Given the growing frictions between the Islamic Republic and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf this year, a visit by the chief of state of one of those nations would appear to be a very major event indeed.
And it may well have been. But only very brief and unhelpful announcements were made about the visit. It isn’t known if Shaikh Hamed bin Khalifa Ath-Thani was carrying any proposals from himself or his fellow Arab leaders for lessening the frictions, which soared after Bahraini Shiites rose in rebellion in February and won sustained vocal support from the Islamic Republic.
The brevity of the visit was also a surprise. Shaikh Hamed arrived Thursday morning and left soon after midnight without staying even one night.
Shaikh Hamed met with President Ahmadi-nejad and Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Salehi, but was not received by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi. Whether that was a snub or whether Shaikh Hamed did not seek such an audience is not known.
The Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) carried a four-paragraph story on the visit, a remarkably short report for what should have been viewed as a momentous trip.
The IRNA story also contained some highly questionable quotes. IRNA is infamous for quoting foreign visitors as mouthing Iranian state propaganda. But the IRNA story had Shaikh Hamed not only voicing the official Iranian line but also doing so with comments that damned his own policies.
Qatar has sent planes to Libya to oppose the regime of Moammar Qadhdhafi and has involved itself more openly and directly in the Libyan issue than all other Arab states combined.
Yet IRNA reported that Shaikh Hamed “criticized the ‘unsolicited interference’ of some of the Arab countries and other powers in the internal affairs of the regional countries and said that ‘those who cannot be accountable to their own people and resolve their problems with compassion and understanding, and for whom only the words of foreigners are important, are pushing their country and the [Arab] nation as well as the region toward insecurity’.”
The IRNA story also quoted Shaikh Hamed as asserting that there would be no need for a foreign presence in the region if the local counties would cooperate more. Qatar has turned over to the US Air Force a huge base that is the central site for US airpower in the region.
Meanwhile, on Sunday, King Hamed of Bahrain launched a major effort at reconciliation with the opposition. The king announced he was pardoning all those convicted of insulting him during the spring anti-regime protests. There was no announcement on the number pardoned.
The general pardon presumably excluded those accused of rioting. But the king also said that all cases of civilians tried in military courts would be transferred to civilian courts.
That has been a major demand of the Bahraini Shiite opposition. And the king said all those dismissed from government jobs or expelled from college for protesting would be reinstated. That was another opposition demand.