Invitation from the member-states of the (Persian) Gulf Cooperation Council to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to attend the (P)GCC Summit in Doha next week is seen as opening a new venue for helping resolve security issues in one of the most sensitive regions of the world.
Ahmadinejad has accepted the invitation, the first of its kind since the birth of the six-nation council 26 years ago.
Scheduled in the neighboring emirate of Qatar, the meeting could be billed as a turning point to help build security on both sides of the strategic waterway.
The council was established soon after Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Iran in the fall of 1980. Founders of the Arab grouping then said the council was necessary for defending security in the oil-rich Persian Gulf.
On surface the PGCC claimed neutrality in the eight-year military conflict in which the Iraqi forces resorted to everything including poison gas against Iran’s defensive forces. However, as time passed and as the Ba’ath Army failed to capture more Iranian territory, the littoral Arab states support for Saddam became terribly clear.
The kingdoms and sheikhdoms panicked at Saddam’s systemic failures and humiliation at the warfronts. They opened their oil coffers and tens, may be hundreds, of billions dollars flowed into Baghdad in the form of financial and weapons aid.
But destiny had some very cruel surprises for the Arab courts in the Persian Gulf. Just two years after the Iran-Iraq ceasefire Saddam sent his tanks rolling into a tiny neighboring state-Ðone of the staunchest backers of Saddam’s inhuman aggression against Iran. On August 2, 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait and six days later annexed it to its own territory.
A lot has transpired since then and the Persian Gulf has witnessed more than its fair share of ups and downs.
For instance, the Islamic Republic has gone an extra mile to expand political, economic and security cooperation with its Arab neighbors on the southern tip of the Persian Gulf.
Despite their complicity in Saddam’s bloody war against the people of Iran, Tehran has extended a hand of friendship toward the littoral Arab states.
Iran strongly believes that sustainable security and stability in the Persian Gulf can only be achieved with the help of inter-regional cooperation and preventing unhelpful foreign interference.
It is pretty obvious that without Iran’s support and cooperation, as we have the longest coast along the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman, no one talks of lasting Persian Gulf security.
Successive governments in Tehran have called for collective security of the volatile but strategic oil region.
Now that the Iraqi dictator is history and a new political era has begun in the neighboring Arab country, it can and should play a crucial role as an important Persian Gulf state.
Needless to say, security is not a manufactured product nor can it be imported. Likewise, it cannot be established simply by inviting regional leaders and heads of states to the same table. For long-term stability, understanding and honest relations among all littoral countries is a compulsion to identify and address issues of mutual interest and concern.
So, from this angle the (P)GCC invitation to the summit cannot and should not be viewed as something rare or an unexpected shift in policy.
But if the six states want to continue their past policies, they would be repeating past errors of judgment. The UAE nuisance and its funny claim to the three Iranian islands, Abu Musa, Greater and Lesser Tunbs, during the (P)GCC sessions, is just one example.