Iran 72

De International Herald Tribune bericht:

Talk in Saudi Arabia turns to 'Iranian threat.'


RIYADH: At a late-night reading earlier this week, a self-styled poet held up his hand for silence and began a riff on the events in neighboring Iraq, in the old style of Bedouin storytellers.
"Saddam Hussein was a real leader who deserved our support," he began, making up the lines as he went. "He kept Iraq stable and peaceful," he added, "And most of all he fought back the Iranians."
Across the kingdom, in both official and casual conversation, once quiet concern over the chaos in Iraq and Iran's growing regional influence has burst into the open.
Saudi newspapers now openly decry Iran's growing power. Religious leaders have begun talking about a "Persian onslaught" that threatens the existence of Islam itself. In the salons of Riyadh, the "Iranian threat" is raised almost as openly and as frequently as the stock market.
"Iran has become more dangerous than Israel itself," said Sheik Musa bin Abdulaziz, editor of Al Salafi magazine, a self-described moderate in the Salafi fundamentalist Muslim movement that seeks to return Islam to its roots. "The Iranian revolution has come to renew the Persian presence in the region. This is the real clash of civilizations." Many here said they believed a showdown with Iran was inevitable. After several years of a thaw in relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, analysts said the Saudis were growing extremely concerned that Iran may build a nuclear bomb and become the de facto superpower in the region.
In recent weeks, the Saudis, with other Gulf countries, have announced plans to develop peaceful nuclear power; officials have feted Harith al Dhari, head of Iraq's Muslim Scholars Committee, which has links to the Iraqi insurgency; and have motioned that they may begin to support Iraq's Sunnis. All were meant to send a message that Saudi Arabia intends to get serious about Iran's growing prowess in the region.
"You need to create a strategic challenge to Iran," said Steve Clemons, senior fellow and director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. "To some degree what the Saudis are doing is puffing up because they see nobody else in the region doing so."
Yet a growing debate here has centered on how Iran should be confronted: Head on, with Saudi Arabia throwing its lot in with the full force of the United States, as one argument goes, or diplomatically, having been offered a grand bargain it would find hard to refuse.
The split burst into the open last week when Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington, abruptly resigned after just 15 months in the job. The resignation set off rumors of a long-running battle over the kingdom's foreign policy.'

Lees verder: http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/21/news/saudi.php