Page 486 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

Gazelles and Lions 483

Al the heart of American policy in the Gulf, so Sisco affirmed, lay the
conviction that ‘the major burden for assuring security in the region must be
borne by the gulf states themselves and in particular by the major nations of the
region, Iran and Saudi Arabia’. He was pained by accusations that the United

States was primarily motivated in its adherence to this conviction by the desire
to sell large quantities of arms to these states. ‘The impression that our military
relationships with the gulf nations have dominated all other aspects of our
relations is as erroneous as it seems to be persistent.’ All that the United States

was doing was to help Saudi Arabia and Persia to satisfy their essential
defensive requirements. The shah, for example, although he had made sub­
stantial purchases of arms, had kept the Persian armed forces ‘relatively small
in number (about 350,000)’ - that is, although Sisco never made the compari­

son, about as ‘small’ as Britain’s. Nor, in Sisco’s opinion, had the shah’s
expenditure upon weapons affected

the impressive strides which the government has made in economic development and in

improving the welfare of its people. Iran’s domestic investment program is more than
twice what it spends on defense.... A substantial portion is for industrial growth, but
S19 billion is earmarked for housing, free education, urban and rural development, and
a massive increase in medical facilities.

If this were so, then Sisco must have been sorely disappointed by the mis­
guided lack of appreciation shown by the Persian people in the closing months
of 1978.
Nowhere in Sisco’s disquisition on the Gulf was there the slightest sugges­

tion that the headlong rush of rhe local states, led by Persia and Saudi Arabia,
to acquire vast quantities of modern arms was highly revelatory of the kind of
countries they were. Whether he saw the connexion or whether he deemed it
politic to ignore it (since it hardly accorded with the case he was at pains to

make for their progress) is uncertain. It is also significant, for the arms trade
was at the very centre of the United States government’s relations with these
countries, and the State Department was being a good deal less than candid in
accounting for the transactions which were then taking place. In his testimony
efore the House committee Sisco conveyed the impression that requests from

the Gulf states for arms and related equipment and services were carefully
scrutinized and responded to according to the State Department’s judgement
0 the merits of each application. Yet within the next twelve months the scandal
0 the irresponsible sale of American arms abroad, in the Middle East

as elsewhere, had reached such proportions that the Congress passed the
fms Export Control Act which was signed into law on 30 June 1976. The
ac* little, however, to break down the wall of equivocation behind

lc the Departments of State and Defence strove to conceal the fact that
transactions with Persia and Saudi Arabia had got completely out
01 hand.