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Saudi Arabia (last updated October 21, 2003) (back to top)

Saudi Arabia, which is both the birthplace of Islam as well as the world's leading oil producer, is a crucial player in the Middle East. Due to the presence of oil, the United States has had very close ties to the Saudi regime since 1945 and especially since the Gulf War of 1990-91, but the relationship has become more strained in recent years on both sides, with growing resentment towards the U.S. presence in the Middle East, with reports linking Saudi elites to terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda, and with growing concern over Saudi Arabia's human rights record.

In one recent development, the Saudi Arabian government announced in mid-October that it would hold the first real elections for the first time within a year. Elections reportedly will take place for positions on municipal councils within one year and then for other councils. The United States welcomed the announcement. "We support any initiative that leads to greater participation of all elements of Saudi society in political life," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in an Oct. 14 press briefing.

Ties to the United States

Effectively working under a security-for-oil agreement, the United States and Saudi Arabia have been allies since the 1940s. Saudi Arabia has been an oil power since World War II and now brings in about $70 billion a year from oil exports, which go largely to Asia; the United States itself gets more oil from Saudi Arabia than from any other country. With that oil money, Saudi Arabia has bought billions in military equipment from the United States and is by far the biggest consumer of United States military equipment.

Moreover, the United States has stationed military forces in Saudi Arabia since the Gulf War, a presence that has become very controversial due to having so many United States troops so close to Mecca, the holy place all Muslims are obligated to visit once in their lives if possible. There were about 600,000 allied forces in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War, and about 5,000 troops and thousands of military contractors have been there since (troops are also in nearby Kuwait and Qatar). Religious leaders criticized King Fahd in 1992 for allowing United States troops on Saudi land, and al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden has said repeatedly that one of his main goals is to drive the United States out of Saudi Arabia.

Three bombing incidents have targeted the American presence in Saudi Arabia. The first was on November 13, 1995 at a US-operated Saudi National Guard training center in the capital city of Riyadh, in which 8 people were killed and 60 wounded (5 of the 8 killed and half the casualties were Americans). The second was at the U.S. military residence in Dhahran, called the Khobar Towers, on June 25, 1996; 19 American servicemen were killed in this incident and 100 seriously injured. These two incidents are believed to be unrelated; the first was allegedly caused by four Sunni Saudi nationals, and the second allegedly by Shi'ite Saudi extremists supported by members of Iran's government.

On May 11, 2003, a third bombing attack against three compounds where foreigners lived resulted in the deaths of eight American citizens. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said the incident "certainly has all the fingerprints of an al-Qaida operation."

A Monarchy with a Poor Human Rights Record

Saudi Arabia has been a monarchy since King Abd Al-Aziz Al Saud unified the nomadic tribes in the area in the 1930s. King Fahd has ruled the country since 1982, though his son, Crown Prince Abdullah, has effectively led the country since Fahd suffered a stroke in 1995. The government is based on a conservative form of Islam and has declared the Koran to be its constitution, but has faced opposition from fundamentalists who want a more conservative regime in power. The country has no political parties or elected representative institutions.

The country's human rights record is poor, according to the U.S. State Department and international organizations, as is its record on religious freedom. The U.S. State Department's 2001 report on Saudi Arabia criticized it for denying citizens basic rights such as free speech and changing their government, and criticized abuses by the country's security forces. The Committee to Prevent Vice and Promote Virtue, whose agents are known as the Mutawwa'in, or religious police, monitors public behavior and have intimidated and abused citizens and foreigners of both sexes for offenses such as not following a strict dress code.

Women in particular have very limited rights in Saudi Arabia; they are not treated as equal members of society, are not allowed to drive, and are segregated in terms of education and their use of public facilities. Women are expected to wear an abaya, a black garment that covers the entire body, and to cover their head and hair. Women make up 5 percent of the work force and own about 20 percent of the businesses, but cannot represent themselves in financial transactions and have their testimony in a Shari'a court count half that of a man's.

One incident cited by critics of Saudi Arabia is the Mutawwa'in's alleged interference with rescue efforts at a March 2002 fire at a girls' public intermediate school in Mecca. According to Human Rights Watch, eyewitnesses reported that members of the Mutawwa'in intentionally prevented some students from evacuating because they were not wearing the required abaya, allegedly forcing students who escaped through the school's main gate to return via another and preventing parents and residents from helping. At least 14 students died in the fire, according to Human Rights Watch's account in a press release.

For more information on arms sales, go here. For more information on Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, go here.

Sources: The State Department's country background report is on-line here. Its human rights report on Saudi Arabia is on-line here. A Human Rights Watch press release on the March 2002 fire at a girls' school is on-line here. Secretary of State Colin Powell's May 13, 2003 comments on the May 11, 2003 bombing incident are on-line here. Richard Boucher's Oct. 14 comments on upcoming Saudi elections is on-line here.


Libya (last updated January 28, 2004) (back to top)

Long considered by the United States to be a state sponsor of terrorism though not an active one, Libya has taken moves since the late 1990s to end its isolation from the international community resulting from the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. Most recently, President George W. Bush announced on Dec. 19, 2003 that Libya's leader Muammar Qadhafi had agreed to eliminate Libya's chemical and nuclear weapons programs and cooperate with international inspection agencies.

Qadhafi's moves seem to be in part because of his own recognition of Islamic fundamentalism to his secular rule. Many Islamic fundamentalists want to replace largely secular regimes in the Middle East with more radical ones. Qadhafi has held power since holding a coup in 1969.

The United States still considered Libya to be one of seven state sponsors of terrorism as of April 2003 (others include Cuba, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Syria and Sudan). However, the Department of State did note in a January 2002 report that there have been "no credible reports of Libyan involvement in terrorism since 1994" and also notes that "Libya has taken significant steps to mend its international image."

The Lockerbie Bombing

Libya long denied involvement with the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded on December 21, 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland and resulted in the deaths of 259 passengers and crew as well as 11 people on the ground. The United Nations imposed sanctions against Libya in 1992 and 1993.

Libya slowly began to accept responsibility for the bombing even before the September 11, 2001 attacks changed the international landscape. Libya surrendered two suspects in 1999, after which the United Nations suspended its sanctions; one of the two suspects turned over was convicted by a Scottish court in the Hague in 2001 and is now serving a life sentence.

In August 2003, Libya finally accepted responsibility for its officials' involvement and agreed to pay up to $10 million each to the families of the victims; the United Nations then permanently lifted the sanctions in September 2003.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell welcomed Libya's acceptance of responsibility in August 2003, but noted that the United States will continue to maintain sanctions against the country. "We remain deeply concerned about other aspects of Libya's behavior, including its poor human rights record and lack of democratic institutions; its destructive role in perpetuating regional conflicts in Africa; and, most troubling, its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and their related delivery system," Powell said in an August 15, 2003 statement.

Sources: Secretary of State Colin Powell's August 15, 2003 statement re Libya's acceptance of responsibility is on-line here. U.N. Security Council resolutions relating to sanctions against Libya - Resolutions 731 (1992), 748 (1992), 883 (1993), 1192 (1998), and 1506 (2003) - are available via the U.N. on-line here. The U.S. Department of State has its January 2002 background notes on Libya on-line here; the 2002 Patterns of Global Terrorism report's chapter on state sponsors of terrorism is on-line here.


Iran (last updated February 10, 2005) (back to top)

Amidst concern that Iran may be developing nuclear weapons, European countries have engaged with Iran in negotiations in recent months, managing in November 2004 to get Iran to agree to temporarily suspend nuclear-related activities but not yet managing to get Iran to stop its ambitions permanently. The United States has not been involved in these negotiations but has supported them; some reports also indicate that the United States may be taking steps for future military action against Iran.

The United States has long raised concerns about Iran's development of a civilian nuclear program and the possibility that Iran is using this program to develop nuclear weapons.

For example, President George W. Bush said in 2002 (on-line here) that Iran was part of an "axis of evil" because of its interest in weapons of mass destruction. The CIA reported in 2003 (on-line here) that the United States "remains convinced that Tehran has been pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program, in violation of its obligations as a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. To bolster its efforts to establish domestic nuclear fuel-cycle capabilities, Iran sought technology that can support fissile material production for a nuclear weapons program."

While the United States has not done much directly with Iran in recent years on the issue, the European Union has been involved in negotiations with Iran about its nuclear programs. In November 2004, Iran announced that it would temporarily suspend many enrichment-related and reprocessing activities voluntarily and then announced that it would allow international inspectors to place surveillance cameras on additional components that it initially wanted to keep using.

International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei said in a Nov. 29 statement (on-line here) that "[a]s a consequence, all measures necessary for the verification of Iran's suspension of enrichment related activities are now in place." The IAEA then passed a resolution welcoming Iran's suspension but reaffirming its concern that Iran's prior policy of "concealment up to October 2003 has resulted in many breaches of Iran's obligations" regarding nonproliferation.

President George W. Bush said on November 30 (on-line here) that Iranians "ought to terminate their nuclear weapons program. So I viewed yesterday's decision by the Iranians as a positive step, but it's certainly not a - it's certainly not the final step."

Negotiations as to Iran's further compliance continue; Iranian officials reportedly said in early 2005 that they might resume enrichment activities, depending on how further negotiations unfold.

Some reports have indicated that the United States is taking steps in advance of possible military action in the future. For example, New Yorker writer Seymour Hersh reported in January (on-line here) that the Bush administration's next target would be Iran and has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran since at least the summer of 2004. According to Hersh, such missions are intended to find at least three dozen nuclear, chemical and missile sites that could be destroyed by strikes and commando raids.

Besides concerns about nuclear activity, the United States has also long considered Iran to be the "most active" state sponsor of terrorism for its support of anti-Israeli activity (report on-line here). Similarly, the 9/11 Commission reported that that there was "strong evidence" that Iran facilitated the transit of some of the 9/11 hijackers between Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia in late 2000 and early 2001; it called in its final report for further investigation of possible ties between Iran and the September 11, 2001 attacks.

An oil-rich country with about 10 percent of the world's oil reserves, Iran first began developing a civilian nuclear-energy program in the 1970s, stopped the project after the 1979 Islamic revolution, and began reviving work on reactors in the 1990s. The United States took steps in the 1990s to prevent other countries such as Russia, China and the Ukraine from helping develop Iran's nuclear program.

Formerly known as Persia, Iran since 1979 has been an Islamic republic that is governed by secular and religious leaders whose duties often overlap. Secular leaders like President Mohammad Khatami are elected by popular vote to the presidency and legislative assembly, but religious leaders can reject laws passed by the legislature as against Islamic law and can reject candidates for public office as not sufficiently keeping with Islam.

Though Iran is an Islamic republic and is considered part of the Middle East, it stands apart from its Arabic and Muslim neighbors. The state's official religion is Shiite Islam, which is practiced by about 80 percent of Iranians but is the minority in the rest of the world; only 10 percent of Iranians follow Sunni Islam, which is considered more mainstream Islam. Iran's people and language are not Arabic; most of the population is Persian, and the language is Indo-European. In fact, Iran has had tense relations with its neighbors based on such differences and on Iran's policy of encouraging similar Islamic revolutions in other countries.

Historical Background

Formerly known as Persia, Iran was ruled from 1941 to 1979 by the Shah Mohamad Reza Pahlvai. Under the Shah's rule, the country underwent rapid economic modernization, fueled by Iran's vast petroleum reserves, the third-largest in the world. However, domestic turmoil swept the country in 1978 and the Shah finally left Iran in January 1979 to seek medical treatment, never to return. President Jimmy Carter initially let the Shah into the United States, a move which greatly damaged the United States' image to the Iranian citizenry.

With the Shah gone, exiled religious leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from France in February 1979. His return quickly tapped into widespread hatred towards the Shah's regime and towards the United States, which was seen as supporting that regime, and ultimately resulted in a revolution that swept a new government into power and inspired Islamist movements in other Middle Eastern countries. By December of that year, Iran had a new constitution that declared that Shi'a Islam was Iran's official religion, and that the country would be governed by secular and religious leaders whose duties would often overlap.

Under the constitution, secular leaders are elected by popular vote to the presidency and the legislative assembly, the Majles, and the president appoints all ministers. However, this secular rule is checked by religious leaders. The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, known as the Faqih, interprets how divine law should be applied and indirectly controls the appointment of half the members of the Council of Guardians, which can reject laws passed by the Majles as against Islamic law and which can reject candidates for public office as not sufficiently keeping with Islam.

Ayatollah Khomeini held supreme power from 1979 to his death in 1989. During this time, Iran moved dramatically away from the West, tried supporting similar revolutions in its Middle Eastern neighbors, and engaged in a long war with neighboring Iraq. These events, as well as Khomeini's casting of the United States as the Great Satan due to its involvement with the Shah's unpopular regime, continue to loom large in Iran's history and over the United States' popular perceptions of Iran today.

First, militant Iranian students occupied the American embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, beginning in December 1979 and lasting to the eve of Ronald Reagan's inauguration in 1981. The United States cut off diplomatic relations with Iran during the hostage crisis and still does not maintain relations (the Swiss and Pakistani governments handle some diplomatic contacts on behalf of the United States).

Second, Iran engaged in a long and fruitless war with its neighbor Iraq, which began when Iraq invaded Iran in 1980 over border disputes. Khomeini kept the war going as a way of solidifying his own internal power. The war finally ended in July 1988 when Iran agreed to UN Security Council Resolution 598, and a cease-fire was implemented on August 20, 1988. Iran has also strained relations with many of its other Middle Eastern neighbors for trying to spread its Islamic revolution to other countries.

Third, Iran has long been a sponsor of the terrorist organizations using the name Hizballah, "Party of God." This group of radical Shi'a Muslims is dedicated to establishing an Islamic government in Lebanon and driving the United States out of the Middle East. The group is credited with the 1983-84 bombings of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon and members were indicted in 2001 for the 1996 attacks on the Khobar Towers barracks in Saudi Arabia. As of 1999, the group is credited with the deaths of more than 270 Americans.

Finally, just months before his death, Khomeini condemned writer Salman Rushdie's book, "The Satanic Verses," and issued on February 14, 1989 a fatwa (a religious edict) ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie and his publishers for his alleged blasphemy. Muslims then did cause the deaths of several people involved in publishing Rushdie's book, but support for the fatwa dwindled over the years. In 1998, Iran's new president, Khatami, dissociated his government from the fatwa, a move that was then endorsed by the Faqih, Ayatollah Khameini. Nevertheless, the fatwa still remains in force and a $2.9 million bounty offered by a private foundation on Rushdie's life remains.

As for Iranians' occasional references to the United States as the Great Satan, that denouncement should be seen in context. While Western civilization sees the term as one likening the United States to the supreme embodiment of evil, anthropologist William Beeman has argued that Iranians see it more as representing a corrupter or tempter, one that lures Islamic civilization away from its spiritual core towards more materialistic ends and towards sin and destruction. The Ayatollah Khomeini first used the term in the Revolution, at a time just after the departure of the hated Shah, who did receive support from the United States in his efforts to modernize the country rapidly. The term is still used sometimes, mostly by conservative Iranians in demonstrations, but has lost much of its fervor with Iran's own slow Westernization.

Sources: The State Department has a profile of Iran on-line here. A Department of Energy report on Iran's energy capacities is on-line here. The State Department has resources on Iran on-line, such as a background note, a human rights practices report, and an international religious freedom report. Human Rights Watch also has reports on Iran on-line here. Elaine Sciolino, Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran (The Free Press, 2000). William O. Beeman, Images of the Great Satan, in Religion and Politics in Iran (edited by Nikki Keddie, Yale University Press, 1983). A June 21, 2001 press release announcing an indictment in the Khobar Towers incident is on-line here. The State Department's Patterns of Global Terrorism reports for 2000 and 2001 are on-line here. The CIA's January 2002 report to Congress on the acquisition of technology relating to weapons of mass destruction and advanced conventional munitions is on-line here.


Iran: Nuclear Weapons and the Plants near Beshehr (last updated April 29, 2002) (back to top)

According to reports by the United States, Iran is "one of the most active countries" seeking to develop weapons of mass destruction technology. Because of its efforts along these lines, the United States has raised concerns for several years over Iran's efforts to develop a civilian nuclear energy program and has tried to limit Russia's support for such efforts. Russia agreed in 1995 to finish building a light-water nuclear reactor in southern Iran but then agreed after a summit meeting with the United States not to build additional infrastructure and to implement safeguards designed to prevent Iran's acquiring of fissile material.

Iran has one of the world's largest oil reserves and produces most of its electricity through such fossil fuels. Accordingly, the United States has questioned why Iran is seeking to develop a civilian nuclear program, raising concerns that Iran's ultimate goals are to develop infrastructure and expertise that could be diverted to weapons production and to produce the fissile material that could be used in such weapons. The United States has pressured other countries into halting efforts to help Iran develop its nuclear program, and enacted in 2000 a law imposing sanctions on those supporting such efforts.

It is unclear how fast Iran's efforts to develop a nuclear weapon are going. A report by the American Jewish Committee, which was presented at a Senate hearing in October 2000, noted that U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry and Israel Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin estimated in 1995 that Iran would need 7 to 15 years to acquire nuclear weapons capability, which would mean 2002 to 2010, though the AJC report noted that "there is little public evidence to suggest that they have made more than limited progress (since 1995). This implies that they still might require seven to fifteen years to produce a weapon."

Iran first began developing a civilian nuclear energy program in the 1970s, during the Shah's regime. The German contractor Siemens began construction of two reactors near Bushehr in 1974, but Iran stopped the project after the 1979 Islamic revolution, with the Ayatollah Khomeini calling it "anti-Islamic." The reactors were then damaged during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

Despite Khomeini's earlier criticism, Iran began seeking ways in the early 1990s to complete construction of the reactors. In 1995, Russia agreed to finish the construction for about $1 billion but quickly dropped its additional plans to build a centrifuge plant that would enable Iran to enrich uranium for use as an energy source. President Boris Yeltsin made this reversal after a May 1995 summit meeting in which U.S. President Bill Clinton raised concerns that such additional infrastructure would enable Iran to develop the highly-enriched uranium necessary for an effective nuclear weapon.

Russia's agreement with Iran calls for spent fuel rods to be shipped back to Russia for reprocessing so that any fissile material cannot be taken and converted into weapons-grade material. Russia has also maintained that the light-water reactors cannot be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium.

Nonetheless, the United States still opposes the project as affording Iran access to Russia's troubled nuclear industry and has continued to negotiate with Russia in order to reduce the ties between the two countries' nuclear programs. The United States has also halted Iran's efforts to seek help from other countries. China terminated work on a uranium conversion facility in 1997, and the Ukraine announced in 1998 that it would not sell turbines to Iran for use in the Bushehr reactors. The United States has also tried to help Russian and international efforts to deal with the problem of unemployed Russian nuclear scientists, who might be courted by Iranian efforts (for more on the Russian nuclear situation, go here).

In her 2000 book Persian Mirrors, reporter Elaince Sciolo mentions her own visit to the Beshehr plants. "For the Iranians, the enormous steel and concrete structures represent what might have been and what might be, a symbol of their legal right to develop nuclear energy and of their potential to become a great regional power. For the Americans, they represent a means for Iran to gain the expertise that could be used in a nuclear weapons program," she wrote.

"I visited the site in 1995 and it struck me quite differently: as an Iranian Chernobyl in the making."

Sources: The Federation of American Scientists has a page on the Bushehr plants here. A subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations held an October 5, 2000 hearing on "Iranian Weapons Programs: The Russian Connection." Greg J. Gerardi and Maryam Aharinejad, An Assessment of Iran's Nuclear Facilities, The Nonproliferation Review, Spring-Summer 1995. Michael R. Gordon, Russia to offer deal to end Iran nuclear aid, New York Times, March 17, 1999. Elaine Sciolino, Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran (The Free Press, 2000). The CIA's January 2002 report to Congress on the acquisition of technology relating to weapons of mass destruction and advanced conventional munitions is on-line here.


Arms Sales to the Middle East (last updated April 7, 2002) (back to top)

The United States sells arms to many countries in the Middle East, but Saudi Arabia is by far the biggest customer of U.S. arms both in the region and in the world. From FY 1991 to 2000, Saudi Arabia bought about $30 billion worth of military arms, including aircraft, defense weaponry such as Patriot and Hawk missiles, and armored vehicles. Egypt and Israel were a distant second and third, purchasing about $10 and 8 billion worth of arms each over that same period.

Sources: The Department of Defense's Defense Security Cooperation Agency, Facts Book 2000, is on-line here and a summary is on-line here.

  

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