Bibi sees only threats, never openings

Two articles and two maps on the role Iran is playing in the region – and whether Netanyahu is being paranoid or realistic. Al Monitor and Wall Street Journal.

The Bab el-Mandeb strait in this oil pipeline map from Business Insider is the ‘narrowest point’ between the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

Mistrust blinds Netanyahu to regional openings

The dangers Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu perceives in the region obstruct his ability to see opportunities favourable to Israel.

By Akiva Eldar, trans. Ruti Sinai, Al Monitor / Israel Pulse
April 01, 2015

On March 27, panellists on Israeli TV Channel 2 Television News debated the emerging agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme and the war in Yemen between the Sunni coalition and Tehran loyalists. “Imagine that these Iranian moves were to happen with Iran holding a bomb,” defence analyst Roni Daniel commented. “Under a nuclear umbrella, no one would dare touch them, talk to them.”

What should one gather from Daniel’s apocalyptic scenario? Should one welcome a nuclear agreement that pushes into the distance, if not prevents, an Iranian doomsday weapon advantage? Perhaps the confrontation in the Gulf illustrates the danger of a “bad nuclear deal” with Iran, as its critics argue.

Do Iran’s imperialistic ambitions strengthen the imperative of stopping its nuclear programme, tightening supervision of its nuclear facilities and gradually replacing the sanctions sticks with economic carrots, or is it better to derail the nuclear negotiations, give up on inspections and hope that adherence to the sanctions regime will encourage Iran to surrender? All this assuming, of course, that President Barack Obama and the other leaders of the six world powers are unwilling to become embroiled in a new Middle East war. One should also keep in mind that most of the experts agree that in the best case, military action will only delay the Iranian nuclear programme by two years. One can also assume that the powers’ negotiators in Lausanne aspire to leave there with a completed agreement, but the Iranian representatives cannot go home with a document of seeming to surrender to Israeli demands.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a simple response to these complex questions. He draws a straight line between the confrontation in Yemen and the advanced-stage negotiations in Lausanne and impending “dangerous agreement” between Iran and the six world powers. At the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting March 29, Netanyahu said, “Even as meetings proceed on this dangerous agreement, Iran’s proxies in Yemen are overrunning large sections of that country and are attempting to seize control of the strategic Bab el-Mandeb straits, which would affect the naval balance and the global oil supply.” Too true.

Iran aspires to take control of the strait, which serves as an important Israeli trade route, but Netanyahu’s description only presents the threat posed by an agreement with Iran and the dark side of its expansion in the region. Meanwhile, Yoel Guzansky of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University suggests, along with the requisite concerns, some positive aspects of these recent developments. Speaking with Al-Monitor, Guzansky said Israelis should be pleased that an Arab-Muslim front, which includes Pakistan and Turkey, is doing Israel’s work vis-a-vis Iran and its offshoots.

“The coalition that Saudi Arabia formed protects our southern flank and could also act against Iranian subversion in Syria and Lebanon,” said Guzansky, a former coordinator of Iranian nuclear issues at the National Security Council. The senior researcher believes that the nuclear agreement is designed, first and foremost, to block Iran’s expansion efforts. In Guzansky’s opinion, Obama understands the implications of a nuclear Iran for the regional power balance and assumes that a deal with Iran will broaden the United States’ flexibility and scope in confronting the Iranians.

Perspectives on the changes and crises in the Middle East are in the eye of the Israeli beholder. Some Israeli decision makers identify opportunities alongside the threats. Others only see threats. Some adapt their views to political exigencies. These differences were also reflected in Israel’s reactions to the Arab Spring.

Former President Shimon Peres wrote in an April 2011 opinion piece in The Guardian, “Israel welcomes the wind of change, and sees a window of opportunity.” Dan Meridor, former minister of intelligence affairs, said in a December 2011 interview in the same context, “In every development, one must prepare for the worst scenario, but also to seek opportunities in the changes which the Arab world is undergoing. For example, there are currently distinct mutual interests between ourselves, Egypt and Turkey against Iran’s nuclearization, and therefore opportunities for alliances are also at hand.”

On the other hand, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman claimed following the revolution in Egypt, “The Egyptian issue is of far more concern than the Iranian one. We cannot rule out that after a new ruler is chosen, Egypt will violate the peace agreement in a substantial way and deploy significant forces in the Sinai.” In a letter to Netanyahu leaked to the media, Liberman proposed re-establishing the southern army command that was dismantled after the 1979 peace agreement with Egypt.

In a November 2011 speech targeting the Israeli left, Netanyahu declared that the Arab world “is not advancing toward progress, but rather going backward.” He boasted that his predictions had come true and that the Arab Spring had evolved into an “anti-Western, anti-liberal, anti-Israel and anti-democratic Islamist wave.” His inevitable conclusion asserted, “This is obviously not the time to listen to wishful thinking. I chose to adapt our policies to reality.”

The right wing espouses an approach described almost 20 years ago by the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in these words: “The sea is the same sea, and the Arabs are the same Arabs.” President George H.W. Bush saw the coalition against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War and its victory as an opportunity to enlist its support for a peace agreement between Israel and its neighbours. Shamir went to the 1991 Madrid peace conference only reluctantly and refused to believe in the Arabs’ willingness to change their attitude toward Israel. That same approach — mistrust of Arabs, leftists and US Democratic presidents — has always characterized Netanyahu’s attitude toward the Oslo Accord, the Arab Peace Initiative and the Arab Spring. The dangers he sees lurking in every corner, and there are many, obstruct his seeing the opportunities offered by crises, and there are many of those as well.

Saudis Warm to Muslim Brotherhood, Seeking Sunni Unity on Yemen

Shi’ite nemesis Iran seen as greater threat to kingdom

By Yaroslav Trofimov, Wall Street Journal
April 02, 2015

Ever since the Arab Spring began four years ago, Saudi Arabia waged a two-front campaign against its Shiite nemesis Iran, and against the Sunni Islamists—led by the Muslim Brotherhood—whose rise across the region had challenged the kingdom’s legitimacy.

The unexpectedly broad Sunni coalition that Saudi Arabia’s new King Salman managed to assemble last week against pro-Iranian Houthi forces in Yemen heralds the end of this balancing act.

In this new pivot, the Saudis decided that Iranian expansionism has turned the kingdom’s regional fight with the Brotherhood into an unaffordable distraction—especially now that the Brotherhood appears too feeble to imperil the monarchy and its allies. Contributing to this shift is Riyadh’s existential fear of Iranian-fostered unrest within the kingdom’s own Shiite minority.

“The Yemen issue is very central for the Saudis. They fear that if there is a government in line with Iranian foreign policy there, it may give a strong voice for the Shiites inside Saudi Arabia,” said Khalid Almezaini, coordinator of the Gulf studies program at Qatar University.

“The Houthis have military capabilities, weapons, and represent a serious threat. The Muslim Brotherhood is much weaker, and the Saudis now are in a much better position to control the brothers wherever they are,” he added.

The Saudi shift doesn’t mean the end of the rift over the role of political Islam that divided the Middle East’s Sunni powers ever since Egypt’s then military chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi ousted President Mohammed Morsi, a Brotherhood leader, in 2013.

Since then, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates portrayed the Brotherhood—which professes nonviolence and advocates elections—as a terrorist group akin to al Qaeda and Islamic State, or ISIS.

By moving from the region’s anti-Brotherhood vanguard closer to the middle ground, Saudi Arabia has managed to rally all the Sunni countries that matter around its Yemen campaign—from Turkey, Mr. Morsi’s key backer, and maverick Qatar to Mr. Sisi, now Egypt’s president, and the staunchly anti-Islamist U.A.E.

While Turkey isn’t participating in the actual fighting, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan endorsed the Saudi campaign and in recent days adopted much harsher language against Iran—something he had avoided until now. By contrast, Oman, the only Gulf monarchy not ruled by a Sunni, is staying away from the Yemen intervention.

“The Sunni parties now are more worried about Iran, and they have been able to close ranks,” said Shadi Hamid, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of a book on the Brotherhood.

Saudi officials often stress the supposed continuity between King Salman and his predecessor King Abdullah, who died in January. But on the issue of how to deal with the Brotherhood, their differences have become increasingly clear.

“In the last couple of years, Saudi officials and media used Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS almost interchangeably,” said Fahad Nazer, a Saudi analyst at JTG Inc., an intelligence contractor in Virginia, and a former staffer at the Saudi embassy in Washington. “Now, there is change coming for sure.”

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al Faisal signaled this change by telling Saudi newspaper Al Jazirah in February: “We don’t have any problem with the Muslim Brotherhood.” He said the kingdom is opposed only to a “small segment affiliated with the group.”

Eager for a lifeline after a vicious crackdown in its Egyptian cradle and setbacks elsewhere in the region, the Muslim Brotherhood has reciprocated to that opening. Following Saudi airstrikes in Yemen last week, Brotherhood leaders throughout the Middle East have by and large cautiously sided with Riyadh on the controversial intervention.

“We hope that the recent military alliance, led by Saudi Arabia, reflects a new stance of the new administration of the kingdom to support the will of the people in Yemen and elsewhere,” said Amr Darrag, head of the political bureau of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in exile who served as minister of planning and international cooperation under President Morsi. “I support any action that would restore democracy in Yemen and ensure security” of the Gulf monarchies, he added.

The resulting Saudi coalition in Yemen is united by a clearly sectarian bent, fitting the kingdom’s narrative of fighting to repel a Shiite expansion across the region. Amid rising religious strife throughout the Middle East—fueled in part by fears about Iran’s nuclear program—that could be a potent glue.

“This is a sectarian-based alliance and because of that, it may last longer than people expect,” said Ali al-Ahmed, a Saudi Shiite dissident who runs the Institute for Gulf Affairs think tank in Washington.

What gets lost in this treatment of the Yemen conflict as yet another battlefield in the Sunni-Shiite regional war is the fact that, until not so long ago, it was anything but.

The Houthis, Yemen’s former dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh, and the royal family that ruled Yemen for centuries all belong to the Zaidis—a Muslim sect long viewed as theologically closer to Sunni rather that Iranian-style Shiite Islam.

In the 1960s, the Saudis had no problem backing the Zaidi rebels against Egyptian occupation troops.

It is only in the recent decade that the Houthis, a Zaidi rebel movement from northernmost Yemen, have forged close links with Iran and its allied Shiite militia Hezbollah in Lebanon, embracing a more distinct Shiite identity.

“Our Shiites are not real Shiites, and our Sunnis are not real Sunnis. We are all Yemenis,” said Farea al-Muslimi, a Yemeni political activist and chairman of the Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies. “What the Saudis are doing is creating a sectarian model for tension and conflict for the first time in a country where the conflict was not sectarian in the past.”

Yet, when viewed through this sectarian prism, it is clear why Saudi Arabia would be courting the Muslim Brotherhood again.

With Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi exiled in Saudi Arabia and lacking a serious power base of his own, the Brotherhood’s Yemeni affiliate, Islah, represents the Saudis’ most feasible Sunni ally on the ground. Islah was once close to Riyadh.

With its long history of conflict against the Houthis and a prominent role both under President Hadi and his predecessor President Saleh, it is also the main loser of the recent Houthi takeover of much of the country.

“The Saudis really need to work with Yemeni locals,” said Hassan Hassan, a political analyst in Abu Dhabi and author of a recent book on Islamic State. “In the new Saudi administration, there is a sense that the Muslim Brotherhood can be a partner—and Islah will be the first test of that.”