ABSTRACT
It is easy to believe, when reflecting on the important pronouncements of the First Islamic Republic’s influential leaders in the aftermath of Iran’s unconditional acceptance of SCR 598 and the implementation of the August 1988 cease-fire, that Iran has indeed turned the blind corner in its foreign relations, that the end to the war has been a turning-point for the entire system. Throughout 1988 Tehran was compensating for its regional set-backs by reestablishing its severed diplomatic ties with the non-aggressive (‘Lesser Satan’) western states-France, Canada and Britain-and consolidating its existing ties with a number of others-the Federal Republic of Germany, Japan and Italy.1 In the same breath, the realists of the techno-clerical elite also made significant conciliatory gestures towards the conservative Gulf Arab states, proposing a complete break from the destructive interactions of the 1979-87 period, but significantly stopping short of extending a hand of friendship towards the larger moderate Arab camp.2 Evidently, therefore, Iran’s inner transformations seem to leave a noticeable mark on its greater regional and extra-regional activities. Additionally, while these inner transformatory energies do not necessarily affect the functioning of the extra-regional countries/ country groupings that they ‘touch’, none the less they feature in the region’s dynamics and interplays. Of course, there is nothing new or unusual in this process. Iran, as a major regional actor for the best part of the last 2,000 years, has continued its uninterrupted dialectical interactions with its regional friends and competitors.3 Remaining distinct from its Arab neighbours, Iran’s rulers have consciously and unconsciously helped to divide,
redefine or bolster the myriad of Arab regimes and forces that have emerged from within that ‘world’. Before 1979, and particularly since the emergence of modern ways and means of regional interrelations-essentially through the formation of post-colonial nation-states of various ideologies and many degrees of effective power-Iran had always been regarded either as a thorn in the side of the Arab ‘independentists and nationalists’ (the so-called radicals), or counted as a force for stability and an ‘equalizer’, depending on the perspective of the parties involved. While the opposition of the Arab radicals to the Pahlavi regime was categorical, the moderates and conservatives, although identifying with imperial Iran’s general game-plan, were never fully convinced of the innocence of the Shah’s regional aims, executive strategies and strategic outlook. The legacies of that era have continued to haunt Arab politics as well as the ArabIranian relations that have taken shape since the overthrow of the institution of the monarchy in Iran in 1979. To understand fully the present, therefore, we ought to take on board elements of a retrospective evaluatory framework. To understand the recent past, however, we need to retrace the evolution of the Arab polities and the points of contact of the non-Arab Middle Eastern countries with them.
