Amjad Atallah of the New America Foundation disputes the claim that Arab governments seek a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran. Too destabilizing. And it doesn’t touch the big enchilada: Palestinian freedom.
Are Arab governments considering yet another war? Despite the repeated unconfirmed reports about anonymous Arab leaders urging Obama to follow Israel’s lead, the circumstances today are very different than 1979 or 1991. There is no threat from either Iraq or Iran toward any neighboring Arab state, not real or imagined. Iran’s unique blend of western parliamentary democracy and the "rule of jurisprudents" hasn’t really gained any adherents outside Iran. The two other Shia majority states, Iraq and Lebanon, have effectively adopted western parliamentary forms of government without any clerical overlay. And the popularity of Iran’s leaders has been eclipsed – not by any Arab leader – but by the Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan whose ambitious and vigorous diplomacy in the region (combined with very real economic engagement) has made him a superstar – draining the air out of the Ahmadinejad bubble. The final popping of that bubble for Arab states will not come from a disastrous U.S. attack on Iran, but from resolution of the Israeli-Arab conflict. And finally, of course, no one in the region believes that Iran will invade any other country.
King Abdullah of Jordan has tried to convey this publicly and privately to American audiences on behalf of governments in the region…
For those advocates in the United States desperately trying to create a sense of inevitability to war with Iran, there is a logic to citing Arab leaders "who are more afraid of Iran than Israel." It makes it sound as if this war is not only about maintaining Israel’s "military autonomy" to operate as it will in the region, but about the security of the region as a whole. It is excellent misdirection, intentional or not. Arab leaders will need to be more vocal in the coming days and months about their own interests and those of the region, in light of the campaign for a U.S. attack on Iran
