MIDDLE EAST: Preserving the Oil Flow

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Arab officials are virtually unanimous in arguing that what they see as Israeli annexationism is not just a major or central problem—it is all pervasive. Until the U.S. is perceived to be influencing Israel toward eventual withdrawal from the West Bank, it will be unable to have much influence on the gulf states. Many U.S. experts on the Middle East, both in the area and in Washington, agree with that gloomy assessment. "Our stock out here is at an alltime low," concludes an American diplomat in the region.

With their immense wealth and their fixation on a different enemy from the one Washington worries about, the gulf states are simply not very amenable to U.S. leverage.

The stagnation of the Camp David process has been a great boon to Soviet interests in the area. By making the most of its longstanding support for the Palestinian cause against the U.S., Israel and Egypt, the U.S.S.R. has been able to weather quickly and painlessly the initial storm of protest within the Arab world over the invasion of Afghanistan. As Oman's Abdul Aziz al Rowass observes sadly, "The Arab-Israeli problem is the gate through which the Soviet Union entered our region, and that gate won't be closed until the problem is solved."

His government, for one, still distinguishes between the issues of gulf security and Arab-Israeli peace, cooperating with Washington on the former while criticizing it on the latter. But for the moment Oman is the only country in the gulf willing to make—and act on— that distinction. It may not be able to do so forever.

—By Strobe Talbott