Unqualified Offerings

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad bcc’s the world on a missive nominally to the American people. Since the plain fact is that Ahmadinejad is mistaken when he declares that, just like Iranians, Americans “are aggrieved by the ever-worsening pain and misery of the Palestinian people” and since the God talk in this letter is marginally less people-of-the-book generic than his previous missives, I think its real audience is, first, the rest of the Ummah, and second, the rest of the world. There are also no specific proposals in this one beyond advice that America ought to pull out of Iraq and stop the hegemon stuff.
Either the letter is Ahmadinejad’s way of shoring up Iran’s international standing as the “reasonable party” in the ongoing US-Iran dispute or his office utterly lacks competent American Studies professionals.

Meanwhile an offiicial unofficial Saudi publishes an open letter in the Washington Post warning of dire consequences if America withdraws from Iraq leaving its Sunni community at the complete mercy of Iraq’s Shiites:

One hopes he won’t make the same mistake again by ignoring the counsel of Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, Prince Turki al-Faisal, who said in a speech last month that “since America came into Iraq uninvited, it should not leave Iraq uninvited.” If it does, one of the first consequences will be massive Saudi intervention to stop Iranian-backed Shiite militias from butchering Iraqi Sunnis.

(Via Belgravia Dispatch.) The writer, Nawaf Obaid, argues that a new generation of Princes is eager to back Iraq’s beseiged Sunni community against what they see as the onslaught of Iraq’s Shia, but that King Abdullah holds them back, mindful that any support provided to Sunni Iraq under present conditions would be used against American troops and strengthen al-Qaeda in Iraq:

They will, however, be heeded if American troops begin a phased withdrawal from Iraq. As the economic powerhouse of the Middle East, the birthplace of Islam and the de facto leader of the world’s Sunni community (which comprises 85 percent of all Muslims), Saudi Arabia has both the means and the religious responsibility to intervene.

Just a few months ago it was unthinkable that President Bush would prematurely withdraw a significant number of American troops from Iraq. But it seems possible today, and therefore the Saudi leadership is preparing to substantially revise its Iraq policy. Options now include providing Sunni military leaders (primarily ex-Baathist members of the former Iraqi officer corps, who make up the backbone of the insurgency) with the same types of assistance — funding, arms and logistical support — that Iran has been giving to Shiite armed groups for years.

Another possibility includes the establishment of new Sunni brigades to combat the Iranian-backed militias. Finally, Abdullah may decide to strangle Iranian funding of the militias through oil policy. If Saudi Arabia boosted production and cut the price of oil in half, the kingdom could still finance its current spending. But it would be devastating to Iran, which is facing economic difficulties even with today’s high prices. The result would be to limit Tehran’s ability to continue funneling hundreds of millions each year to Shiite militias in Iraq and elsewhere.

Now, that cheap oil threat sounds like a briar patch I wouldn’t mind being thrown into! It makes a curious “threat” from the standpoint of a mass American audience, but of course its real audience is the Administration’s oil patch constituency.

The rest of the warnings are more genuinely dire, and even the production ramping strategy has its risks. Recall that all of this unpleasantness got started in 1990 when Iraq decided Kuwaiti “overproduction” was making it impossible for Iraq to pay off its Gulf War I debts. Iran doesn’t have to sit back and take a price war.

Obaid’s letter points out genuine risks from an American withdrawal. Some of it rings a little hollow - the last thing Saudi Arabia can afford to do is get into a shooting war with Iran, whose population, level of industrialization and military might excel it handily. Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia has a large Shiite population of its own, concentrated in its oil fields, making them vulnerable to the kinds of sabotage bedeviling Iraqi production. Saudi Arabia could only risk substantial intervention in Iraq with clear if implicit backing from the US to deter overt Iranian retaliation, and they would still be vulnerable to Iranian terrorism and sabotage.

Nevertheless, “honor, fear and interest” still impinge. The Saudis might decide they have to intervene and the risks be damned. I don’t know whether Obaid’s letter represents the Saudi elite trying to sway America’s or as the Saudi elite doing a favor for the Bush Administration - it’s interesting that Obaid’s letter comes so quickly after Dick Cheney’s weekend visit to the Kingdom. But I can’t deny the danger.

Nevertheless, the first lesson of the letter is just how big a disaster the US government has made in Iraq. As Obaid himself writes, ‘In February 2003, a month before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, warned President Bush that he would be “solving one problem and creating five more” if he removed Saddam Hussein by force.’ Second, downside risks to withdrawal don’t mean withdrawal is not the best of the bad options available to us.