Bustling Trade, Tradition Connect Dubai With Iran

Stacked high with anything from Korean chewing gum to Japanese pick-up trucks, traditional wooden Arab boats are plying a bustling Persian Gulf trade route between this United Arab Emirates (UAE) port and Iran.

Trading and family ties between the Emirates and Iran go back centuries.

“In the Gulf region, the ties between Iran and the UAE are the best,” Iranian ambassador to the UAE Mostafa Foumeni el-Haeri told Reuters. “This state knows and understands the Islamic Republic better than its colleagues.”

Most Are Iranians

One reason is, perhaps, that some of Dubai’s most prominent businessmen and officials are Iranians or of Iranian descent.

The UAE is the only member of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which also includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar, to have full ambassadorial relations with Iran.

In the Dubai market or the crowded creek where the traditional boats, known as dhows, load up, Persian is as common a tongue as Arabic or Urdu. Ajami, an Arabized Persian dialect from Iran’s southern coast, is spoken in homes throughout the Emirates.

The UAE’s population of 1.2 million includes some 70,000- 80,000 Iranian expatriates.

Trade between Dubai and Iran grew from $91 million in 1982 to $267 million in 1983 but fell last year to $201 million, according to official figures.

Iran is represented in the UAE not only by Ambassador al-Haeri, a religious scholar, but also by a personal representative of Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Religious Adviser

Based in Dubai, Hojatoleslam Sayyed Raza Borghai acts as a religious adviser and oversees a considerable array of Iranian institutions. They include banks, schools, state trading companies and one of Dubai’s largest hospitals, run by the Iranian Red Crescent.

Iranian sources say UAE’s fears have now subsided that Iranian nationals would be a source of unrest following the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran.

Gulf Arab states support Iraq in its five-year-old war with Iran. But the diplomats say the UAE tends to take a softer line on Iran in GCC meetings than other members.

The diplomats say ties with both Iran and Iraq suit the UAE ideally for mediation betwen the warring countries and point to the flurry of messages that continually pass between Tehran and the UAE and the UAE and Baghdad.

“Iraq doesn’t get too angry because of the UAE’s ties to Iran. Everybody needs an Arab state the Iranians can and will talk to,” one diplomat said.