Many Arabs are openly expressing their concern about Iran, or secretly discussing it in their private councils. I want to say here that I am worried about this Arab concern. The Iranian regime does not worry me or frighten because I am not courageous); this is due, in fact, to my conviction that there are Iranian ambitions in the Gulf, meddling that even reaches the Arab Maghreb, and a stance in Lebanon and Gaza that only exacerbates domestic antagonisms rather than attempting to resolve them. Then there is the Iranian nuclear program; my personal position towards this latter is that Iran is seeking to build a nuclear bomb, or at least, seeking to obtain the knowledge necessary to do so if needed. However, the Iranian nuclear program, even if it had a military aspect, does not worry me at all. Rather, I wish and hope that the regime in Iran is lying, and that Iran will possess a nuclear arsenal twice the size of that in Israel, then I will not worry. In general, nuclear weapons are not for use. Instead, they are an insurance policy that protects the country that has them. Beside that, the truth lies in the fact that, despite all the Israeli mongering, every single official American report, including the famous National Intelligence Estimate, and another report issued days ago by the State Department's intelligence, confirms that Iran is years away from obtaining any military nuclear capabilities. As such, I do not find any reasons at all for the worries expressed by Egypt, the largest Arab country, about Iran, when this latter is a thousand miles away from it. This is unless President Hosni Mubarak is worried about Iran's ambitions in the gulf, or its meddling in Lebanon and Gaza. This might be possible, but worrying about Egypt, or in Egypt, is incomprehensible. Nonetheless, I do not need to use Egypt as a proof to my argument. Instead, I will choose Iran and the United Arab Emirates. I have spent a lot of time comparing between these two countries in the last days and weeks, and arrived thus to the conclusion that should there be any reasons for concern, they would be entirely Iranian and not Emirati. First of all, the Emirates are not threatened by a devastating airstrike or invasion. The Emirates are also not being threatened with economic sanctions that might become an embargo a-la Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The UAE's President, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, has no one superior to him to “guide him”, and whom he does not need. Also, I do not recall that the inauguration ceremony of Sheikh Khalifa as a State Leader was interrupted by anyone, and certainly not by people in the UAE, in the level of Mir Hussein Moussavi, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami. I do not recall that demonstrations were organized following the election of Sheikh Khalifa as the successor of Sheikh Zayed, and that the police killed protesters there and detained hundreds of others. There are no secret opposition movements in the UAE, nor armed terrorism or dissidents abroad. What's more, the President of the UAE does not need revolutionary guards to monitor the army, neither does he need to strike a balance with the latter, nor to rely on the Basig to monitor both of these, and the Iranian street along with them. I do not recall that trials were carried out for members of the opposition following the inauguration of Sheikh Khalifa as the President. It should be mentioned here that the UAE were created about a decade before the Islamic Republic, in the seventies, without devouring its own children as the Islamic Revolution did. I have never heard, for instance, that the United Arab Emirates prosecuted personalities of the calibre of Iranian former Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi, and former Intelligence Minister Said Hajarian. - The President of the UAE never had to withdraw the nomination of a vice-president that he said he would never withdraw. - There is no gasoline crisis in the UAE, although both countries are oil producers. - The Per capita income in the UAE is three to five times higher than the per capita income in Iran, which does not exceed seven thousand dollars a year in a country that floats on a lake of oil and gas. I pause here to tell the reader that I am drawing a comparison, and not arguing at all that the United Arab Emirates is Plato's Republic; like in any country, there are many problems in the UAE, and we all read the criticism by human rights organizations of the treatment of foreign workers there, and the extreme legal rulings, as well as the restraints on public and personal freedoms in the country. Nonetheless, this does not change the fact that my comparison between the two countries above is correct. As such, I call on the reader to forgo of his concerns about Iran because it does not frighten anyone who does not already want to be frightened. If the reader believes me, I also call on him to forget what is written in the right-wing newspapers in the West about Iran, because their intentions in this regard are purely Likudnik, and to forget what liberal newspapers write, because they are against any religious rule as a matter of principle. Also, the reader must forget the reformists in Iran, because there are no real reformists there, and to forget the hardliners because everyone is trying to attain power in order to steal, and to forget all the allegations of Israel because it is a terrorist occupational state and has no right to accuse anyone of what it already does: Israel, in fac,t is nothing but an illegal outpost in the Palestinian territories. Meanwhile, the former U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen literally said: “fears about Iran have replaced animosity toward Israel as the top concern of governments in the Persian Gulf and the broader Middle East.” Yet, I do not find any cause of concern for any Arab country about Iran. Instead, I think there are many reasons for concern within the Islamic Republic itself, which is being targeted both internally and from abroad, and I hope that no Arab ruler is like the lion in “Alice in Wonderland”; i.e. without a strong heart as it should be in a lion, especially that the Arab street is dormant, while and the Iranian street is lively, and this will be the last comparison for the day.
