrence with the arms packages, Mattair said, but the new deals probably will prompt a matching buildup by Iran, which is already sprinting to lengthen the range of its missiles and hone its nuclear technology.

Ultimately, U.S. arms sales in the Gulf often are a matter of rewarding the prime protector of the Middle East with oil dollars, analysts said. The U.S. military also offers up some of its more coveted product lines to ensure that Gulf allies keep looking to the United States as its primary protector, rather than Russia or China.

"Was selling U.S. arms to Gulf countries in the past ever a deterrent to Iran or anyone else?" asked Khaled al-Shami in an article in the London-based Arabic daily al-Quds al-Arabi. "Or is it an indirect way to spread around oil revenues where U.S. warships embark?"

Rice also announced a 10-year renewal of the $1.3 billion in military aid Egypt has received from the United States each year since 1987. Egypt has been the second-largest recipient of U.S. military aid since signing a peace accord with Israel in 1979.

Egyptian human rights activists said the U.S. arms renewal gave Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak tacit U.S. sanction to proceed with his crackdown on all forms of opposition here.

Tuesday, as Rice and Arab leaders talked at Sharm el-Sheikh, an Egyptian court refused to release imprisoned opposition leader Ayman Nour. The court rejected defense contentions that beatings and other harsh treatment in custody had made his diabetes life-threatening.

Nour was the lead challenger to Mubarak in 2005 elections. A court later sentenced him to five years in prison after convicting him of political fraud. Nour's supporters said the case against him was falsified. Rice told reporters Thursday on the flight back to Washington that she had raised Nour's case privately with Mubarak. Her inquiry went unreported in Egyptian newspapers during the trip.

"The United States decided to replace one commodity, democracy . . . after it discovered the dangers of exporting democracy without the necessary complementary package of cultural and social change and public liberty," wrote Hussam Ittani, a columnist for Lebanon's as-Safir newspaper. "What is the replacement? A commodity whose usefulness was proven in the past: gigantic arms deals."

Staff writer Robin Wright and staff researcher Robert E. Thomason in Washington contributed to this report.

UK Report: Errors Made in Sailors Kidnap

By DAVID STRINGER
The Associated Press
Saturday, July 21, 2007; 11:39 PM

LONDON -- British diplomats were too slow to contact a key official who helped broker the eventual release of 15 sailors and marines held hostage in March by Iran, a report by lawmakers said Sunday.

Officials also bungled a decision that allowed some of the personnel to sell their stories to media organizations after their release, despite strong reservations from some sectors of government, Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee concluded.

The British sailors and marines were searching a merchant ship in the Persian Gulf, off the coast of Iraq, when they and their two inflatable boats were intercepted by Iranian vessels near the disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway.

Iran claimed the crew had strayed into its territorial waters, a charge Britain denied, and held the sailors hostage for 13 days. Several of the captured sailors were paraded on Iranian television and "admitted" trespassing in Tehran's waters.

The sailors later said they were blindfolded, bound and faced constant psychological pressure during their detention.

In their report, the lawmakers said Britain had made no application to hold talks with Ali Larijani, Iran's nuclear envoy and an influential foreign policy figure, for seven days after the sailors were seized on March 23.

"Although the Government was making every effort to resolve the situation ... its application to speak to Dr. Ali Larijani could and should have been made much earlier," the report said.

Larijani gave an interview to Britain's Channel 4 News on April 2, signaling that the Britons would not necessarily be put on trial in Iran _ a key sign negotiations were possible, the committee said.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair's foreign policy adviser spoke to Larijani on April 3, and a day later the sailors were freed, an event Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called a gift to Britain.

Richard Dalton, a former British ambassador to Iran, told the committee that access to Larijani had not been a problem in the past. "It appears odd that an application was not made earlier in the process," the report said.

Lawmakers said Britain placed too much emphasis on using the United Nations Security Council to pressure Iran, and failed to win a U.N. statement that backed London's assertion that the sailors were in Iraqi waters when seized.

"The fact that the government appears not to have been able to achieve its main objectives at the U.N. brings into question the wisdom of its tactical approach," the report said.

Committee members also criticized a defense ministry decision to allow the released personnel to sell their accounts of the crisis to the media.

Lord David Triesman, a minister at the time of the kidnap, said the Foreign Office had indicated it would be a "significant mistake" to allow the sailors to conduct interviews.

Allowing the sailors to appear on television and in newspapers was "a disturbing failure of judgment" and "wholly unsatisfactory," the report said.

Though the crew had returned home to an initially warm welcome, public feeling quickly turned when some sold their stories. One sailor, Arthur Batchelor, was lampooned after he revealed he had wept when his Iranian captors stole his iPod.

A military inquiry into the saga, reported on in June, said there was no single error that led to the sailors' capture, and no cause for disciplinary action. A second independent inquiry slammed the decision to allow the seized troops to sell their stories.

U.S., Iran do Persian Gulf squeeze

The stakes are big and the waterway is small, so communication between the two sides is a must to keep a lid on tensions.
By Borzou Daragahi
Times Staff Writer

July 11, 2007

ABOARD THE USS JOHN C. STENNIS — Iran and the United States remain so far apart on so many issues that they refuse to talk about them.

But in the cramped sea routes of the Persian Gulf, U.S. and Iranian warship sailors and fighter pilots speak to each other daily.

They have to. They're practically jostling one another in courteous games of surveillance, counter-surveillance and geopolitical posturing.

"We are operating very close to their territorial waters in a very confined space with a tremendous amount of traffic, be it the small dhows, be it the supertankers going up to the oil platforms," said U.S. Navy Capt. Sterling Gilliam Jr., commander of air operations for this nuclear-powered supercarrier and its associated ships.

"The margin of error is smaller in that the space is more confined. That would be the case even if anyone was your ally, just because of the sheer small size of the Arabian Gulf," Gilliam said, using an alternative name for the body of water.

Even mundane changes of direction require chitchat with Iranian counterparts. When sedate gulf winds fade to a whisper, for example, this 100,000-ton carrier whips up to the 25 knots required to hurl jets into flight from the 1,092-foot flight deck.

But first the vessel alerts nearby forces of Iran's Revolutionary Guard and the organization's navy.

"We would do the standard international maritime measures," said Capt. Bradley Johanson, commanding officer of the aircraft carrier.

"We would call them on their radio and say, 'Sir, I just wanted to let you know that we're going to be turning to port and be coming to this course so that we're into the wind in support of our flight operation."

The Iranians respond professionally and courteously, Johanson said: " 'Thank you very much for the information. We will move off to the starboard position. We very much appreciate the heads-up.' "

Nearly half of the U.S. Navy's 277 warships are stationed close to Iran, alongside most of Tehran's estimated 140 naval surface ships and six submarines, according to GlobalSecurity.org. More than five dozen aircraft are aboard the Stennis, along with dozens more aboard the Nimitz, another U.S. aircraft carrier in the gulf.

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Multiple roles

Crew members on the Stennis say they are here to provide aircraft for peacekeeping and counterinsurgency missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia.

But few doubt they are also here to send a message to Iran, which the U.S. accuses of pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program and supporting anti-American militants from Lebanon to Afghanistan.

"My feeling here is we're here to show our resolve, and to protect our friends," said Cmdr. Marcus Hitchcock, the Stennis' executive officer.

A flotilla of nine U.S. warships steamed through the Strait of Hormuz two months after the United Nations Security Council passed the last round of sanctions against Iran for continuing with its uranium enrichment program and Iranians seized 15 British sailors and marines in disputed waters off Iraq.

Positioning two aircraft carrier groups in the gulf gives the United States the capability to operate 24 hours a day and potentially conduct about 180 daily bombing and surveillance operations over Iran.

It also means the United States may be deploying nuclear weapons, believed to be aboard some of the ships in the aircraft carrier groups, within 10 miles of Iran's shores.

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Big targets

But the aircraft carriers, each accompanied by four or five other ships, could become big targets for Iran in the event of a war.

"It's going to be very hard to defend U.S. ships against small ships and volleys of missiles in the confines of the Persian Gulf," said Joseph Cirincione, a security analyst at the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank.

"This is not an ideal situation for the Navy."

Tensions between Iran and the U.S. lie barely beneath the surface of the delicate maritime protocol. Both Iran and the U.S. regularly dispatch spy planes to watch each other. A photograph of an Iranian T-12 reconnaissance plane is posted outside the intelligence office of the Stennis. "Image of the day," says the caption.

"We would take a picture of an Iranian navy warship to see if they've made any changes," said Vice Adm. Kevin J. Cosgriff, commander of the Bahrain-based U.S. 5th Fleet. "They do it too. We pay attention and want to know where they are. Is their action routine or are they getting ready for an exercise?"

Each country accuses the other of bad behavior. Iran says the U.S. plays a disruptive role in the gulf and destabilizes the region. U.S. officials say the Iranians behave like bullies, sometimes getting on the radio to order Americans to leave what the Iranians claim as territorial waters.

Americans also complain that Iranians don't do enough to clear sea lanes before conducting missile tests in international waters and that their aircraft fly too close to U.S. planes.

"They're overt about it," Cosgriff said. "They're communicating."

Operating an aircraft carrier is a task that requires precision and stamina even in the most spacious waters.

Stumbling into a hot conflict with the Iranians remains a constant concern in the overcrowded gulf, where nearby oil wells glow orange in the steamy night, and wooden dhows, steel-hull freighters and warships navigate the waterway by day.

On the ship's computer maps, a thick black line delineates Iranian coastal waters from the rest of the gulf. Shades of gray mark the waters off Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, allies of the United States. U.S. pilots are told to stay well away from Iranian airspace.

"We do worry about miscalculations," Cosgriff said. "That's one of the reasons we want to be transparent on the radio and be talking to them a lot."

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daragahi@latimes.com