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“Iran and Turkey said Thursday they planned to double their trade volume despite having political differences on Syria and a NATO radar shield on Turkish soil. “Our annual trade volume currently stands at 15 billion dollars but we hope to double it in the near future,” Iranian Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Salehi said in a joint press conference with his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu in Tehran. Despite the plan to increase trade, the two sides did not seem to have settled political differences, especially on the situation in Syria. ……….”
 
“Middle East powerhouse Turkey on Wednesday warned against a sectarian cold war in the region and said rising Sunni-Shiite tensions would be “suicide” for the whole region. “Let me openly say that there are some willing to start a regional Cold War,” Foreign Minster Ahmet Davutoglu told state-run Anatolian news agency before heading to Shiite Iran. “We are determined to prevent a regional Cold War. Sectarian regional tensions would be suicide for the whole region,” Davutoglu said, adding such effects would last for decades. “Turkey is against all polarisations, in the political sense of Iran-Arab tension or in the sense of forming an apparent axis. This will be one of the crucial messages that I will take to Tehran.”…….. Davutoglu is expected to hold talks in Tehran later on Wednesday on Iran’s nuclear programme and developments in neighbouring Iraq and Syria………..”

Davutoglu, with the talk of “Sunni-Shiite tensions”, seems to be jabbing the Saudis and their allies who have been stoking sectarian hatred for a few years now, especially along the Gulf. For a while there was talk, mostly in some Arab oligarchy media, of an Iranian-Turkish-Qatari-Syrian alliance. The Turkish role was exaggerated: after all Turkey is an old NATO member and a longtime friend of Israel. The Qatari role was also exaggerated: Qatar shares a huge offshore gas field with Iran and is also wary of Saudi attempts at hegemony over the GCC states. A Saudi-sponsored coup attempt against the Emir was thwarted in the late 1990s, with several high Saudi security officials arrested and jailed in Doha (they were released last year). Saudi media and the Wahhabi faux-liberal media on the Gulf were full of condemnation of a mythical Qatari-Iranian-Syrian-Iraqi-Hezbollah axis. It was supposed to be an “axis of evil” as opposed to the “axis of goodness and democracy” of Saudi Arabia-Bahrain-UAE-Taliban-Mubarak-Wahhabi shaikhs.
Now the Turks and Iranians are on opposite sides in Syria. Now the Saudis and the Turks and the Qataris are on the same side in Syria (almost on the same side: the Salafis and Wahhabiized Muslim Brothers of Syria are not exactly what the Turks like). The Turks are now seen by some Arabs as a counterweight to Iran, a NATO and a Muslim counterweight in Syria. There may be some complications: the Syrians and the Arabs have always claimed that the Turkish region of Iskandaruna (Alexandretta) is part of Syria and that it is occupied territory, just like the West Bank. That is another issue to ponder as the Turks and some Arabs get close enough to each other to start disliking each other again (all that stuff about familiarity breeding contempt). The West probably sees a two–pronged approach to contain Iran:

(1) The Persian-American Gulf to be “defended” by the Western forces, mainly the US Navy, that are clogging it now. Of course Iran has not attacked anyone in the Gulf yet, nor does it have any intention of attacking anyone “first”, Saudi and Salafi propaganda and fear-mongering by the Bahrain satraps notwithstanding.
(2) The Eastern Mediterranean to be “defended” by NATO, with the Turks as the main player. Lebanon is probably considered, wisely, very iffy: a majority of the people want no Western military forces, certainly no Israeli forces or outside Arab forces either. Lebanon was tackled with Western “intelligence” operations and Saudi money (a lot of Saudi money for such a small country). So far it has failed: Saudi princes are not exactly lovable, charismatic, or principled creatures. They can never buy love with money (not that kind of love), nobody can. This is not to say that the Iranian mullahs, or other Arab leaders, are very lovable either. Many are barely more lovable than Netanyahu or Lieberman (Avigdor not Joe).
 
Breaking Syria away from its Iranian alliance is the main prerequisite for success in the Eastern Mediterranean now. The pro-Saudi Syrian opposition (the Salafis, Muslim Brothers, some former military officers, even others, now seem to want Western (NATO) intervention against the regime. They want to be liberated by the West just as Iraq was liberated in 2003 and Libya was liberated in 2011.
After that, the Saudi camp hopes their Israeli allies will be able to soften Hezbollah and Lebanon.
More on this later……
Cheers
mhg


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