The agenda of the Arab Summit, scheduled to convene on Saturday in Sharm El-Sheikh, is daunting: Yemen, Iraq, the Islamic State (IS) group, Libya and a new Arab League secretary-general. The biggest item, however, is an expected end to the long isolation of Iran archenemy to leading Arab capitals, including the most influential, Riyadh and Cairo, the latter of which is set to chair the summit for the next year. It is only a matter of time, Arab diplomats agree, before Tehran reaches a deal with the West on Iran's nuclear programme. In the assessment of most informed, region-based diplomats, it is unlikely that this year will come to an end before a deal is in the offing, if not sealed. The return of Iran to a region where Turkey and Israel are consequential players is not good news for any leading Arab capital, especially in the Gulf and Mashreq, according to the assessment of Arab diplomats. Already disturbed by Iranian influence in several Arab countries, concerned Arab capitals have tried — as some Western diplomats in Cairo have said, “in coordination with Israel at times” to stop or at least slow down a nuclear programme deal. “The Saudis don't want it, the Israelis hate it and the Egyptians don't want it either,” said a Cairo-based European diplomat. This week, as the Israeli minister of intelligence was on his way to Paris in the hope of convincing the French to step back from the deal with Tehran, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faissal was openly saying that Iran should not be granted an ill-deserved deal on its nuclear programme, especially when it is interfering in internal Arab affairs. Diplomatic sources in Washington tell Al-Ahram Weekly that the message from several Arab capitals in the past few months has been similar if not identical to the “demand” that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is aggressively stating: Stop the deal with Iran, lest it exercise considerable regional hegemony. The fears of Israel and concerned Arab countries seem to be based on a similar rationale: Iran could challenge the current status quo that all parties are comfortable with. For Israel, a reintegrated Iran is a message of empowerment for its serious regional enemies: the Islamic resistance movements Hamas and Hezbollah in particular. For the Arab regimes, it is about the empowerment of Shia segments of some societies, especially in the Arab Gulf where Shias complain of limited rights, and maybe, as one Egyptian government official suggested to the Weekly, “the expansion of the Shia population to gain more ground, as we have been seeing happen in Egypt, Sudan and across North Africa.” Confronting Iran, or at least making sure that a reintegrated Iran is not about to take over the region, is the top priority of the Saudi delegation to the Arab Summit that will be led by new Saudi monarch, King Salman bin Abdel-Aziz. Already the Saudis, according to Riyadh- and Cairo-based Arab and foreign diplomats, are “super worried” about “what the Iranians are doing in Yemen.” According to a Riyadh-based Asian diplomat, the Saudis seem to feel that Iran, which has already gained control of Iraq on the northern borders of the oil rich kingdom, is now gaining control of Yemen in the Saudi backyard. The same diplomat said that the Iranian-supported Houthis are sparing no effort to make Saudi rulers “significantly worried.” “Already we have heard news of some activities on the borders with the kingdom, and commotion in the community of Shia activists. The rulers of the kingdom are for sure not feeling very comfortable,” he said. Unease over Iran and its influences across the Arab Gulf and Mashreq is something that the Saudis share openly with the regime in Egypt, as they have done with all previous regimes since the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. Attending to this unease, according to the shared Saudi-Egyptian view, requires a whole set of diplomatic strategies to make it hard for Iran to use its re-entrance to enhance its cultural, religious, political or economic presence in Arab countries. It also requires action diplomatic and maybe even military to blunt the edges of existing Iranian influence in Iraq and Yemen. As a key step in this formula, Egypt nominated the last foreign minister under the rule of Hosni Mubarak, Ahmed Abul-Gheit, as the next Arab League secretary-general. Having served for close to a decade as the top Egyptian diplomat, Abul-Gheit is known for his acute positions on Iran and its allies, especially Hamas and Hezbollah. In 2006 and 2008-2009, during two confrontations between Israel and both Hezbollah and Hamas, both considered enemies of the Mubarak regime in its last decade, the former foreign minister was known to have actively coordinated Egyptian-Saudi diplomatic moves to gain Western support for the elimination of the capacities of both Iranian-supported resistance groups. The nomination of Abul-Gheit, said an informed Egyptian diplomatic source, was supported by all Arab Gulf countries, including Oman, which has been maintaining good relations with Iran but is also keen on keeping good relations with Saudi Arabia and Egypt. It was also supported by Qatar, a country that had issues with Abul-Gheit when he was foreign minister during one of the worst periods of Cairo-Doha diplomatic relations. Together, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are likely to be able to accommodate North African reluctance over the nomination of Abul-Gheit. Also on the agenda of shared Saudi-Egyptian schemes is an idea to establish a joint Arab military force to be in charge of checking Iranian-supported groups in Arab countries. Western diplomats in Cairo say that what they have heard from Egyptian and visiting Arab interlocutors about the “purpose” of the proposed joint force has more to do with Shia groups than with other threats, including the IS and other radical militant groups. The establishment of these joint forces is also material for North African scepticism. This week in the Algerian capital, upon the request of the Algerians, Arab League Secretary General Nabil Al-Araby was promoting the two Egyptian-Saudi proposals: the nomination of Abul-Gheit and the joint Arab force. An informed Arab League source told the Weekly that initial talks were not immediately conclusive. “This is a matter that will have to be settled during the talks of foreign ministers leading up to the summit,” he said. Also to be settled on the fringes of the Arab League Summit are Saudi ideas on a containment scheme for Iran, about which Egypt is apprehensive. Cairo is willing to accommodate the request of Riyadh to reduce the level of tension with Doha with a possible (mostly ceremonial) three-way summit that should bring together in Sharm El-Sheikh the rulers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Cairo, however, is less forthcoming about the Saudi idea to include Turkey, the worst regional enemy of the current authorities in Egypt, as an influential regional partner to face up to what the Saudis insist on qualifying as the upcoming “Iranian storm.” Cairo is even much more reluctant about a Saudi idea to reintegrate Sunni political Islamic groups across the Arab world to create a buffer zone against an assumed inevitable Shia expansion. According to the Saudi proposal, this effort should include the Muslim Brotherhood, especially in Jordan, Syria and Yemen. This last item of the Saudi bill is supported by several regional and international powers, but is still resisted by Cairo, agree Egyptian sources who say that Egyptian officials were plain in sharing with “some of the old faces of the Saudi regime” deep concern about the hospitality that Riyadh has been showing towards members of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood in recent weeks. According to the Saudi narrative, the Muslim Brotherhood is crucial to neutralising Hezbollah influence on Hamas, and to assembling Sunni Yemeni resistance maybe even armed against the Iranian-supported Houthis. The summit, Arab diplomats agree, is going to be about drawing the outlines of what should be done. But it will have to be followed by many consultations in the days and weeks to follow, for a comprehensive scheme to be concluded before Iran and the West ink a deal. “We still have a few months, I think, given that the West is still trying to extract more concessions from the Iranians. But we don't have forever, for sure,” said a Cairo-based Arab diplomat.
