THE JERUSALEM POST: Analysts say the unique Saudi move has crossed a red line for Iran which may prompt it to intervene as a counterweight.
Saudi Arabia’s decision to deploy security forces in embattled Bahrain threatens to escalate a domestic political dispute in the island state into a sectarian confrontation with Iran, whose reverberations may be felt as far afield as Iraq and Lebanon, analysts said.
Saudi Arabia, together with security personnel from the United Arab Emirates operating under a mandate from the Gulf Cooperation Council, has placed 2,000 soldiers and police in Bahrain. At the cost of four lives, scores of injured and the imposition of martial law, calm has been restored. A week after the March 14 deployment, businesses, the stock market and schools were re-opening.
But analysts said the Saudi move – the first ever by one Arab state intervening militarily in another since the onset of the so-called Jasmine Revolution three months ago – has crossed a red line for Iran and may prompt it to intervene as a counterweight.
A tiny country with no oil of its own, Bahrain nevertheless holds a strategic place in the Gulf. It is home to the US Fifth Fleet and is adjacent to Saudi Arabia’s biggest oil fields. Its Sunni Islamic monarchy is close to the Saudi ruling house as well as the US, but some 70% of its population shares the Shi'ite faith of Iran, Riyadh’s rival for regional supremacy.
“Iran sees it as an attack on the international Shi'ite community,” Theodore Karasik, director for research and development at the Dubai-based Institute for near east and Gulf Military Analysis. “Also, they have claimed Bahrain in the past, as a historical claim, is Iran’s 14th province. That kind of rhetoric is a portent for the future.” » | David Rosenberg / The Media Line | Monday, March 21, 2011
