What is the diplomatic protocol for responding to an impetuous and patronising tweet, like that sent out on Wednesday evening by the foreign minister of Iran? After Mohammed Javad Zarif wrote an op-ed for The New York Times in which he painted Iran as the perennial victim in the Middle East, he received extensive mocking on social media. That, perhaps, is unsurprising, given some of the startling claims: the foreign minister of the country that has destabilised four Arab countries had the temerity to write, “Iran has no desire to escalate tension in the region”. Mr Zarif clearly has a career in satire.
The reply from the UAE’s Foreign Minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, was both entertaining and relevant. “I thought the writer to be the foreign minister of a Scandinavian country,” he quipped. Certainly, someone unfamiliar with the Middle East would have thought the op-ed was penned by a party uninvolved in the wars of the region – as opposed to the primary firestarter.
Still, the worst was yet to come. Mr Zarif – a representative, let’s not forget, of a nation of nearly 80 million people, many with extensive links of family, business and friendship to countries of the Arab world and especially the Gulf – replied: “Diplomacy is the domain of the mature; not arrogant nouveau-riche.”
Ah, the old criticism. Iran has long thought of itself as the great power of the Gulf, despite the fact that its heydays are long behind it. Few countries face such a disconnect between their aggrandised self-image and the reality of their country. The political, cultural and military power of the Gulf has passed to the Arab states.
Worse, it is the Gulf states that have had to use their riches to clean up the mess of the Iranians. Look at Iran’s friends: the butcher of Damascus, starving and bombing his people. The sectarian politicians of Iraq. The untrustworthy Houthis of Yemen. These are the best alliances of Iran’s “mature” diplomacy?
Yet the tragedy of such silly diplomacy belongs to the Iranian people themselves. That the heirs to such a glorious civilisation should find themselves ruled by such leaders is a tragedy. Iranians rightly look across the Arabian Gulf with envious eyes: the rule of law, the chance of building a decent career, a cosmopolitan civilisation without the fear of the secret police. This is what the Gulf states have built on this side of the water. What have Mr Zarif and his comrades built on theirs?
