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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; Page 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
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Iran to buy jets from Russia
By YAAKOV KATZ AND HERB KEINON; http://www.jpost.com
30--7-2007
Israel is looking into reports that Russia
plans to sell 250 advanced long-range Sukhoi-30 fighter jets to Iran in an
unprecedented billion-dollar deal.
According to reports, in addition to the fighter jets, Teheran also plans to
purchase a number of aerial fuel tankers that are compatible with the Sukhoi
and capable of extending its range by thousands of kilometers. Defense
officials said the Sukhoi sale would grant Iran long-range offensive
capabilities.
Government officials voiced concern over the reports. They said Russia could
be trying to compete with the United States, which announced over the
weekend a billion-dollar arms sale to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.
Despite Israeli and US opposition, Russia recently supplied Iran with
advanced antiaircraft systems used to protect Teheran's nuclear
installations. At the time, Moscow said it reserved the right to sell Iran
weapons, such as the antiaircraft system, that were of a defensive nature.
The Sukhoi-30 is a two-seat multi-role fighter jet and bomber capable of
operating at significant distances from home base and in poor weather
conditions. The aircraft enjoys a wide range of combat capabilities and is
used for air patrol, air defense, ground attacks, enemy air defense
suppression and air-to-air combat.
After years of negotiations, the Indian Air Force in 1996 purchased 40
Sukhoi-30s and in 2000 acquired the license from the company to manufacture
an additional 140 aircrafts.
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Israel voices satisfaction over U.S. aid
increase
Sun Jul 29, 2007; http://www.reuters.com
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert voiced satisfaction on Sunday over Washington's intention to offset a
package of arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states with increased
military aid for Israel.
He said he and U.S. President George W. Bush, in talks at the White House
last month, agreed Israel would receive $30 billion in U.S. military aid
over the next decade, averaging $3 billion a year.
"This is an increase of 25 percent for the military aid to Israel from the
United States. I think this is a significant and important improvement of
the defense aid to Israel," Olmert told reporters.
He spoke a day after a senior U.S. defense official said Washington was
working on a military assistance deal for Israel expected to top $30 billion
over the next 10 years.
The aid boost has been widely seen as a U.S. bid to help allay Israeli
concerns over a package of arms sales, that could be worth some $20 billion
over the next decade, which Washington is preparing for Saudi Arabia and
other Gulf states.
"We understand the United States' need to assist the moderate Arab states,
which are standing in one front with the United States and us in the
struggle against Iran," Olmert said, referring to Tehran's nuclear program.
A U.S. defense official said on Saturday the Bush administration hoped to
present the regional package to the U.S. Congress for approval later in the
year.
Washington is striving to assure Gulf allies, worried by the growing
strength of Iran and war in Iraq, that the United States is committed to the
region and will stand by them, with arms sales part of that process, U.S.
officials say.
The package for Saudi Arabia would upgrade its missile defenses and air
force and increase its naval capabilities, the official said. The United
States also is preparing a package of military assistance worth some $13
billion in the next decade for Egypt, another U.S. ally in the Middle East,
a senior State Department official said.
(Additional reporting by Andrew Grey in Washington and Avida Landau in
Jerusalem)
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Kurdish leader seeks U.S. help to topple
regime
By David R. Sands
August 4, 2007
The Washington Times
The exiled president of Iran's largest Kurdish opposition group appealed for
U.S. political and military support for its campaign to topple Iran's
Islamic regime and create a new democratic, federal government in Tehran.
In his first visit to Washington, Rahman Haj-Ahmadi, president of the
three-year-old Kurdistan Free Life Party, told The Washington Times that the
Iranian regime faced a growing internal challenge to its power from the
Kurds, Azeris and other restive minority groups.
Mr. Haj-Ahmadi, who lives in Germany, said his
movement, known by its Kurdish acronym PJAK, was forced to take up arms and
retreat to the rugged highlands along the Iran-Iraq border in self-defense
against the central government. "We certainly would not take to the
mountains and live such a difficult existence if the regime allowed us to
pursue our struggle politically," said Mr. Haj-Ahmadi, speaking through an
interpreter, in an interview Wednesday.
PJAK, he said, has only limited contact with
the U.S. government, but he appealed to Washington to push Iran harder on
its human rights record and said his party would welcome American military
and financial aid to carry on its fight.
"We obviously cannot topple the government with the ammunition and the
weapons we have now," he said. "Any financial or military help that would
speed the path to a true Iranian democracy, we would very much welcome,
particularly from the United States."
But the question of the Kurds, a stateless people with significant
communities in Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria, is one of the most delicate
facing the Bush administration.
Iraq's Kurds were key U.S. allies in the
campaign to oust Saddam Hussein and establish a stable Iraq. But Turkey,
also a key U.S. ally in the region, has fought a long, bloody war against
Kurdish separatists to the north and watches with increasing anger signs
that Iraq's Kurds are moving to de facto autonomy.
The Kurdish independence movement in Turkey, known as the PKK, was
officially designated a terrorist organization by the State Department.
Chris Zambelis, a terrorism analyst with the Washington-based Jamestown
Foundation, said there are multiple reports of operational and logistical
links between the PKK and PJAK.
PJAK officials traveling with Mr. Haj-Ahmadi
said they tried to set up meetings with the State Department and other
administration officials, but received "no answer" to their requests. Mr.
Haj-Ahmadi said PJAK had good relations with other Kurdish movements in the
region, but insisted his party was a "completely independent organization"
from the PKK.
Iran's leaders, including President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, accused the United States of secretly funding PJAK and other
minority resistance movements as part of a campaign to undermine their
regime.
Mr. Haj-Ahmadi dismissed questions of whether PJAK was part of a master plan
to create new "Greater Kurdistan" in the region.
"Right now, for us, democracy inside Iran is the issue," he said. "We will
work with whoever we can to establish a just, democratic federal government
to replace the Islamic regime."
If and when democracy takes hold in Iran and throughout the region, "we
would then lean toward the idea of a greater Kurdistan as an aspiration," he
said. The PJAK president acknowledged that his group did not have the
numbers or the military might to challenge the Iranian regime on its own.
"But I guarantee you, anyone who wants to do something about Iran needs to
reach out to us," he said. "We are working hard to make ourselves known to
other ethnic minorities in Iran. Without PJAK, you will not get anywhere."
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A Letter to the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace
Dear Sir
As a political and social worker, with great concern, I would like to inform
you that we Baloch are being pushed
into a religious circle by Pakistani military junta and Iranian theocratic
regime in Balochistan in a unusual way:
Promoting Islam among Baloch and thereby the killing of Baloch nationalism
and turning it into a greater part of
Islamic world.
Fanatic mullaism is proactively being promoted by the collaburation of
discarded local mullahs in Balochistan
against the Baloch nationalism which seeks the restoration of its national
sovereignty over Balochistan.
Yesterday on July 31, a “tabligi ijtama" that is, promotional gathering for
Islam, has started its gathering in
Gwadar, a coastal port city in Balochistan,
Such religious activities are always taking place in all over Balochistan,
and this phenomenon suggest a new
conspiracy against Baloch and is seen by nationalist as second force of
Pakistani government after its arms
forces.
After the failure of paki army in crushing the Baloch Resistance movements,
now it wants dilute the intensity of
Baloch nationalism by mobilizing the religious elements in our society.
All these activities are funded by I S I and spearheaded by Mulana Sherani
of Jumayat Ulme Islam. He is a
member of Pakistan national assembly and he heads JUI in Balochistan.
The striking concern is that Iran is also involved in promoting mullahs
among Baloch people. for example a
common Baloch who wants to visit his relatives on the other side of the
boarder the irani occupied Balochistan,
has to go through harsh scrutiny by Pasdarane Inqalab, the Revolutionary
Guard. But on the other hand those
who want to participate in a religious gathering in Pakistani held
Balochistan have to face no restrictions, they
can pass the boarder without any document or "Rahdari" permit.
All these activities can be seen through satellite. The gathering is still
underway for another two days.
Archen Baloch
Thanking you for your kind attention
E mail. archenbaloch@ yahoo.com
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