Fear of Iran Is Growing in Emirates : Escalation in Gulf Increases Concerns in Tiny Sheikdoms

While U.S. warships sailing these waters cloak their movements in secrecy, their high-tech sensors and shipboard computers on the alert, an armada of old-fashioned wooden dhows crosses the Strait of Hormuz daily, plying a trade route used for centuries by the merchants of Dubai and Iran.

Once, these sleek, crescent-shaped vessels carried spices and silks, but now their cargoes are more likely to be color television sets, radios and disposable diapers.

It is still a matter of speculation, but shipping sources here believe that, on their way back from Iran, some of these boats--or others like them--may have planted the mines that damaged the supertanker Texaco Caribbean on Aug. 10 and sank a supply ship off the eastern port of Fujaira on Aug. 15.

Scare Subsides Somewhat

The mine scare has subsided somewhat now that the coastal waters have been swept and declared free of the menacing devices. But this is of little comfort to the sheiks who rule Dubai and the six other tiny city-states--Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Ajmaan, Umm al Qaiwain, Ras al Khaima and Fujaira--that make up the loose federation known as the United Arab Emirates.

“They were very worried about Iran before the mines. They are a lot more worried now,” a Western diplomat said.

The fears felt here, at the southern tip of the Persian Gulf barely 40 miles across the water from Iran, are typical in many ways of those gripping the other Arab states further up the waterway--Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, for instance.

Deep Sense of Unease

Virtually undefended and indefensible, the tiny Emirates have watched the gulf war between Iran and Iraq rage about them for almost seven years with a deep sense of unease but also with a certain confidence that they could stay out of it.

That confidence is being undermined now as tensions escalate and the stakes increase following the arrival of U.S., British and French warships in the region.

The appearance of mines not only within the Persian Gulf but in the Gulf of Oman, the unpredictability of Iran’s revolutionary leadership and the conviction, shared by most of these states, that the Reagan Administration is only dimly aware of the risks it is courting have given rise to new fears that the war is spreading in an uncontrollable way.

The possibility that Iran may seek to widen the war, through terrorism, subversion or, less likely but not inconceivably, through direct military confrontation, is especially disturbing to these countries because there is little they can do about it.

Moreover, the recent riots by Iranian pilgrims in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, which resulted in more than 400 deaths, have reopened old but still deep divisions between Sunni and Shia Muslims, reminding the Emirates that this is as much a religious war as it is a political, economic and social conflict.

Shia Islam is the religion of Persian-speaking Iran, while the Arab states of the gulf are ruled by Sunnis.

The split between these two branches of Islam dates to a disagreement in AD 632 over who should have succeeded the Prophet Mohammed as leader of the Islamic faith.

The Shias recognize Ali, the prophet’s son-in-law, who was bypassed in the succession and later assassinated. Ali’s son Hussein subsequently pressed the family claim but was defeated and beheaded at a battle in Karbala, Iraq.

This may seem like ancient history, but to dismiss it as such, analysts warn, is to ignore an essential component of the current conflict.

“One of the problems you Americans have in understanding this part of the world is that you’ve never been able to appreciate the power that the past holds over the present,” said one Western analyst, who has spent years studying the region.

“When I talk to Americans about the history behind this conflict, their eyes tend to glaze over, as if to say ‘Get to the point.’ But this is the point, because the Iranians, in a real sense, are fighting the battle of Karbala all over again.” Karbala, he noted, is the code name that Tehran uses for its offensives against Iraq.

Passionate Conflict

There are, in effect, two wars now being fought in the gulf--the one that began on Sept. 22, 1980, when Iraq invaded Iran, and the one that began more than a millennium ago. And it is this second, far more passionate conflict that is especially worrisome to the Sunni nations of the Persian Gulf, most of whom have sizable Shia communities.

In Kuwait, Shias make up about a third of the population. In Bahrain, they constitute 70%. In the Emirates, Shias number only about 65,000 in a population of about 1.6 million. But this figure takes on more importance in view of the fact that only 20% of the population holds citizenship, the rest being expatriate workers.

In Saudi Arabia, the Shia community is also small, but it is concentrated in the eastern provinces, where the kingdom’s oil fields are located.

Most of these Shias do not share the fanaticism of their co-religionists in Iran. Shias constitute a plurality in Iraq, for instance, and they show no more sympathy toward Iranian fundamentalism than does the Sunni government of President Saddam Hussein.

Iran Enjoys Some Success

Nevertheless, Iran’s attempt to inflame Shia passions, by reviving ancient grievances and refreshing them through spectacles such as the Mecca riots, seems to be meeting with some success.

Kuwait, which has put itself directly in the line of fire by serving as the principal point of transit for arms being shipped to Iraq, has suffered a series of terrorist attacks, ranging from an attempt on the life of its ruler in 1985 to several more recent incidents of sabotage at its oil and gas fields.

The assassination attempt against Sheik Jabbar al Ahmed al Sabah, the emir of Kuwait, was blamed on outsiders working on behalf of Iran. However, the more recent incidents of oil field sabotage have been attributed to Kuwaiti Shias.

The riots in Mecca last month, which apparently erupted when knife-wielding Iranians clashed with Saudi police trying to prevent them from staging an anti-American demonstration, were followed by a threat from Tehran to topple the Saudi royal family.

On Aug. 15, an explosion damaged a Saudi gas-processing plant near Ras Tannurah. The Saudis blamed the accident on an electrical fault, but diplomats said the possibility of sabotage could not be ruled out.

Widening Split

Certainly, the Sunni-Shia split appears to be widening.

In Kuwait, an effort is reportedly under way to ease Shias from sensitive positions, while diplomats throughout the gulf say that surveillance of Shia communities is being increased. This, in turn, is fueling the old Shia fears of Sunni persecution and exacerbating the animosities, which Iran is then able to exploit, the diplomats add.

In the Emirates, the Sunni-Shia schism is not so apparent, largely because the Shia community is smaller and less cohesive than in Kuwait and because of the close commercial links that these tiny sheikdoms, formerly known as the Trucial States, have maintained with Iran over the centuries.

Yet the Emirates have other problems--as Iran has pointedly reminded them in recent weeks.

Banding together after the British withdrew east of the Suez in 1971, the seven sheikdoms on the tip of the Omani peninsula have never managed to integrate themselves into one true country.

Interstate rivalries, especially between Abu Dhabi and Dubai, the two largest members of the federation, have kept them apart.

Until recently, this did not seem to be so bad because the system appeared to thrive on creative tension, particularly between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Their Hertz-versus-Avis relationship helped to spur development, albeit some of it unnecessary.

However, a coup attempt in Sharjah, another of the Emirates, last June has deepened these differences, diplomats say. The trouble started when Sheik Abdulaziz al Kasimi tried to oust his spendthrift brother, Sheik Sultan ibn Mohammed al Kasimi, as ruler of Sharjah while the latter was in London.

Sheik Abdulaziz reportedly had the support of his family and at least the tacit approval of Abu Dhabi, which was alarmed at the $1-billion debt run up by Sultan’s management of the economy.

Dubai, however, intervened on Sultan’s behalf and got him reinstated.

While things have since settled down, the incident has left a bitter aftertaste and, in the view of some diplomats in the region, has set back by several years any further attempts at integration, particularly of the Emirates’ 40,000-man armed forces.

Now, on top of this crisis comes the possibility of an argument with Iran, which is widely believed to have been behind the recent mining of the Emirates’ waters.

“The mines really frightened them,” one diplomat said. “Ever since the Iranian revolution, their strategy for defense has been to persuade the Iranians not to hit them. Now, they are not so confident they can continue to do this. The mines were a reminder of how vulnerable they really are.”

Like the Emirates, most of the Arab states along the western side of the gulf have tried to keep a low profile throughout the war, balancing their quiet support of Iraq with appeasement toward Iran.

Even Kuwait, which internationalized the tense situation when it invited both the United States and the Soviet Union to protect its oil tankers from Iranian attack, has tried to distance itself as much as possible from the consequences of its request by refusing, at least publicly, to give the United States landing rights to refuel the minesweeping helicopters it sent to the gulf.

The other Arab states are understood to have had deep misgivings about the wisdom of inviting the superpowers into the gulf and were upset by Kuwait’s failure to consult them first, diplomats said.

However, now that one of the largest U.S. Navy armadas to be assembled since the Vietnam War has been committed to the gulf, the Arab states “desperately want to see the reflagging operation succeed,” one diplomat said.

The consequences of failure--of Iran being seen to have chased the United States out of the gulf--would be “devastating and would leave these countries feeling far more vulnerable than they already feel,” the diplomat added.

Still, they are reluctant to declare their support, or be seen as openly cooperating with the U.S. escorts, because of persistent doubts over whether the operation can succeed, this diplomat and others said.

“The big problem now is credibility,” one diplomat said. “Is the United States in this to stay? How long will it be willing to keep up the escorts? These are open questions in the minds of the gulf states.”

The avowed U.S. purpose behind the escorting of Kuwaiti tankers is to guarantee the uninterrupted flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. But this is a goal that helps Iran, which sends all of its oil through the narrow channel, far more than it does Iraq, which moves most of its oil via overland pipelines.

Since the arrival of U.S. forces in the area, Iraq has refrained from attacking tankers bearing Iranian oil from the gulf. But no one thinks Iraq can afford to let this situation continue indefinitely.

“Although the Iraqis are showing restraint because the reflagging operation has temporarily painted them as the good guys, they are actually under more pressure now than the Iranians are,” one shipping source said. “Sooner or later, they’re going to have to resume their tanker attacks, and that will make the Americans look pretty stupid.”

Risky Approach

The awesome volume of U.S. firepower dispatched to the gulf has also alarmed cautious Arab states, who fear that this high-profile approach may only play into the hands of Iranian propaganda.

“A lot of Iranian propaganda over the past few years has been devoted to covering up the fact that, despite countless suffering and tens of thousands of lives, Iran has not been able to defeat Iraq,” one analyst noted.

“The Iranians have tried to hide this unpalatable fact from their own people by saying that Saddam Hussein and the other Arab rulers of the gulf are supported by the United States, ‘the Great Satan,’ ” he added.

The Sunni rulers of the region fear that the manner in which the United States has entered the gulf may only validate this impression in the eyes of many Shias, this analyst said.

All of this makes it extremely difficult for the timid rulers of the Persian Gulf nations to openly identify with the United States at what they see as a crucial and perilous juncture in the Iran-Iraq War.

“They are not being anti-American so much as they are trying to hedge their bets,” another analyst said. “For they know that Iran still has the upper hand, because it can manipulate this crisis, while all the United States can do is react.”