Much ado about not much

Thomas Erdbrink has an article in The New York Times about Iran:

For Iranians, whose country’s borders have shrunk in the past two hundred years, after wars and unfavorable deals by corrupt shahs, territorial issues are a delicate matter. So a renewed claim by the United Arab Emirates to the tiny island of Abu Musa in the Persian Gulf has touched a raw nerve. But many here say that may just be the point.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his reactionary agenda tend to be unpopular among the urban middle classes, but he is enjoying a rare surge of support even in those inhospitable quarters in the growing dispute with Iran’s Persian Gulf neighbors— one that he touched off by making a surprise visit to the island last month (photo), the first by an Iranian president.
Other Iranian politicians have rushed to embrace the controversy, aware of how it is playing at home. A parliamentary delegation made a high-profile visit to the island recently to observe Iran’s National Day of the Persian Gulf, normally a low-key event, which seems bound to further inflame the issue. Other legislators have called for the establishment of a Persian Gulf province, and want the Tehran street that the United Arab Emirates embassy is on renamed Abu Musa.
For many Iranians, the dispute over Abu Musa, a four-square-mile spit of sand with about two thousand inhabitants, surrounded by pristine blue waters, arouses strong nationalistic feelings at a time of general hopelessness over the devastating impact of a grinding economy, foreign sanctions and a feeling of unprecedented isolation. To that extent, it mirrors Iran’s nuclear program, which has also whipped up nationalistic emotions that Ahmadinejad has used to build support for the government.
“We Iranians continuously fight and disagree, like a husband and wife during a nasty divorce,” Somaye Allahdad, 35, a Tehran homemaker who does not always agree with Ahmadinejad’s policies, said over a family lunch of traditional lamb kebab and sabzi, a sort of herbal stew. “But when someone tries to take away our child, we team up and face the threat.”
Ahmadinejad’s visit to Abu Musa, where he spoke to an audience of sun-tanned Iranian fishermen, prompted angry reactions from Arab states on the western shore of the Persian Gulf, which rejected his assertion that the island is occupied by Iran. That, too, may have been part of the plan, some Iranians believe.
“Be sure that Ahmadinejad saw those angry Arab reactions coming,” said Allahdad’s aunt, who would not give her name. “He needs distraction from his internal problems.”
If that was the plan, it seems to be working. Recently, the Facebook page of the Saudi leader, King Abdullah, was closed after tens of thousands of Iranians had left the slogan “Persian Gulf forever” in the comments section of his latest post.
At Allahdad’s lunch, several relatives, none of whom had voted for the president, debated loudly over his intentions, the continuing scourge of inflation and the effects of sanctions imposed by the West because of Iran’s nuclear program. But all concluded that Ahmadinejad had done the right thing by visiting Abu Musa.
Allahdad spoke of her father, who died on the front lines during the eight-year war with Iraq when she was a young girl in 1981. “We defended every inch of our nation with our lives, and now we should give the Arabs our island? Over my dead body,” she said.
Tensions in the Persian Gulf have always run high but, with Iran jockeying for the position of regional power and recent weapons purchases by Saudi Arabia and the emirates worth more than a hundred billion dollars, the dispute over the island takes on added significance.
According to a 1971 memorandum of understanding between Iran and the Emirate of Sharjah, the island and its energy resources are to be divided between the two. By agreeing to the pact, the tiny emirate prevented an invasion by Iran, which two days earlier had taken two other disputed islands, Greater and Lesser Tunb, which were even smaller and uninhabited.
Iran has stoutly defended its actions, saying all three islands were Iranian territory until Britain occupied them in 1908. The United Arab Emirates say most of the inhabitants of Abu Musa have been Arab for centuries. In 1980, the emirates took their claim to the United Nations Security Council, which rejected it. Most of the island’s infrastructure, like roads and schools, including a university, have been built by Iran, and Abu Musa’s governor is Iranian.
One Iranian analyst sympathetic to the government said the ownership issue had surfaced now as part of the Western campaign to pressure Iran over its nuclear program, which it says is peaceful but the West suspects is a cover for developing weapons.
“The emirates are not acting independently in this matter,” said the analyst, Sadollah Zarei, 55, a columnist for the hard-line state Kayhan newspaper. “Bigger powers are behind this.” He said the West was trying to raise the pressure on Tehran ahead of the second round of nuclear talks between Iran and world powers, scheduled for 23 May. “By driving up tensions in the Persian Gulf, the US and their allies are trying to send a message to Iran: back down, or face pressure on other fronts,” Zarei said.
Whatever the reason for the resurfacing of the Abu Musa claims, many here agree the Iranian collective psyche can be wounded by even the smallest verbal threat to the nation’s territorial integrity. History has not smiled on Iran, which lost territory in the Caucasus, Baluchistan, Afghanistan, and Bahrain after wars with Russia and highly unfavorable land sales by a succession of shahs, among other things. “In the past two hundred years, our territory has been taken from us bit by bit,” said Mohammad Esmael Heydari, 68, a retired journalist. He also pointed out that the Soviet Union and Britain invaded Iran during World War Two. “Such incidents are not quickly forgotten here,” he said. “We do not want to lose any more territory. No more.”
While the Persian Gulf is a handy motive for stirring up nationalist support, there is also an ethnic element to the appeal, as Allahdad explained after lunch. “These Arabs pretend as if they rule the region, but they have no history, and no independence, like Iran,” she said. “They have no right to look down upon us.” For three years, Allahdad and her family lived on the Iranian island of Kish, where her husband was working. Allahdad confided that, in all that time, she had never made an effort to visit Abu Musa, even though it was quite near. There was no point, she said, because she had been told it was a barren place where there was nothing to do. “I don’t need to go there,” she said. “All that matters is that it is Iranian.”

Rico says we need to stay out of this one; they will go to war over nothing on their own...