The Shah and the King

The Persian Gulf is an important neighborhood in today's world. Britain is planning to complete its withdrawal from the island of Bahrain and the Tru-cial States along the Gulf in 1971, and so the frail but oil-rich little sheikdoms provide a tempting target. Supporters of Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser seek to dominate the desert land; the Russians at present need no oil, but would like to deny the oil to the West. Soviet ships now ply the Indian Ocean, and early this year nosed into the Persian Gulf on courtesy visits. With such forces on the prowl, it is no time for disputes among Persian Gulf neighbors; yet until last week Iran and Saudi Arabia were embroiled in a troublesome feud.

Fear of Nasser's ambitions helped drive Iran and Saudi Arabia together, and they both supplied the royalists in the Yemen civil war against the Nasser-supported Republicans. Last February, however, Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, the 49-year-old Shah of Iran, abruptly canceled a state visit to Saudi Arabia, even though the capital city of Riyadh was already bedecked with welcoming banners. The Shah was irate because King Feisal was playing host to the Sheik of Bahrain Island, the British dependency just off the coast of Saudi Arabia that has long been claimed by Iran. Even worse, Feisal was said to have promised to build a twelve-mile bridge to Bahrain and vowed to defend the is land "under any circumstances."

Disclaimed Bridge. The strife extended to the waters of the Gulf that separates the two countries. Iran refused to ratify a 1965 agreement dividing the Gulf into Saudi and Iranian zones, and Arabian newspapers blossomed with maps labeling it the "Arabian Gulf." When an Aramco drilling team, with Saudi approval, began working in the same waters as the Iranian concessionaire, a joint venture by Iranians and Standard Oil of Indiana, one of the Shah's gunboats arrested the oilmen.

Washington was sufficiently alarmed to rush White House Adviser Eugene Rostow to Teheran in an unpublicized attempt to cool the angry Shah. Later, King Hassan of Morocco, on visits to Teheran and Riyadh, acted as a conciliator. Reassured about each other's intentions, the Shah and King Feisal began to exchange delegations. Feisal disclaimed any bridge building to Bahrain, and the Shah glossed over the fracas.

With that, the banners finally went back up on the lampposts in Riyadh, and the Shah dined with Feisal in the gleaming marble hall--half the length of a football field--in Almazar Palace.

Rising, Feisal said: "We welcome and receive you as a great and wise king." In a courtly return, the Shah said that in Feisal's presence "I have a feeling of holiness, of getting closer to God." With the compliments out of the way, the Shah devoted special attention during the next few days to the Moslem tie that binds the Aryans of Iran, most of whom are members of the Shi'a sect, to the Arabs of the Sunni sect, who inhabit Saudi Arabia. The Shah prayed at the Prophet's mosque in the holy city of Medina, and in Mecca he performed the umra, the little pilgrimage, walking seven times around the Kaaba, toward which Moslems turn when they pray.

Into the Vacuum. Before he returned home last week, the Shah, in his ambitious new role as benevolent big brother to Saudi Arabia and the diverse sheikdoms along the Gulf, promised Saudi Arabia a new medical school, complete with professors. He brought along a trade pact that will supply arid Arabia with fresh meat, vegetables and eggs. And he offered the Saudi airline a share of the lucrative annual hadj flights, the trips to Mecca by devout pilgrims from Iran.

More significantly, the two monarchs tacitly agreed to put aside the Bahrain dispute, for the time being at least, and moved on to the more urgent problem of how to defend the Persian Gulf.

Too divided and weak to defend them selves, the sheikdoms will be wide open to subversion when the British depart unless the Shah and Feisal fill the vacuum. No agreement was reached at Riyadh on joint defense measures. But, taking no chances, Iran pushed ahead with plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on arms and development in the region. The Iranians are adding three minesweepers to the nine minesweepers and 125 patrol boats already on duty in the Gulf. The first two squadrons of U.S.-built Phantom jets have arrived at the southern Iranian air base of Vahdati, only 20 minutes' reach from the heart of the Gulf.

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