Who’s isolating whom?

Who’s isolating whom?

Despite their fear of Iran and of Islamist movements at home, most Arab regimes seem loth to co-operate wholeheartedly with America in the region

YOU can’t have it both ways, is what America’s secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, is telling Arab audiences during a tour of friendly capitals to rally sagging support for American policy in the Middle East. You can’t preach violence and expect international aid, she says of Hamas, the Islamist party that recently swept Palestinian elections. No one will respect you if you signal reform but act repressively, she advises Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak. You can’t say in private that you fear Iran going nuclear but do nothing to stop it happening, she will tell Gulf leaders.

Yet Ms Rice is hearing much the same refrain in response. America cannot preach democracy in Palestine, then chastise the winners, just as it cannot demand concessions from Hamas without Israel budging, too. It cannot bully dictatorial allies to reform, then always expect their support. And America cannot single out Iran on the nuclear issue, while ignoring Israel’s nearby arsenal. It’s like Dick Cheney hunting quail but shooting his friend instead, joked a Saudi columnist.

Stark as they are, differences between America and allied Arab governments, across the range of issues on Ms Rice’s agenda, mask a degree of convergence. Egypt, for example, says it agrees that Hamas should meet such conditions as accepting previous Palestinian peace commitments, recognising Israel’s right to exist and renouncing resort to violence. Egypt’s government, stunned by the strength of the Muslim Brotherhood in recent national elections, dearly wishes to thwart the political advance of closely related Islamist groups such as Hamas.

What Egyptian officials fear is that too much pressure, too soon, could drive Hamas into further extremism. Instead of making threats, say the Egyptians, outsiders should bolster Palestinian institutions that are not run by Hamas, such as the presidency of Mahmoud Abbas, and give Hamas itself time to sort out a more practical, less ideology-bound position. “I’m sure Hamas will develop, will evolve,” Egypt’s foreign minister, Ahmed Abul Gheit, said at a joint conference with Ms Rice, “We should not prejudge the issue.”

As for internal reform, the signs are that it is America that is muting its demands. Last time Ms Rice was in Cairo, in June, she appealed for Egypt to lead the region in democratisation. Since then, Egypt has held presidential and parliamentary elections, but both were marred by massive fiddling. In recent weeks, Egypt has jailed a candidate who challenged Mr Mubarak for the presidency, summarily postponed local elections due in April, mounted pressure on judges who protested against vote-rigging under the country’s notorious emergency laws. During the elections some 1,500 Muslim Brothers were arrested; most were set free quite soon, but a score or so remain behind bars.

The Bush administration has responded by suspending talks on a bilateral free-trade agreement. Yet in Cairo Ms Rice contented herself with expressing disappointment at “setbacks” to reform, which she said fell within a context of continuing progress and friendly dialogue. Despite signs that America’s western allies are inching towards talks with the Brothers, the Bush team remains wary of offending Mr Mubarak’s regime by courting the rising party, which has yet to be made legal. The underlying signal, it seems, is that the Bush administration deems the regional situation too precarious, in the short run, for the kind of hasty experimentation that might weaken occasionally useful friends such as Mr Mubarak.

On the issue of Iranian nuclear power, the two sides appear to have agreed to disagree. Arab countries will not actively support Iran, a country that all regional governments, bar Iranian-allied Syria, regard as meddlesome and dangerous. Most will probably go along with multilateral actions, through the UN or its agencies, that seek to curb Iran’s ambitions. Yet even Saudi Arabia, a country that has skirmished militarily with Iran in the past and sees itself as a Sunni rival to Shia Iran’s pretensions of Islamic leadership, says bluntly it will not openly challenge Iran.

Yet while most Arab governments may achieve fudges on such issues with the Bush administration, the public mood across the region continues to head towards polarisation. America’s unpopularity seems only to grow as Iraq remains chaotic, and now the cartoon controversy has tainted the West’s relatively “good cop”, Europe, with a similar perceived animosity towards Arabs and Muslims. Bolstered by its electoral performance and sensing a surge of pan-Islamic feeling, the Muslim Brotherhood has laid down a challenge by announcing a campaign to secure donations from Muslims around the world to replace western aid to Palestinians.

That call was echoed in Iran, where Hamas’s most telegenic leader, Khaled Mishal, condemned financial “blackmail” this week, declaring that funds from Arab and Muslim countries would make western aid redundant. Iran’s president chipped in, suggesting helpfully that “Since the divine treasures are infinite, you should not worry about financial issues.”

So far, no significant substitute cash has made its way to Hamas. But should such cash start to flow, Arab governments would find it hard to stand in the way. Obviously, an even starker Muslim-western division over the eternally-divisive Palestinian issue could muck up other parts of America’s regional agenda. This could, if not handled with care, make Mr Bush’s administration look more isolated than Iran and its fellow rejectionists.