چکیده:
The paper aims to critically consider the proposition maintaining that the contemporary state of affairs between Iran and the Arab world results from an endemic، deep-rooted enmity between these two peoples with roots in the annals of history. To elucidate its argument، the paper offers a brief review of the major ups and downs in the historical relationship between Iranians and Arabs to see whether animosity or good-neighbourliness has mainly prevailed. Then، seeking to pinpoint the causes of uneasiness in the Iranian-Arab relationship since the 1950s، the focus of the paper turns to the formation of pan-Arab ideology and its strong anti-Iranian elements. Major differences in outlooks، coupled with territorial and diplomatic disagreements، had Nasserite Egypt and especially Ba’athist Iraq embrace these elements and begin implementing them to their full and extreme extent at a time when a monarchical West-leaning regime was in power in Iran. The paper concludes that the uneasiness in Iran-Arab relations during the past five to six decades has been situational and a modern phenomenon، chiefly stemming from specific political circumstances with certain roots in nation-building activities in the concerned countries. Hence، historical and ethno-religious or civilizational roots of this strained relationship are either non-existent or insignificant.
خلاصه ماشینی:
Nasserite Egypt, mostly for political reasons, and Iraq, primarily for reasons related to nation-building and the construction of an Iraqi Arab identity as well as geopolitical considerations, tried to define Arab nationalism, inter alia, as opposed to ‘the Persians’ and Iranian nationalism.
I. Myth of Endemic Persian-Arab Enmity A quick review of the history of interaction between Iran and the Arab world reveals that the frequent misunderstandings as well as animosity and, at times, conflicts and war in the past decades have been recent phenomena.
The singling out of Iran and Iranians as an enemy first found expression in the writings and rhetoric of Pan-Arab nationalists such as Sati’ al-Husri in the 1920s through the 1950s, and were later operationalized by Nasserite Egypt in the 1960s and taken to its extreme by republican and Ba'athist Iraq from 1958 through 2003.
The Shah’s reassertion of Iran’s old claim to Bahrain in 1957 and the Iranian move to establish sovereignty over three Persian Gulf islands in 1971 that Iran considers part of its territory - seized by Britain in the early nineteenth century and claimed for its Arab protégés - created tension and provided pan-Arab nationalists with fodder to strain Iran-Arab relations.
The following observation by Sir Richard Nelson Frye encapsulates the crisis in Arab attitudes towards Iranians: "Arabs no longer understand the role of Iran and the Persian language in the formation of Islamic culture.