Why the $20 Billion Arms Deal?

The New York Times has an inter­est­ing piece today on the $20 bil­lion arms deal to Saudia Ara­bia and some of the other Gulf sheikhdoms. Mark Mazzetti and Helene Cooper write that the U.S. has admit­ted that the plan to pro­vide advanced weaponry to Saudi Ara­bia, Egypt and Israel is to con­tain Iran. Help­ing America’s friends in the Mid­dle East is para­mount the White House says, and the weapons will include “only defen­sive sys­tems.” Why the U.S. felt the need to announce this is a mys­tery, since it’s a pretty obvi­ous con­clu­sion to draw. Did the Ira­ni­ans not get the mes­sage the first time? They cer­tainly seem rather upset about the whole thing. Amer­ica “is cre­at­ing fear and con­cerns in the coun­tries of the region and try­ing to harm the good rela­tions between these coun­tries,” said Iran­ian For­eign Min­istry spokesman Moham­mad Ali Hos­seini. Shock­ingly, the U.S. blew off Iran’s con­cerns and coun­ter­charged that it was Iran that was doing the med­dling. “There isn’t a doubt that Iran con­sti­tutes the sin­gle most impor­tant single-country strate­gic chal­lenge to the United States and to the kind of the Mid­dle East that we want to see,” said Sec­re­tary of State Con­doleezza Rice en route to Egypt with Sec­re­tary of Defense Robert Gates.
(By the way, Lebanese Hezbol­lah is going to get tons of milage out of that com­ment. They like to fash­ion them­selves as the bul­wark against America’s “impe­ri­al­ist plans” in the Mid­dle East.)
Rice denied there was any quid pro quo for the pack­age, say­ing “We are work­ing with these states to fight back extrem­ism.” Yeah, what­ever. Back in Wash­ing­ton, under­sec­re­tary of state for polit­i­cal affairs R. Nicholas Burns didn’t get the memo, how­ever, say­ing, “We would want our friends in the region to be sup­port­ive not only of what the United States is doing in Iraq, but of the Iraqi gov­ern­ment itself.” Trans­la­tion: of course it’s a quid pro quo.
Who else might have missed the mes­sage that Iran was Pub­lic Enemy No. 1 in the Mid­dle East these days? Con­gress? It would seem so. The White House faced hos­tile ques­tions from law­mak­ers dur­ing closed brief­ings as to why the U.S. thinks new, “only defen­sive” weapons would deter Iran.
Ah. And there’s a rea­son for trum­pet­ing the Iran threat in prepa­ra­tion for these sales. Sen­a­tors and Rep­re­sen­ta­tives are eager to dis­tance them­selves from the Bush White House, and Israel is viewed as a trusted friend in the Mid­dle East. No mem­ber of Con­gress ever lost an elec­tion by stand­ing up for the Jew­ish state. By ques­tion­ing these deals, mem­bers up for reelec­tion get to defend Israel’s inter­ests. Even though Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ehud Olmert has expressed approval of these sales to mod­er­ate Arab coun­tries, Israel is prob­a­bly look­ing for a lit­tle Con­gres­sional insur­ance — paid for with lob­by­ing dol­lars — to keep the bal­ance of power in its favor, despite assur­ances from the White House that they have noth­ing to worry about.
So it’s more than pos­si­ble that the White House is play­ing up the Per­sian peril as a way to keep them from block­ing the deals. By warn­ing of Iran, the White House can make the case that the weapons sales are actu­ally good for Israel, and that the weapons will be “only defen­sive.” How can you oppose stand­ing up to the great­est threat to Israel?
That prob­a­bly won’t com­fort the Israeli’s too much because as part of the pay­ment for sup­port­ing the Shi’ite-led gov­ern­ment of Iraqi Prime Min­is­ter Nouri al-Maliki, America’s Arab friends are buy­ing things that don’t seem “only defen­sive.” Egypt’s pack­age, for exam­ple, (which is sep­a­rate from the Gulf pack­age and “only” $13 bil­lion) includes advanced AIM9X Sidewinder mis­siles, used on jet fight­ers for aer­ial com­bat. In the past, Israel has suc­cess­fully lob­bied the United States not to sell such mis­siles to Arab states out of fear that the bal­ance of power might shift. And Egypt’s a lot closer to Israel than it is to Iran.
So you see why the Israelis might on the one hand express no great con­cern — they’re get­ting $30 bil­lion extra them­selves over the next 10 years — and on the other have their allies in Con­gress ques­tion the wis­dom of sell­ing advanced mis­siles and smart bombs to neigh­bor­ing states they really don’t trust.
But why are these deals so impor­tant? Well, $20 bil­lion is a lot of money for defense con­trac­tors, who over­whelm­ingly donate to the Repub­li­can party. It’s also, obvi­ously, a reward and incen­tive for back­ing Maliki’s gov­ern­ment, which most Sunni Arab gov­ern­ments in the region see as an Iran­ian cats-paw. And finally, the weapons might deter Iran mak­ing Israel a lit­tle safer.
But I wouldn’t bet on it.
Parts of this post draw on my writ­ings at IraqS​log​ger​.com — CA

Related Posts:

  • No Related Posts
This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Trackbacks are closed, but you can post a comment.

Post a Comment

Your email is never published nor shared. Required fields are marked *

*
*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

  • Visits

      Wordpress.com stats not installed!
    » wp.com stats helper
  • Community

    Login with Facebook:
    Last visitors
    Powered by Sociable!
  • Facebook Activity

  • Facebook Activity

  • RSS InsurgencyWatch RSS

  • Archives

  • Categories