Morocco's Spat With Iran Over Bahrain

In early February, former Iranian parliament speaker Ali Akbar Nateq Noori was quoted in Arab media as saying that Bahrain was an Iranian province--the 14th, to be specific--until 1970. It shouldn't have mattered much. But Noori is also the Inspector General in the office of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The remark carried weight (and not just in Bahrain: the tiny Gulf country is the home port to the American Fifth Fleet), especially since it wasn't the first time that a Khamenei partisan was making the very same claim. Two years ago, Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of the hard-line, state-approved Iranian newspaper, "Kayhan," and a Khamenei adviser, made the very same claim in an editorial. He was, of course, speaking for Khamenei on an extremely sensitive subject in Bahrain, a tiny country ruled by a Sunni Muslim monarchy but peopled by a Shiite majority. Iran styles itself the heart and soul of Shiitism. It makes no secret of its desires to export its "Revolution."

A row ensued between Bahrain and Iran. Iran's foreign minister had to cross the Persian Gulf to assure Bahrain that Iran and Bahrain "respect each other's sovereignty and territorial integrity."

The two countries have followed an identical script this time around. Bahrain was supremely insulted by Ali Noori's remarks, and on Feb. 18 halted negotiating with Iran over a natural-gas importation deal. A week later, the Bahraini foreign minister, Sheikh Khaled bin Ahmad Al-Khalifa, was crossing the Persian Gulf in the other direction to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and deliver a "good will letter" from the king of Bahrain. Ahmadinejad, in turn, claimed that "[t]his friendship and closeness will not leave any opportunity for the mischief of evil people." (Was Ahmadinejad somehow suggesting that Khamenei's acolytes are "evil people"?)

The row should have been over. But today, Morocco announced that it was cutting ties with Iran in part over the "14th province" remark. Morocco also claims Iran is trying to spread Shiite Islam in Morocco--an odd claim, considering that out of 34 million Moroccans, 33.5 million are Sunni Muslim, and the rest are Christian, with a smattering of Jews. That Shiites are more rare than Jews in Morocco tells you something about the state's religious demographics.

Still, Morocco is worried. Iran's "inadmissible attitude, solely directed towards Morocco" was a sign of its desire to "alter the religious fundamentals of the kingdom, to attack the roots of the Moroccan people's ancestral identity," a diplomatic source told Agence France Press.

The Arab world and the Persian world are replaying millennia-old rivalries.