The repercussions of the recent Houthi rebel attacks on Saudi Arabia and the UAE captured the attention of the press this week and raised questions about the role of Iran -- which supports the rebels -- in these attacks. The editorial of the official daily Al-Ahram said the Gulf area had, after these attacks, entered a very important phase that requires a united Arab and Gulf stand to meet the present challenges and dangers. In that context, the editorial added, came the Saudi call to hold a Gulf and Arab emergency summit in Makkah on 30 June to discuss the attacks and their repercussions on the stability and security of the region. “The recent attacks present a dangerous escalation which will not only affect the Gulf region but also have an impact on regional and international peace and security and the stability of oil markets,” the edit said. Thus, it added, global powers are monitoring the attacks closely and trying to identify the party or parties involved in them. Amr Al-Shobki questioned whether the US will attack Iran as a result of its recent policies in the region. Iran tried, after the 1979 revolution, Al-Shobki explained, to export its revolution to the region's states but failed. Then Tehran offered seasonal support to Hamas initially. Hamas then became the Shiite arm of Iran and the guard of its expansionist policies in the region. Then, Al-Shobki elaborated, the US gave Iran an extra push in the region when it allowed the disbanding of the Iraqi army and destroyed the country, thus allowing Iran to control it. Then, Al-Shobki added, Tehran was allowed to control the Houthi rebels and give the Yemeni conflict a sectarian dimension which was never there before. “Iran organised its papers quite well after the US threatened to strike it. One of its extensions attacked a Saudi oil field and a few days earlier attacked UAE ships,” he wrote in Al-Masry Al-Youm. However, Al-Shobki ruled out any comprehensive US military confrontation with Iran even though Washington is expected to put the strongest pressure and impose economic and political sanctions against Tehran. This step, he concluded, may lead to US raids on important Iranian sites or limited confrontations. But the danger of this is that it may pull the parties into a catastrophic war that the region and the US will pay dearly for. Mahmoud Gad focused on how Iran failed to move from the phase of revolution to the building of a state. Although the faces have repeatedly changed during the last 40 years, Gad wrote, Iranian citizens are still suffering from the same crises: some reject the post-revolution ‘forced religiousness' while others are not happy to live in a place that failed to move from revolution to reconstruction. Thus, he added, those who stepped on the pictures of the last shah of Iran Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and bet on Ayatollah Khomeini, the old revolutionary religious leader who returned from exile, are now burning the latter's pictures as well as his successors for the same reasons. “Iran crossed from the throne of the pahlavi to the cloak of the religious leader, but it failed to cross from the state of revolution to building the state. The post-revolution era started with a war against Iraq. Forty years later, it is getting ready to enter a new war,” Gad wrote in the daily Al-Youm Al-Sabei.
