Rice and Gates Push Anti-Iran Agenda
Gates and Rice used the trip to urge Saudi Arabia and other mostly Sunni Arab states to intensify efforts to block militants from traveling to Iraq, to reduce Iraq's foreign debt, and to set aside concerns about Iraq's Shiite-led government and support it. Rice also tried to drum up Arab interest in a Middle East peace conference this fall proposed by President Bush; Saudi officials said they might participate if the "final status" issues of a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians were taken up. Still, Rice insisted there was no "issue of quid pro quo" in obtaining Saudi and other Arab help in return for the arms sales.
And yet, with the growing U.S. emphasis on arming Arab states against Iran, the administration seems to be moving more toward a traditional national security approach to the Middle East and, in the process, de-emphasizing its earlier calls on autocratic Arab leaders to reform and democratize. That democracy theme has rankled the very same governments Washington acknowledges it will need to stabilize Iraq and fend off Iran.
But the difficulty of managing relations with skeptical Arab states in any containment scheme may be matched by other problems: the apparent determination of the Iranians to proceed on the nuclear front and otherwise and the risks of dangerous miscalculation. As Patrick Clawson and Michael Eisenstadt, analysts at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, wrote recently, "Deterring a nuclear Iran is likely to prove particularly challenging and much more difficult than deterrence was during the Cold War."
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