Trump better understands region: Bahrain
Gulf ally confident US would clarify foreign policy stances
MANAMA, April 5, (RTRS): Bahrain’s foreign minister said on Tuesday that US President Donald Trump understood the region and the threats posed by their common adversary Iran better than Barack Obama.
Speaking in an interview with Reuters at his office in the capital Manama, Sheikh Khaled bin Ahmed alKhalifa said the staunch US Gulf ally was confident the new administration would soon clarify its stances on foreign policy.
The Sunni-ruled kingdom accuses Iran, a Shi’ite theocracy across the Gulf, of radicalising and arming some members of its Shi’ite Muslim majority population, and Gulf monarchies say Obama did not do enough to tackle perceived meddling by Iran in Bahrain and in wars raging throughout the region.
Tehran denies any meddling in the island kingdom.
Trump has pledged to deal forcefully with the Islamic Republic and criticised a landmark international deal to curb its nuclear programme inked under Obama in 2015 as a concession to a state the United States considers a sponsor of terrorism.
“We see ... a much clearer understanding from the White House of the threats we are facing here in the region and especially the ones that are coming from the Islamic Republic,” Sheikh Khaled said. “The last few years, there was a policy that we think it was better for them to correct, and we advised them it should be corrected.”
Sheikh Khaled last month met US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Washington and Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa has spoken by telephone with senior US officials, including Trump after his election in November.
Sitting astride one of the world’s key oil shipping lanes, Bahrain is a key ally of Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia and hosts the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet.
Neither country were among the ban Trump is seeking to impose on travellers from Iran and five other Muslimmajority nations in the Middle East and Africa.
Some critics of the Trump administration fear it is prioritising the fight against militancy and Iran over promoting human rights among American allies, but the foreign minister said the US shift acknowledged the region’s harsh realities.
Sheikh Khaled said his country welcomed a decision by the White House to pursue a $5 billion sale to Bahrain of 19 Lockheed Martin F-16 aircraft and related equipment which was held up last year by concerns about human rights.
He said Trump’s style may have distracted some from the merits of his views, but all administrations had growing pains.
“They’ll get in order ... every new administration will always start in a way that will seem unclear, but clarity is coming,” he said, speaking in his green and wood-panelled office adorned with pictures of past and present Bahraini monarchs.
“Maybe when you see the difference in the personality of the president, maybe that’s kind of giving an overwhelming picture of the situation. Things are working in America.”
Since 2011 Arab Spring protests led by Bahrain’s Shi’ites were crushed with the help from some Gulf Arab states, Bahrain says Iran has stepped up a campaign to undermine security there and bring about the downfall of the ruling Al Khalifa family, of which Sheikh Khaled is a member.
“It’s a whole project we are facing and it will not stop until this regime changes its course from the way it is now - hegemonic, theocratic, theo-fascist - to a regime that would answer the aspirations of its own people.”
“Until that moment we will have to defend ourselves.”
Human rights organisations have criticised an escalating government crackdown since the main Shi’ite opposition bloc was shuttered last year, several prominent activist were arrested and the top Shi’ite spiritual leader had his citizenship revoked on corruption charges.
Bahrain says it has acted to reform its security services and that it genuinely seeks dialogue with the opposition in a way that is rare in the mostly closed and authoritarian region.
“We feel like we are being pressured and punished for no reason, just for sticking our neck out and addressing issues that every country has,” Sheikh Khaled said.
Obama, too, faced a dearth of good options in Syria, which he has often acknowledged as the biggest failure of his presidency. Years after Obama predicted that Assad’s days were numbered, the Syrian leader remains in power in a country ripped apart by civil war, and a new US president is struggling to establish a way forward.
Trump left it to his top diplomat, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, to assign culpability to Russia and Iran, Assad’s most powerful allies. Tillerson noted both countries signed up as guarantors to a recent Syrian cease-fire and said they must pressure Assad not to conduct more such attacks.
“Russia and Iran also bear great moral responsibility for these deaths,” Tillerson said.
Yet it was a mainstay of Obama’s approach to Syria to try to persuade Moscow to stop supporting Assad and clear the way for a political transition. Instead, Russia launched a military operation in Syria that successfully propped up Assad’s regime, strengthening Russia’s influence in Syria and the broader Middle East in the process.
And Tillerson’s predecessor, John Kerry, negotiated painstakingly with his Russian counterpart to secure cease-fire deals that repeatedly fell apart.
“This is the administration in charge. They are now facing exactly the same terrible dilemmas that Obama faced and will quickly realize there are no easy ways to deal with the situation,” said Phil Gordon, Obama’s top Mideast adviser from 2013 to 2015. “In that sense, the Trump administration is simply recognizing the reality: We are not, and have not been, prepared to do what’s necessary to overthrow the regime.”
International donors pledged billions of dollars in aid for war-ravaged Syria as the UN Security Council convened Wednesday for emergency talks over a suspected chemical attack that killed dozens in a rebel-held province.
At a donor conference in Brussels, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed for Syria’s warring factions and government backers such as Russia and Iran to bring an end to a six-year conflict that has killed almost 400,000 people.
“Nobody is winning this war, everybody is losing,” Guterres said. “It is having a detrimental and destabilizing effect on the entire region and it is providing a focus that is feeding the new threat of global terrorism.”
Nearly half the Syrian population has been displaced by the violence, with millions seeking sanctuary in neighboring Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, or heading further west to Europe. UN agencies estimate war damage across Syria so far at $350 billion, including physical destruction and the loss of economic activity. Four out of five people are living in poverty.