French President Emmanuel Macron has been visiting the Gulf Arab states, performing his solemn duty as his country’s Exporter-in-Chief, which in that part of the world means the sale of weapons. The United Arab Emirates has long been a major customer for the French arms industry. In the past decade, it bought $5 billion worth of weapons from Paris. But now the UAE has outdone itself, agreeing to the purchase of 80 Rafale fighter jets as well as 12 transport helicopters, costing a total of more than $19 billion, almost four times as much as the total sales of French weapons to the UAE between 2010 and 2021. There were smiles all around, among the French and Emirati officials in Abu Dhabi attending the final signing of the sale. But not everyone was pleased. Iran, the neighborhood bully that lies just across the Gulf from the UAE, is distinctly unhappy. A report on Iran’s angry outburst is here: “Iran says France ‘destabilizing’ the region with weapon sales to Gulf states,” AFP, December 6, 2021:
Iran on Monday [Dec. 6] accused France of “destabilizing” the Gulf region after Paris signed a record arms deal with the United Arab Emirates for 80 Rafale fighter jets.
“We must not ignore France’s role in destabilizing the region,” foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told a news conference.
“We expected France to be more responsible,” he said. “The militarization of our region is unacceptable and the weapons they sell in the region are the source of turmoil.”
But why should Iran object to the UAE acquiring these aircraft? Isn’t Iran just now trying to be the Emirates’ friend? Didn’t Ali Shamkhani himself, the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, recently meet with a high-ranking Emirati official, where both spoke of the hoped-for “warm and brotherly ties” between Iran and the UAE? Why should the UAE’s purchase of jets and helicopters alarm Iran? Or is it possible that Iran is not really intending to nurture those “warm and brotherly ties” with the UAE, but has quite different plans for the Emirates? Perhaps it wants to make sure that the UAE — which with this sale will have 552 aircraft to Iran’s 343 — doesn’t try to take over the disputed Greater and Lesser Tunb Islands in the Gulf, that Iran now ‘”occupies” but the UAE, backed by the other Arab states, claims as its own. And surely Iran must harbor hate for the Emiraties, for the unpardonable sin of being the first Arab state to join the Abraham Accords and to “normalize ties” with Israel. Still worse, in little over a year the UAE has gone all in with Israel, making deals worth some $675 million, promoting trade, tourism, and technology with the Jewish state, and making a smashing success of its adherence to the Abraham Accords that cannot have gone unnoticed In other Arab states that are now wondering if they, too, should “normalize ties” with Israel and reap similar benefits. This sends the hard men in Tehran into a rage.
France clinched the order for 80 Rafale fighter aircraft during a visit Friday by President Emmanuel Macron to the UAE.
During the visit, Abu Dhabi also inked a deal to buy 12 Caracal military transport helicopters, for a total bill of more than 17 billion euros (more than $19 billion).
The UAE was the fifth biggest customer for the French defense industry, with deals worth 4.7 billion euros, from 2011 to 2020, according to a French parliamentary report.
France has faced criticism after some of these weapons were used in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition that includes the UAE is fighting Iran-backed rebels in a war that has created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
But the UAE pulled completely out of Yemen almost two years ago, in February 2020. Emirati forces are no longer outside the borders of the state; there is no longer any reason to worry about the use of these French weapons in military adventurism. The same, however, cannot be said for Iran. It is Iran, not the UAE, that has been involved in aggressive military adventures all over the Middle East, with its network of proxies and allies. Iran has backed the Houthi rebels in Yemen’s civil war that has been going on since 2014. Iran’s IRGC has been supplying weapons and training to Kata’ib Hezbollah, one of the main Shi’a militias in southern Iraq. Iran has supplied $30 billion dollars in cash and billions of dollars worth of weapons to Syria’s Assad. It has also built bases in Syria, where Iranians have prepared precision-guided missiles that they then attempt to smuggle to Hezbollah in Lebanon, adding to the immense store of 150,000 missiles and rockets that Iran has provided Hezbollah over many decades. Iran has also supplied money, weapons, and training to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza.
Given all that, should Iran be complaining that the weapons the French sell has led to ‘the militarization of our region” which is “unacceptable” and “the weapons they sell in the region are the source of turmoil”? Surely the “militarization” of the region is mostly a function of Iran’s supplying weapons to Hezbollah, Hamas, Assad’s Alawite-ed Syrian Army, the Iraqi Kataib Hezbollah, and the Houthis in Yemen. Surely the military adventurism of Iran, not the French sales of airplanes, are the main “source of turmoil” in the region. Or are we meant not to notice what the Islamic Republic has been doing these last forty years?
Khatibzadeh also complained that “billions of dollars worth of weapons are being sold to Arab countries” without sparking global concern while Iran’s missile program is condemned by world powers.
Why doesn’t the world seem concerned, Mr. Khatibzadeh plaintively asks, about the billions of dollars of weapons sold to Arab countries, but condemns Iran’s “missile program”? Let’s see. In the first place, weapons sales to various Arab countries have raised concerns in the past, and they have been embargoed. An arms embargo has been in place in Libya since 2011, when Qaddafi was still in power. In 1990 the Security Council passed Resolution 661, an open-ended arms embargo placed on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq after he invaded Kuwait; it was lifted only in 2003, after Saddam’s fall. Saudi Arabia, too, has been the object of an arms embargo after Khashoggi was murdered, first by Germany, then by Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Finland and Greece. Iran’s complaint that there has been “no global concern” about weapons sales to Arab states is simply untrue.
Khatibzadeh’s complaint that no one has been concerned about weapons sales to Arab countries — as we have seen, a falsehood – is followed by his equally misleading charge that everyone, on the other hand, seems alarmed about Iran’s “missile program.” No, it is not Iran’s missile program that has worried half the globe, but rather, Iran’s nuclear weapons program. After all, Iran has told the world repeatedly that it plans, once it possesses a nuclear weapon, to use it in order to “annihilate Israel.” But why should it stop there? Perhaps Iran will use one or two bombs on its other regional enemies, the Sunni states of the Gulf, beginning with Saudi Arabia. And perhaps the fanatics in Tehran could find a way to deliver a nuclear weapon for use in a terror attack, to punish the Great Satan, America, for all it has put Iran through these last 40 years. That’s what the world worries about, when it worries about Iran. With good reason.
gravenimage says
Iran Accuses France of ‘Destabilizing’ the Gulf Region
…………
In other words, the Mullahs don’t think that Macron has been sucking up to them enough…
OLD GUY says
It’s just amazing how our western governments in collusion with the corporate arms manufactures are willing to sell weapons to our potential enemies. Along with these arms deals we also don’t criticize or seem to care about their human rights violations against women and people of non-islamic faith that these countries promote and allow. I guess the sale and money is what’s most important.
Rafael says
You are so right Old Guy. Sadly, I think the Western governments and democracies does not care about us non-Muslims living in Islamic countries. I was born in Turkey and was never able to leave this country. But I hope I can flee Turkey for a better non-Muslim nation. But withouth their help I can’t do nothing. Clearly, Turkey murders and persecutes Kurds on a daily basis, as well as non-Muslims. But the tracherous Western countries like Trudeau’s government are still signing agreements with this murderous regime. This is sad, and most people should know that Jihadists governments like Turkey and Iran are the scums of humanity.