Why Donald Trump’s ’Arab Nato’ would be a terrible mistake | Rashid Khalidi | Opinion

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  • Why Donald Trump’s ’Arab Nato’ would be a terrible mistake | Rashid Khalidi | Opinion | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/22/why-donald-trumps-arab-nato-would-be-a-terrible-mistake

    More to the point, how can it be in the national interest of the United States to support one side in a recently concocted sectarian conflict? What benefit can come to the US from supporting an unwinnable Saudi-Emirati war on Yemen, the poorest Arab country? Does the United States really desire to increase the number of its enemies in the Middle East? Must Americans adopt the Israeli and Saudi Arabian position – convenient to both those countries – that Iran’s enmity to the US is intractable and immutable?

    It is worth pointing out that before the Iranian revolution of 1979, the Sunni-Shia divide was a secondary one. Sunnis married Shia, and any number of other conflicts were more important. It is true that there were serious rivalries between Iran and its neighbors. But Iran under the Shah also supported countries in the Arabian Peninsula, such as Oman during the insurgency of the 1960s and 1970s and the royalist side during the Yemeni civil war in the same period.
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    Since 1979, this conflict has been envenomed by the expansion of the sectarian influence of the Islamic Republic, and by the counter-offensive spearheaded by Saudi Arabia, involving intolerant sectarian appeals, which in turn have contributed mightily to the growth of takfiri jihadi terrorism.

    While the former is a problem for the United States and many countries of the region, in the US we hear endless sermons about the danger of the Shia sectarianism of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

    Meanwhile, there is a cone of silence over the manifest dangers of the Sunni sectarian bigotry which treats Shia as kuffar (unbelievers), mushrikin (idolaters), and rawafid (rejectors of Sunni orthodoxy), terms which imply not only that they are bad Muslims, but that this obliges believers to fight them to the death.

    Perhaps after Trump has launched his so-called “Arab Nato”, someone with a clue about the region he is visiting and the real nature of its conflicts should bring to his attention these inconvenient facts that his hosts on the first two legs of his tour will be sure to conceal from him.

    And if the president is too mesmerized by his enmity towards Iran, and by the hundreds of billions of dollars in arms sales that this junket has provided, perhaps the American people and their elected representatives might pay attention to them, before the US is dragged into yet another land war in Asia.