Gates in Riyadh to Show Iran the Region Closing Ranks (Update1)
March 10, 2010, 8:37 AM EST(Adds Gates’s comments starting in seventh paragraph, U.S. defense official’s comments starting in 10th.)
By Viola Gienger
March 10 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrived in Saudi Arabia on a mission to show officials in Tehran that their neighbors in the region are closing ranks in opposition to Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.
Gates, who flew to the Saudi capital, Riyadh, today after a two-day stop in Afghanistan, plans to meet with King Abdullah and Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdelaziz al-Saud, the deputy prime minister. The U.S. defense chief aims to demonstrate that Iran’s military buildup in defiance of international demands won’t make it more secure and may backfire, U.S. officials said.
Weapons purchases by U.S.-allied Persian Gulf nations have grown in recent years, along with joint military training and exercises. Gates has urged his counterparts in the region to integrate air and missile defense systems, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters traveling with Gates before he left Washington.
“The historical regional reluctance to cooperate in that manner is being diminished by the recognized common threat they all face across the Gulf” from Iran, Morrell said. “As Iran becomes more menacing, we’re seeing greater cooperation.”
Gates’s visit is part of the Obama administration’s shift from negotiations with Iran to pressure, including plans to impose a fourth round of United Nations sanctions on the country. The U.S. is working with France, Britain, Germany, Russia and China to persuade Iran to give up uranium enrichment, a process they say may be aimed at building a nuclear bomb.
Nuclear Energy
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who says his government is simply exercising its right to produce nuclear energy, hasn’t taken up an offer from the group to enrich the uranium Iran needs outside the country in a monitored process.
Ahmadinejad also was in Kabul today. The U.S. defense chief expressed amusement at the overlapping of their Afghan visits.
“It’s clearly fodder for all conspiratorialists,” Gates told reporters at a briefing today with his Afghan counterpart, Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak. Gates reiterated the U.S. position that Afghanistan should have constructive ties with all its neighbors.
“But we also want all of Afghanistan’s neighbors to play an upfront game in dealing with the government of Afghanistan,” Gates said. The U.S. says Iran is providing funding and other assistance to the insurgency in Afghanistan in an effort to ensure that the coalition led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization fails in the war against the Taliban.
Saudi Oil
Saudi Arabia, as the biggest supplier of oil to China last year, also may be helpful on sanctions against Iran, U.S. officials have said. The Saudis are trying to persuade China to back further UN sanctions, said a U.S. defense official who briefed reporters before the trip.
The Saudis also could help by offering more oil to China, a step that would reduce its dependence on Iran to power the Asian nation’s burgeoning economy.
China’s crude oil imports from Iran fell to a three-year low in January, and were about one-third the level of the shipments from Saudi Arabia, according to Chinese customs data.
Gates will seek to reassure officials in Riyadh, in light of the threat from Iran, that the U.S. is committed to following through on pledges to help Saudi Arabia modernize its air and missile defenses, the U.S. defense official said.
The defense chief will also urge the Saudis to make progress on integrating those defenses into a regional system that has been in development in recent years, the official said. That includes features such as coordinated early-warning systems, sharing information and integrating imagery.
The visit is more a symbolic message of solidarity and working on existing agreements rather than producing any new arms deals, the defense official said.
Gates isn’t likely to raise the question of whether Saudi Arabia might want to pursue its own nuclear program to counter Iran’s development work, the official said. Such concerns aren’t immediate, according to the official.
--Editors: Heather Langan, Ben Holland
To contact the reporter on this story: Viola Gienger in Riyadh at vgienger@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jim Kirk in Washington at jkirk12@bloomberg.net.
