History, religion, oil ...

Peter Jones

WHILE Tasmanians might be watching the sabre-rattling going on around the Persian Gulf, it might be somewhat harder to understand what it’s all about.

Like any conflict in the Middle East, it boils down to the usual mix of history, religion and oil, plus outside interests.

The latest tension is really between Saudi Arabia and Iran, vying for hegemony in the Islamic world, based on the split in Islam between the Sunni majority (80 per cent) and the Shi’a minority. Iran has been the only country with a Shi’a majority until recent years but the antagonism between the Arabs and the Persians goes back centuries.

Oil complicated matters as we entered the Age of Oil just over a century ago, when the world realised that the Gulf region contained much of the world’s reserves of cheap and easily accessible oil. Britain put in early for control of Persian oil while US interests focused on the other side of the Gulf, particularly after Saudi Arabia became a nation in 1932. The other Gulf oil emirates were largely under British protection until the discovery of more oil as well as gas reserves made them wealthy too and they gained independence in the 1970s.

Not surprisingly, outside interference had antagonised many Iranians and in the age of post-war nationalism, it was hardly surprising that a democratically elected government decided to nationalise the oil industry under Prime Minister

Mohammed Mosaddegh in 1953. The CIA intervened to engineer his overthrow and they brought the Shah back as a client ruler to support Western oil interests. Basically it was an oil for weapons arrangement but while the Shah sought to modernise his country as well as arm it to the teeth, the elite did very well while the poor turned to religion. The Shah remained in power with the backing of his brutal secret police, the SAVAK, and the crushing of any dissent.

Then in January 1979, the regime fell apart as the Shah fled into exile and the Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile in France to create a theocratic regime, just as harsh towards dissent as its predecessor.

To add fuel to the fire, enthusiastic young revolutionaries then stormed the US Embassy in Tehran the following November and 52 diplomats and staff were hheld ld hostage for more than a year.

This set the stage for the ongoing hostility between the Iranian regime and the US, now exacerbated by the emerging power of Saudi Arabia.

Both Iran and Saudi Arabia had benefited economically from the dramatic rise in oil prices after the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the creation of OPEC. Saudi Arabia used much of its accrued wealth to bbuy sophisticatedhd weapons from the West as well as to spread its conservative version of Islam around the Islamic world. Iran too had benefited from its links with the West before 1979 and West Germany had started building a nuclear power plant for the Shah that was then left unfinished.

As tensions in the Islamic world flared after the end of the Cold War, Saudi Arabia emerged as the leader of Sunni Islaml whilehl Iran saw itself as the inspiration for the Shi’a minorities.

The situation has become more complicated since the emergence of ISIS, which while viewed as a threat to the Saudi Arabia regime has also gained support from wealthy Saudis and the Emirates.

US support for the Saudis developed after the war against Saddam Hussein and the establishment of US military bases in the kingdom and the Gulf region, the factor that turned al-Qaeda against Saudi Arabia, and led to the 9/11 attack on the US.

While ISIS is hostile to the West, it is also hostile to the Shi’a who it regards as deviants from Islam. At the same time, Iran has promoted support for Shi’a minorities in Syria and Lebanon, including the current regime in Damascus, as well as the Houthi rebels in Yemen. This has now resulted in tacit support for Israel by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, much to the advantage of the current government in Israel that sees Iran as its greatest threat because of their support for a Palestinian state.

In recent years, the Saudis have developed a close relationship with the Trump administration in Washington, who now seek to destroy what they see as Iran’s nuclear capability.

While the regime in Iran

says it has no intention of developing nuclear weapons, it certainly resents the fact that all its neighbours have nuclear weapons while they apparently are denied the right to develop them: Israel, China, Russia, and Pakistan are all accepted as Nuclear Weapon States. There are even rumours Saudi Arabia wants to develop a nuclear weapons capability as well.

Sanctions have wrecked the Iranian economy and for many years they have been unable to modernise their weapons, originally obtained from the US. National pride however, remains strong and Iran still has by far the largest population in the region.

A worrying factor is whether or not President Trump and his advisers see a war with Iran as a positive factor in the forthcoming elections as a war tends to unify a nation behind its government as well as boost arms exports and the militaryindustrial complex.

For Australia, it would mean the possibility of being dragged into yet another war on behalf of the US. The US military facilities being developed in the Northern Territory could involve us in yet another conflict in the Middle East as well as the South China Sea.

What it certainly would mean is a dramatic surge in oil prices as much of the world’s oil passes through the vital Strait of Hormuz connecting the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean. This would certainly affect Tasmanians already grumbling about the price of petrol at the bowser. Like the rest of the world, we can only wait on events.