The media coverage of hostile remarks about Iran from some Gulf Arab leaders, among others, largely glazed over the autocratic [...]]]>
The media coverage of hostile remarks about Iran from some Gulf Arab leaders, among others, largely glazed over the autocratic character of the figures making the comments. But the gaps in attitudes between the dictatorial leadership of many of these Arab countries and their populations — citizens or subjects, however you want to call them — is vast and well-known.
Telhami and Zobgy’s Arab Public Opinion survey is a highly regarded poll, known for reflecting the views of the people in these countries who go unmentioned in diplomatic cables such as those released by WikiLeaks.
As of last August, here’s how those surveyed felt about Iranian nuclear weapons (hint: it’s nothing like their leaders):
Gulf Between Arab Leaders and Public
The U.S. diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks about Arab regimes’ hostility toward Iran — and the innumerable commentators on the subject – all overlook the gulf between autocratic Arab leaders and their citizens or subjects, who tend to have a different view of Iran and its nuclear programme.
However, a Brookings Institution and Zogby International 2010 Arab Public Opinion Poll, released in August, found that more than three- quarters of respondents in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, UAE, Lebanon and Egypt thought Iran had the right to pursue its nuclear programme despite most feeling that it is aimed at developing weapons.
While a majority of respondents (55 percent) said they believe Tehran’s nuclear programme is aimed at developing weapons – a charge denied by Iran – nearly four out of five respondents (77 percent) said the country has the right to pursue the programme – a whopping increase of 24 percent since last year.
Support for the programme was strongest by far in Egypt and Morocco and weakest in the UAE, where a strong majority said Iran should be pressured to halt it.
Conversely, only 20 percent of respondents said they favoured applying international pressure on Iran to curb its nuclear programme. That was down from the 40 percent who took that position one year ago.
“Overall, there is very little support here for the notion that Arabs are secretly yearning for the U.S. to attack Iran,” wrote Marc Lynch, a Mideast expert at George Washington University, whose blog on foreignpolicy.com has a wide readership among elite sectors here. “Really little.”
Moreover, a solid majority (57 percent) of respondents agreed that if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, it would lead to a “more positive” outcome in the Middle East region. That was nearly twice the percentage of one year ago (29 percent). By contrast, only 21 percent said that it would lead to a “more negative outcome”, compared to a plurality of 46 percent who took that position in 2009.
(Much of this sidebar is drawn from Lobe’s August article on the poll. The link for Marc Lynch’s FP piece was added to this post.)
]]>Jim Lobe wrote the poll up yesterday. He said:
Much of the disillusionment with Obama appears related to his failure to make progress in achieving a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, according to Telhami, who has conducted eight previous surveys of Arab opinion since 2000.
Asked what policies pursued by the Obama administration they were most disappointed with, 61 percent of respondents in the new poll identified the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. That was more than twice the percentage of the next-most-cited example, Washington’s Iraq policy (27 percent).
“This is the prism through which Arabs view the Untied States,” Telhami said, referring to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Iran appears to have benefited, at least indirectly, from Arab disillusionment with Obama, the poll results suggested.
While a majority of respondents (55 percent) said they believe Tehran’s nuclear programme is aimed at developing weapons – a charge denied by Iran – nearly four out of five respondents (77 percent) said the country has the right to pursue the programme – a whopping increase of 24 percent since last year.
Of course none of this should come as any great surprise, and linkage has become an increasingly accepted way to view U.S.-policy in the Middle East after Gen. David Petraeus’s Senate testimony in March in which he stated that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, “…foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel,” and, “[t]he conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas.”
Numerous pundits, academics and politicians have tried to deny that this linkage exists but, try as they might, facts on the ground make it very difficult to close the box which Petraeus, very publicly, opened this spring.
Eighty-six-percent of the poll’s respondents were “prepared for peace if Israel is willing to return all 1967 territories including East Jerusalem,” 39 percent held the belief that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be resolved through negotiations, and only 16 percent believed it will end through war.
One has to wonder how U.S. interests are served by continuing to ratchet up tensions with Iran via “Sanctions Plus,” “Economic Warfare,” or chest-pounding threats of military strikes. As U.S.-Iran relations deteriorate and Iran, via its allies, exacerbates tensions between Israel and its neighbors, Arab public opinion will, if the trends in the poll have any predictive power, swing in Iran’s favor and make the Obama administration even less popular in the region. That isn’t good for Israel which, if Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren’s dire warnings are to be believed, might find itself in another war before the end of the summer, and it isn’t good for a U.S. administration which is trying to figure out a way to extract the country from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Of course all of this requires that you believe that there is a linkage between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. strategic interests in the Middle East. If you suspend your belief in that linkage, then anything goes.
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