MIDDLE EAST: Iran and Saudia Arabia have moved to heal old rifts as uncertainty surrounds US plans, Michael Jansen reports
Riyadh announced on Saturday that Tehran had expelled to Saudi Arabia 16 Saudi members of al-Qaeda who had taken refuge in Iran from the fighting in Afghanistan.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saudi al-Faisal revealed that a senior Saudi intelligence officer travelled to Tehran in May to interrogate the fighters, who had been detained along with four women and six children.
They left Iran in June on a Saudi aircraft and were held for questioning by Saudi intelligence. Prince Saud did not indicate whether any members of the group were still in custody. Some 2,000 to 3,000 Saudis have been arrested over the past 11 months and 200 remain in detention.
The prince said Iran had turned the men over to the Saudis knowing full well that information gained from them would be passed on to US intelligence.
"All the information we have on al-Qaeda [is shared with the US]. We asked [the Iranians] to hand them over and they did," he asserted.
Iran's second-hand participation in the Bush administration's "war on terror" is significant at this juncture because relations between Tehran and Washington, which had improved during the first few months of the US military campaign in Afghanistan, soured early this year when the US President, Mr George Bush, placed Iran in his "axis of evil" alongside Iraq and North Korea.
In an effort to remind the US of Iran's stand in the Afghan conflict, the prince stated: "Iran has not only cooperated with Saudi Arabia in this conflict but cooperated extensively with the United States." Tehran encouraged its allies amongst the Shia warlords in northern Afghanistan to take part in the campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Iran, which was already hosting two million Afghan refugees, set up new camps for those fleeing the fighting and provided food and shelter for them. In February, Tehran reported that it was holding 100 Arabs who had crossed into Iran from Afghanistan. Officials said that they were refugees rather than al-Qaeda detainees and repatriated them to their respective countries, where they were detained and interrogated.
In spite of Iran's actions, Mr Zalmay Khalilzan, the US envoy to Afghanistan, suggested that Tehran is harbouring al-Qaeda fugitives.
Analysts argue that this is highly unlikely because Iran's heterodox Shia Muslim sect is considered to be an aberration by the radical orthodox Sunni Muslim ideologues of al-Qaeda. And, on the practical level, al-Qaeda was closely connected with the Sunni Afghan Taliban, which persecuted Shias and murdered Iranian diplomats captured in the northern city of Herat.
The Bush administration's declared intention of effecting "regime change" in Baghdad has driven Riyadh and Tehran into the opposition camp. On August 3rd, Prince Saud paid a one-day visit to Iran during which he met the President, Mr Muhammad Khatami. The two leaders reiterated their rejection of any attacks on regional and Muslim states and, particularly, on Iraq.
Recent statements by officials connected with the Bush administration have pushed these two Gulf powers towards this common stance.
Administration hawks have called for an attack on Iran as well as Iraq; last week, it was reported that an analyst briefing the Pentagon's top advisory council recommended occupying Saudi Arabia's oil fields. The Saudis have clearly been shocked by this report. "Suddenly Saudi Arabia [has gone] from staunch ally of the United States to \ the centre of all evil in the world," Prince Saud observed.
After Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, Riyadh and Tehran became antagonistic competitors for the hearts and minds of Muslims around the world.
The two Gulf powers reconciled in 1997 after Mr Khatami became president. Since then the leading Sunni state and largest Shia country gradually resolved their differences and achieved rapprochement.
Prince Saud's call for the US to reconsider its attitude towards Iran suggests that Riyadh and Tehran are now allies.