IT cannot be just a coincidence that every time George W. Bush paints himself in a tight corner a new recorded message of his nemesis, Osama bin Laden, pops up out of the blue to come to his rescue and remind an increasingly sceptical American people that the danger to US security is well and truly scary. Nothing works as redoubtable as this to keep the chimera of ‘war on terror’ alive and kicking.

The latest Osama tape, telecast on Al Jazeera on April 23, perfectly fits into this pattern, especially with Bush sinking, by the day, into the bog of public disapproval of his presidency, especially the mess in Iraq.

Which informs the obvious inference that Bush and Osama are in a symbiotic relationship: both are feeding off each other’s idiosyncrasies and foibles and desperately seeking to stay in international limelight.

But Bush, with his back to the wall, is trying another tack, virtually his last throw of the dice, to stem the rot in Iraq and rally the client states in the Arab world round the American totem on the shibboleth that Iran is hacking away at Iraqi unity and trying to rob it of its Arab character.

On any given day, there is no dearth of Arab states and potentates, from Morocco to Jordan to Oman, ready to oblige the sole pretender to the world’s imperialist throne at the drop of a hat. But Bush is picky and choosy and knows exactly which among the wilful Arabs vassals would measure up to delivering on the chores expected of them.

In this case of a new coalition-building against Iran — Bush’s recurring hangover and prime villain in his ‘axis of evil’ charade — it’s Egypt and Saudi Arabia that are being worked upon to stick their necks out for Uncle Sam in the name of the elusive Arab unity.

The choice of these two major Arab players to act as regional proconsuls of US imperialist power in the Gulf and the Arab world makes sense in more ways than one. These are the two largest Arab states, with assets that can be useful to an American military overstretched in terms of men and material. Egypt has the largest military force among the Arabs, besides being the principal recipient of US largesse outside Israel, the number one beneficiary of American military and economic assistance.

Saudi Arabia, though short in manpower, has the financial clout to cushion the buffeting effects of the Iraqi misadventure on US military budget and the gaping federal budgetary deficit, currently in excess of $400 billion and ballooning all the time.

President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, ever the most trusted ally of the US, was the first to speak like a Jeremiah and raise the alarm that, in his fertile imagination, the loyalties of the Iraqi Shias were more arrayed on the side of Iran than Iraq. Interestingly, Mubarak’s chest-thumping for Pan-Arabism was done in an interview with the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiyya news channel. He was roundly condemned by the Iraqi leaders of all persuasions, especially Shias and Kurds, for his brazen and snide attempt to further fan the Iraqi sectarian fires ignited by the continued US military occupation of that country.

The American-fed theme of the Iraqi sectarian threat to that country’s Arab character and its overall Arab context, increasingly perceived and articulated by some regional players — not excluding a redoubtable western votary like King Abdullah of Jordan — was picked up by the Saudis, in quick succession to Mubarak. The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud Al Faisal, in remarks that made bold headlines in the American and other western media, lamented: “The threat of break-up of Iraq [can be] a huge problem for the countries of the region, especially if the fighting is on a sectarian basis ... this type of fighting sucks in other countries.”

It is obvious that Egypt and Saudi Arabia are being prompted to view the Iraqi slide into anarchy as a sectarian problem triggered by alleged Iranian interference in Iraq. But their espousal of a one-sided and skewed vision of the Iraqi imbroglio fosters only a haemorrhaged version of the Iraqi scene. Neither Mubarak, nor Saud Al Faisal, had the gumption to allude to the stark reality that it’s primarily the fallout from the on-going American military occupation of Iraq that is clouding the Iraqi national horizon and unleashing a divide that wasn’t there before the Americans went into that country.

For Bush, it is a Machiavellian ploy to hold someone else responsible for the mess his myopia has created in Iraq. But pinning the blame on Iran smacks too overtly of his lust for yet more bloodletting in the region, notwithstanding the carnage that goes on unabated in Iraq because of the American presence there.

For an American policy to transform the Gulf, in its totality, into an American lake and dominate its political and economic spheres without a challenge from any regional player, it makes eminent sense to point the finger at Iran for Iraq’s widening sectarian divide. The drums of American propaganda against Iran’s nuclear ambitions beating incessantly, have failed to stir a sympathetic chord among the Arabs because of Israel sitting over a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons; every child on the Arab street is aware of which powers helped Israel become a nuclear power on the sly. So the Washington neocons are now wielding the Iraqi sectarian card and hoping that the Arabs, predominantly Sunnis, would bite the bait. They may have good reason to feel elated that major players like Saudi Arabia and Egypt have fallen for it and seem inclined to play along the US guidelines. There is a history of the Arab knee-jerk reaction to an Iranian ‘threat’ howsoever unreal.

Back in the early ‘80s, when Saddam was unleashed against the Iranian revolution in the hope that the danger from a rejuvenated Iran would be nipped in the bud, the oil-rich Arab states of the Gulf were induced to create a defensive forum of their own. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was born and baptised to stand on guard against revolutionary Iran and, also, against an unreliable Iraq under Saddam Hussein. The Gulf potentates, with their pockets bulging with oil wealth, were encouraged to lubricate Saddam’s war machine with petro-dollars in the hope that both combatants would drain out one another’s strength, thus taking the sting out of the ‘threat’ they posed to the wealthy Gulf states.

But there was also a strong undercurrent of sectarian prejudices prompting the Gulf Arab rulers to bankroll Saddam’s war against Iran: he was perceived as fighting the war on their behalf too in order to prevent the Shia Iran from dominating them. The Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the Bahrainis, with a heavy admixture of Shias in their demography, felt compelled to hitch their wagon to Saddam’s in order to roll back a possible Iranian ideological and sectarian onslaught.

The ground realities remain unchanged for these Gulf rulers. Half of the Kuwaiti population is of Shia origin and hails from Iran. More than 70 per cent of Bahrainis are Shias, with strong emotional and ethnic ties bonding them with Iran. The oil-rich eastern coast of Saudi Arabia, where all the mineral wealth is located, is predominantly Shia.

The Iranian influence and clout over the Arab Gulf’s Shias has manifestly increased since the end of the Iran-Iraq war. GCC has failed to contain the ‘menace’ of either Iran or Iraq; after a quarter century of its founding, it remains at best a pompous club of potentates as much at sea about either of their two perceived adversaries as they were at its birth.

In fact, George W. Bush’s Iraq caper, and his unrelenting brinkmanship against Iran, has enormously helped bridge the gulf that Saddam’s aggressive posture vis-a-vis Iran had toiled to aggravate. The Gulf Arab rulers were wrong in betting their money on Saddam a quarter century ago; they would be committing an even bigger blunder by ganging up against Iran at Bush’s bidding.

A policy of keeping Iran out of the Gulf fold serves no interest of the regional countries. The only beneficiary of division in the Gulf on sectarian or linguistic basis would be the hegemonic power that seeks to become its arbiter as much as of the rest of the world. The myopia of the Gulf rulers hasn’t served its peoples’ interest ever since US inherited the imperialist mantle from Britain in the early ‘70s.

For the moment, though, it seems that the Arab Gulf rulers, egged on by Egypt, are content to do exactly as told. The Arab League, which had shunned much contact with the Shia-dominated interim Iraqi government of Ibrahim Jaffari, has decided to reopen its office in Baghdad. A Moroccan diplomat has arrived in Baghdad to head the League office. Several Arab countries, which had thus far refused to oblige the Iraqis with their diplomatic presence in Baghdad, are believed to be rushing in with staff to reactivate their diplomatic missions.

But a much bigger American bait that Arab countries seem ready to swallow is their apparent willingness to agree to deploy an Arab peacekeeping force in war-torn Iraq.

US Vice-President Dick Cheney had made a special foray into Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan earlier in January this year to coax them into forming an Arab multinational force in Iraq in order to relieve the hard-pressed Americans. The formation of such a force, largely led by Egypt as its biggest component, is now being touted as a possibility under the Arab League banner. The Iraqi government may accept an Arab force minus soldiers from the neighbouring countries.

All indicators suggest that Bush is about to rope in his Arab allies into his plan to isolate Iran in the region and pull his chestnut out of the fire with their help. Rich Arabs of the Gulf have never had much courage to resist succumbing under pressure. History is repeating itself. But the Arabs made a farce of themselves when they fell sfor Saddam’s offensive a quarter century ago; it would be a tragedy for them to be blinded by Bush’s imperialist ruse. Some people never learn from history, not even from their own blunders.

The writer is a former ambassador.