Russia Steps Up Diplomacy in Renewed Bid for Middle East Influence

TEHRAN, Iran -- What was the Soviet ambassador's car doing, parked inside the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, during the height of the Cold War?

Relations between staunch U.S. ally Riyadh and committed adversary Moscow were at an all-time low, as Soviet arms and funding were being delivered to a number of Arab nationalist, anti-royalist regimes, such as Nasserite Egypt, Marxist Southern Yemen and Baathist Syria.

"What is the ambassador doing in our embassy?" Abdurrahman Ar-Rashed, the current editor of Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily Asharq Al Awsat, recalls asking of then-Saudi Ambassador to London, Sheikh Nassir Al-Manqoor. "We do not even shake hands with the Russians!"

As Ar-Rashed related in a recent column, Al-Manqoor replied sarcastically that the Soviet ambassador had parked his car at the Saudi Embassy because there was no space at the Kennedy Center next door, where he was headed. After that quip, the Saudi ambassador presumably introduced Al-Rashed to the Russian representative.

"Matters were much clearer when the world was divided into two camps, between the left and the right, or between Washington and Moscow," Al-Rashed concluded.

This month, Russian President Vladimir Putin's royal welcome in Riyadh must have begged the question: What is the Saudi monarch doing hugging the Russian President?

The week after the visit, Moscow announced it will delay starting Iran's first nuclear power plant. The announcement came a day before a Pentagon bombing wish list was leaked to the BBC, on which, for the first time, the Russian-constructed Bushehr power plant appeared as a target. The Saudis have been terrified at the prospect of large-scale regional radioactive contamination in the event the Bushehr power plant is bombed after it becomes operational. In light of these fears, the Russian move can only be interpreted as further evidence that Moscow has decided, for the time being and despite the Cold War rhetoric, to march in step with the West.

The first time I heard about the Iran-Iraq War was on an evening of indeterminate season in the mid-1980s at a pizzeria in Greece. A report about the ongoing war must have been flickering on the evening news because my father decided at that point to introduce his six- or seven-year-old son to the concept of hypocrisy. In doing so, he used as an example the bloodbath being waged between Iran and Iraq. I remember that not even the taste of the delicious pizza could obscure the shock I felt at the revelation that the West was perpetuating a brutal struggle by arming both sides.

More than 20 years have passed since then, and I grew up and started covering the Middle East. One of the first consequences of this career choice was my loss of any remaining vestiges of innocence. But last week, as I watched Russian President Vladimir Putin shake hands with a series of Arab leaders on a rare tour of the Middle East, that childhood incident impinged on my consciousness. I had the distinct feeling that the Russian leader was taking advantage of the new Cold War between the region's Sunnis and Shiites to make a double profit.

"Moscow is a good dealer and will be happy to convince the rich Arab countries of the region to buy the Russian weapons by using their fear of Iran," said Hossein Bastani, the former general secretary of the Association of Iranian Journalists.

Sure enough, Putin tempted longtime U.S. ally Saudi Arabia by hinting at the possibility of a Russian-sponsored nuclear energy program and suggesting Moscow help rearm the country against "threats." Riyadh currently perceives its greatest threat as coming from neighboring Iran.

"Russia is willing to look into cooperation opportunities in the area of atomic energy," Putin told Saudi businessmen during his visit. At the same time, he announced Russia will launch six Saudi-made information satellites for Saudi Arabia this year.

At the same time, Russia is the primary foreign backer of the Iranian nuclear energy program, and has built the Bushehr power station on the eastern shore of the Persian Gulf. Russia also has been heavily involved in Iran's aeronautics program, launching at least two of its satellites. Finally, Moscow prompted American and Israeli indignation last month when it delivered the sophisticated TOR M-1 surface-to-air missile system to Iran, which promptly deployed it around its nuclear facilities.

"The Russians are playing a double game with Iran," said Bastani. "Despite all their oral support for Iran, they have not voted in favor of Tehran on different sensitive international occasions, especially in the Security Council, whereas they have had many profitable economic contracts with Iran, and Iran always buys low-quality Russian products and services to confront American sanctions and gain Moscow's cooperation against the USA."

The relations between Russia and the Arab world or Iran can hardly be characterized as based on mutual affection or common values. In a predominantly Muslim region, Russia's recent incarnation, the Soviet Union, was traditionally viewed as a Trojan Horse for godlessness and an oppressor of Allah-fearing people everywhere. Moscow's exploits in Chechnya since the 1990s acted as a clarion call for militant defenders of Islam.

So it was unsurprising that Putin's visit raised eyebrows in the region.

"It's a very simple equation: Russia is a nuclear country with a nuclear excess, and Saudi is an oil country with an excess in its budget," opined Saudi blogger Mohammed al-Shehri.

But there are other factors as well. With a considerable and growing Muslim minority numbering 20 million, offset by a plunging demographic rate among Christian Russians, the Kremlin's foreign policy is being forced to acknowledge the country's impending future. In addition, Moscow has been making noises recently about establishing a body regulating the sale of natural gas. Iran believes it is an excellent idea, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei even said so in public. Critics in the West have attacked it as a sinister plan to set up an OPEC-style cartel that keeps prices artificially high.

Just as Washington's push into the region followed the collapse of the carefully balanced regional system after the Iranian Revolution of 1979, so does Russia's latest foray coincide with flagging American influence in the Middle East.

Moscow is enjoying record foreign currency profits through its natural gas sales and is finally able, for the first time since the end of the Cold War, to think about resuscitating its foreign policy role in the region. This it has begun doing in controversial style. It was the only Western government, for example, to welcome sanctioned Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyah to Moscow shortly after his election last March. Saudi King Abdullah has also been through Moscow, as have the leaders of Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon. With the world's biggest gas reserves, and as the second net exporter of oil after Saudi Arabia, Moscow can now finally afford to resume projecting power.

Russia's first step in doing so is to return to the world's most strategically important region, the Persian Gulf, and Moscow has pluckily gone knocking on doors that were always firmly shut to it. All three of Putin's destinations -- Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan -- are firm Western allies. For Arab leaders, Russia's advances benefit by comparison with recent U.S. foreign policy. "Relations between Russia and the Arab world are flourishing today and we greatly value Russia's policy in the Middle East," Amr Moussa, the secretary-general of the Arab League, said in Moscow recently. "The policies of other countries regarding our region have not proven as successful perhaps," he added in a thinly veiled jab at Washington.

Moussa was one of several Arab statesmen who warned against the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, memorably saying it would "open the gates of hell" in the Middle East. It is clear that increasing numbers of Arab politicians are translating their feelings of impotence before a U.S. policy that consistently ignores them into an effort to bring the influence of other world powers into their region.

In fact, Russia's presence in the region could act as a stabilizing, if polarizing, force, at a time when the aggressive presence of the United States is tearing away the bonds that have traditionally held the region together.

"If Russia, being the main supplier of the Iranian nuclear energy project, played the role of a guarantor that prevents Iran's nuclear armament on the basis of commitments from Tehran itself, this alone would bring the most critical crisis that we are about to experience to an end," wrote Ar-Rashed the Saudi editor, in his column, titled "The Return of Russia." "We all need a positive, counterbalancing Russian role rather than a negative one in the tug-of-war with Washington and high-level bargains."

Certainly, Moscow is freer to maneuver today than in Soviet times. "In the Soviet era, Moscow also had to make a pretense of exporting its ideology," the veteran Indian diplomat Melkulangara Kumaran Bhadrakumar perceptively pointed out last week in Asia Times. "Moscow . . . was bogged down with the baggage of ideology during the Soviet era, [and] didn't have such a freedom to be in the vanguard of Arab aspirations."

With Russian involvement in the Middle East set to grow, the sight of Russian diplomatic sedans parked inside the embassies of countries with claims to defending the Islamic faith will become an ever less shocking sight.

Iason Athanasiadis is a Tehran-based analyst and writer.