Iranian Warships Complete Suez Canal Transit
Uprisings across the Arab world. Bearings askew. Sands shifting like nobody's business. And into this disorienting world of new uncertainties, the Islamic Republic of Iran sends a pair of warships toward the Suez Canal, bless its heart. It's the diplomatic equivalent of comfort food, like coming across mashed potatoes and green beans on a table where you don't recognize any of the other foods.
The vocabulary is familiar, too. Throughout the Cold War the Sixth Fleet steamed toward the Suez to signal U.S. concern about something on the far side of it and, of course in the process, raised tensions that rose further still when Soviet warships made some counter-move on the global chessboard. But if the Iranian cruiser Kharg and the frigate Alvand leave the Red Sea early on Tuesday and nose toward the Mediterranean as scheduled, the significance will be in the passage itself. No Iranian military vessel has traveled the Suez since 1979, the year Iran's shah was dispatched by the kind of mass demonstrations now threatening autocrats from Morocco to Bahrain. (See pictures of the long shadow of Ayatullah Khomeini.)
"Iran is trying to take advantage of the situation that has arisen and broaden its influence by transferring two warships via the Suez Canal," Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet Sunday. "Israel takes a dim view of this Iranian step." The prime minister threatened no military move in response, except to site the provocation as a reason to hike defense spending.
It might be mere coincidence that the Kharg and Alvand showed up only after Hosni Mubarak stepped down as Egypt's president. "I assumed it was planned before this," says Ephraim Kam, deputy director of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. Kam sees the passage as an Iranian effort to project strength outside the Persian Gulf; to signal overt support for Hizballah and Syria, the announced destination; and finally to answer Israel, which has sent missile boats through the canal as recently as a year ago, and once even a submarine. In the Cold War of the modern Middle East, after all, the poles are Jerusalem and Tehran. (See TIME's complete coverage of the crisis in the Middle East.)
Yet in this Cold War, Mubarak's Egypt was on the same side as Israel. The deposed president loathed Iran, and almost certainly wouldn't have allowed Iran to send ships through the Suez, as Egypt's new military leaders have done despite Israel's pleas. "Beware of Egypt's wrath," Mubarak publicly warned in 2009 after state media announced the arrest of 49 people Egypt said were agents of Hizballah. An Israeli intelligence source said the captured operatives had "built a very big infrastructure" in Egypt that included apartments and speedboats on, yes, the Suez. The source said Egyptian security services captured, "at least two high level Hizballah operatives" carrying false passports.
The perceived threat from Iran, which Mubarak said seeks to "drag the region into the abyss," stirred Egyptian intelligence to work more closely with Israel, tipping off their counterparts to plots against Israel and U.S. targets in the Sinai peninsula in one recent instance. Egyptian spymaster Omar Suleiman, who in the final days of Mubarak's reign became his first vice president, was a regular visitor to Tel Aviv. (See pictures of Israel.)
"I knew him," says Ilan Mizrahi, a former deputy head of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad who also served as national security adviser under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Mizrahi says Egypt's course after Mubarak will depend first on the army he left in charge, but that, in the larger picture, President Obama may have helped Iran by so publicly "deserting" Mubarak when the masses swelled against him. "If you're going to kill someone, kill him softly, like the song," Mizrahi says. Iran's determined effort to acquire nuclear capabilities, he says, already had its neighbors mulling where to place their bet: "Iran, which is very close? Or Washington, which is very very far?"
"Oman and Qatar are already much friendlier to Iran than they were in the past," Mizrahi says, naming two states that face Iran across the Persian Gulf. It's not the kind of thing noticed except by students of Mideast power politics, but Palestinian leaders on the West Bank - who do not get on at all with Iran - blamed Qatar for the effort to embarrass Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas last month with leaked documents from the authority's negotiations with Israel. The leak was trumpeted by Al Jazeera, the satellite news channel owned by Qatar's emir.
None of which means Iran is poised to emerge somehow triumphant when the dust settles from the popular revolts in, to name a few, Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, Morocco and Jordan. The Islamic Republic had its own revolt a year ago, after the stolen presidential election incited the uprising known as the Green Movement. It was put down violently then, but has risen again in recent days, energized not only by the Arab revolts but possibly by the historical Persian rivalry with - in fact, feeling of superiority over - Arabs. In that respect, Iranians might not want to be left behind. (See pictures of Iran's presidential elections and their turbulent aftermath.)
"I think without Mubarak, the anti-Iran front in the Middle East is weakened," Mizrahi says. "But I think Tehran is nervous. Before the revolutions they were nervous because the sanctions are working. And now they are losing legitimacy."
Iran Makes Waves in Israel By Sending Ships to the Suez Canal - Yahoo! News
Iran Makes Waves in Israel By Sending Ships to the Suez Canal
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