White House working with Gulf nations to contain Iran

WASHINGTON – Opening a new front in its effort against Iran, the Bush administration has begun developing a containment strategy with the Islamic state’s Persian Gulf neighbors that aims to spread sophisticated missile defense systems across the region and to interdict more ships carrying nuclear technology to the country.

Although the primary goal is to keep Tehran from obtaining a nuclear bomb, the defense effort also reflects the administration’s planning for a day when Iran becomes a nuclear state and, officials fear, more aggressive in a region that provides vital oil exports to the world.

“Iran without nuclear arms is a threat … With nuclear weapons it would become even more emboldened, in terms of moving forward with its aggressive designs,” Robert Joseph, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, said in an interview. “And that includes in the Gulf, and many countries in the gulf are concerned about that.”

Gulf leaders are anxious about Iran’s nuclear program and rising influence in the region. But they are also unwilling to appear provocative to Tehran, which is a major trading partner and an intermittent military threat.

U.S. officials will have to overcome that nervousness before they can convince the Gulf states to sign on to their full package of proposals, say gulf officials and experts on the region.

“They don’t want to antagonize, so there is a degree to which they are conflicted,” a senior State Department official said, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

However, he added, the Gulf countries “as a whole are very receptive to the message …”

U.S. officials say they see the initiative as a way to build additional pressure on Tehran even while they press ahead with their primary diplomatic effort, which seeks to have the United Nations Security Council take steps to halt Iran’s uranium enrichment program.

Joseph rolled out the proposal during a trip last month to the six Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman. John Hillen, assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, led a top-level U.S. delegation to the gulf last week for further discussions.

Hillen said in an interview that the initiative “is really the first time in a while” the United States had been actively involved in trying to reshape a regional security system. The effort “could put pressure on Iran to behave responsibly,” he said.

U.S. officials want to help boost the Gulf states’ ability to monitor and control cargo on the high seas, and goods that are trans-shipped from busy Gulf ports. They want to help improve the countries’ abilities to detect “front” companies for Iran, to use American-style export control regulations, and to identify and halt transactions to finance Iran’s purchase of goods for its unconventional weapons programs.

The containment strategy aims to improve the countries’ ability to protect oil facilities and other infrastructure, and to train Gulf personnel in counterterrorism and in handling attacks with unconventional weapons.

The Bush administration is also eager to see wider use of sophisticated defenses against aircraft and missiles. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have Patriot antimissile batteries, but U.S. officials say other countries need them as well, especially in light of Iran’s advanced ballistic missile program.

U.S. officials declined to provide specifics of their approach on missile defense for the region, but some analysts suggested that the U.S. would try to integrate missile defense systems with real-time intelligence using sophisticated U.S. Navy Aegis cruisers.

It is not clear whether the U.S. would provide the military hardware or sell it to the gulf nations.

Many countries in the region have been apprehensive recently that the United States would soon pressure them to provide bases or other help to enable U.S. forces to attack Iran. U.S. officials insist this effort is exclusively about defense.

The program is “defensive, defensive, defensive,” Hillen said.

U.S. officials said that one of the greatest dangers of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon is that it could give Tehran new confidence to act against its neighbors. The senior State Department official said Iran might mount more terrorist attacks, or try to destabilize Gulf countries by using the Shia minorities, which are sympathetic to Iran.

The Iranians have warned of their ability to halt oil traffic through the Straits of Hormuz, the narrow passage between Oman and Iran through which one-quarter of the world’s oil cargo passes. Army Gen. P. John Abizaid, the senior U.S. commander in the Middle East, told Congress in March that Iran had expanded the naval bases along its shores, and had arrayed large numbers of fast-attack ships armed with torpedoes and high-speed missiles.

In interviews this week, some gulf officials acknowledged concern about Iran and their interest in U.S. defense assistance, but emphasized their eagerness to avoid confrontation with Iran.

“We have good relations with our allies, but we are hoping that all confrontations can be avoided,” Qatar’s ambassador to the United States, Nasser Bin Hamad M. Al-Khalifa, said in an interview.

Patrick Clawson, deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank, said one of the challenges for the administration in working out these arrangements was that the Gulf countries preferred such steps to be taken as quietly as possible, but U.S. officials wanted to send a public message to Tehran.

The Gulf states “are receptive as long as we have the good taste to keep our mouths shut,” said Clawson, a longtime Iran watcher. “In this case, they are going to be even more eager to do this quietly because they know the Iranians will be upset about it.”

The U.S., on the other hand, “will want to do this even more publicly than usual, because they want a maximum deterrent effect,” he said.

Some analysts were skeptical that the United States would be able to sell the effort.

Ray Takeyh, an Iran specialist with the Council on Foreign Relations, said he believed Gulf officials were unlikely to risk antagonizing their far larger neighbor even if they might be privately sending positive signals to U.S. officials.

“This is a tough place for them to be in,” Takeyh said. “At some point they might have to live with an Iran that has nuclear arms. They don’t want to go back to the 1980s, when the Iranians were actively trying to subvert their countries. So they have to tread softly here.”