Tag Archive for: Middle East

Will Biden’s two-pronged approach to the Middle East work?

President Joe Biden has shaken up the Middle East, putting America’s allies on notice and warning its adversaries not to take his administration for granted. He has revealed the traditional carrot-and-stick approach to promote American democratic values on the one hand, and maintain US geopolitical, economic and strategic interests in a vital but unstable region of the world on the other. Will this approach work?

As a zone of economic and strategic significance and, at the same time, frenemies, alliances and counter-alliances, the Middle East is a highly polarised, contested and conflict-ridden region. The former neonationalist and impulsive Republican president Donald Trump sought to boost America as the hegemonic player by building an Arab–Israeli alliance to confront Iran in the region. By the same token, he wanted to check the influence of an Iran–Russia axis in Syria, protect Israel and stonewall China to whatever extent possible in the region.

Whereas Trump’s approach heightened tensions and instability in the region, the Democratic, multilateralist and diplomatically savvy Biden aims to deal with the region in a way that emphasises the liberalist values in America’s foreign policy and, at the same time, safeguards its economic and strategic interests. In the process, he has stressed the need to resolve disputes with Iran, especially over the country’s nuclear program, regional influence and missile capability.

Yet he has balanced this with the launch last week of the first military operation of his presidency against Iran-allied Shia militias in Syria on the border with Iraq, primarily in retaliation for an attack presumably by an Iranian proxy on a coalition base in Iraq in mid-February. He has thus signalled to Tehran that when it comes to America’s strategic interests, he is not for turning. Tehran could not but view the development with disdain; yet, like the American side, it doesn’t want an escalation of hostilities. Iran recently declined a European Union invitation for talks with the US, but that may prove to be part of posturing, as Tehran would ultimately find it in its interest to reach a settlement with Washington to secure the lifting of America’s debilitating sanctions, though not at any cost.

Concurrently, Biden has unfolded a number of other policy initiatives in the region from which Tehran can take heart. They include halting the sale of American offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, ceasing US support for the Saudi-led Arab coalition operations in Yemen and calling for an end to the Yemen war, removing the Iran-backed Houthis (who are fighting the Saudi-supported government in Yemen) from the list of US terrorists, restoring some American aid to the Palestinian Authority, and rejecting unilateral action concerning construction of Israeli settlements on occupied territories. To top it all off, Washington has released the CIA report implicating directly the Saudi crown prince and de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), in the gruesome killing of Saudi national and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

Although Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that these measures are aimed at recalibrating rather than rupturing US relations with Saudi Arabia as an important ally, they amount to more than that. At this stage, Washington has refrained from sanctioning MBS directly, but its naming of him as the main culprit behind Khashoggi’s murder, plus the fact that Biden has bypassed MBS and communicated directly with his ageing father, King Salman, with an emphasis on human rights, leaves a huge stain on MBS’s reputation. It could prove to be very damaging to the crown prince.

Despite being in control of the Saudi coercive forces to guard his position, MBS now faces a serious credibility deficit in dealing with his domestic opponents, who include many older members of the royal family, and foreign adversaries. He may try to counter Washington’s moves by seeking to strengthen relations with China, especially through nuclear-armed Pakistan, which has close strategic ties with both the kingdom and China. However, given America’s traditional deep involvement in many aspects of the Saudi state, no amount of turning to China will bear meaningful fruit, even in the medium to long run.

Biden has initiated a course of Middle East policy to cover both sides of the equation: simultaneously calling for reform and protecting American interests. Where this approach will leave the US and the region, only time will tell. But whatever the ultimate outcome, his policy initiatives promise to be more soundly based than those pursued by his diabolic and ‘America first’ predecessor.

Has Biden caused a wind of change to blow in the Middle East?

A wind of political change seems to be suddenly blowing across the troubled Middle East. Egyptian authorities have unexpectedly freed an Al Jazeera journalist from jail and Saudi Arabia has conditionally released a human rights activist. Both have happened in the wake of Joe Biden’s inauguration as US president. Are these moves likely to be followed by more and wider changes affecting the regional geopolitical landscape?

The releases of Mahmoud Hussein, who had been incarcerated in Egypt since 2016, and Loujain al-Hathloul, who had languished in a Saudi prison since 2018, came as a surprise to many in the region and beyond.

Hussein was accused of seeking to overthrow the Egyptian government and having an allegiance to the banned Muslim Brotherhood, although no formal charges were ever laid against him. An Egyptian national, but working for the Qatari Al Jazeera news network, Hussein and his employer had denied any wrongdoing, asserting that he was simply fulfilling his normal duties as a journalist.

Hathloul, on the other hand, had been convicted in a closed trial on a number of ‘criminal’ charges and sentenced in December to five years and eight months in prison, despite widespread international protests on her behalf. However, her release is conditional, limiting her movement and leaving her vulnerable to being arrested again.

Whatever the details of either case, Hussein’s and Hathloul’s releases may mark the dawn of an era in which not just Egypt and Saudi Arabia but also other regional states, including Israel, might find it expedient to change tack to align themselves with the new occupant of the White House.

Biden has already announced a number of policy initiatives that signal a Middle East policy approach very different from that of his predecessor, the neonationalist populist Donald Trump. He has emphasised human rights as a major foreign policy issue, halted the sale of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, withdrawn America’s support for the Saudi-led Arab operation in Yemen and called for an end to the Yemen war which has inflicted massive devastation on the country’s population. This week, he removed the Iran-backed Houthis, who have been fighting the Arab coalition and its Yemeni allies, from the US list of terrorist organisations and announced that he will deal only with the ageing Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz rather than his controversial young son and Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman.

Biden has also said that he favours a US return to the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, provided Tehran restores all of its commitment to the deal. He has also intimated that his administration doesn’t recognise Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories as legitimate and has restored some of America’s funding to the Palestinians for humanitarian and security purposes.

Considered together, these announcements indicate that the Biden administration isn’t interested in dealing with the region through a lens of ‘business as usual’. Its policy shift carries the potential to exert pressure on regional actors to engage in reform and conflict resolution, and thus dismantle some of the hurdles that have rendered the Middle East so turbulent and branded America as a contradictory player in the region.

Of course, the Middle East is not an arena where states can easily be compelled to succumb to America’s policy preferences. They have in the past often succeeded in using their individual geopolitical, geoeconomic and geosecurity viabilities and vulnerabilities to cut through or get around pressure coming from different US administrations. In recent times, we have seen Arab, Iranian and Israeli authorities find ways to defy or survive America’s cajoling—whether through diplomatic or interventionist means.

However, Biden’s initiatives come at a time when all governments in the region are struggling, though in varying degrees and intensity, to cope with Covid-19 and its far-reaching economic and social consequences, as well as growing public demand for better governance and living conditions.

Even Israel—America’s closest Middle East ally—is not free of this dictum. It has experienced an unprecedented level of political instability, economic hardship and public protests, not to mention its lingering internationally damaged image over its continued occupation of Palestinian land and treatment of its inhabitants.

Comparably, as America’s adversary, Iran has faced deeper and wider challenges. It has suffered enormously from American sanctions and the coronavirus’s savagery, which have given rise to intense bursts of public discontent from time to time.

The releases of Hussein and Hathloul could not possibly have materialised free of Biden’s policy initiatives. They may mark the start of more responses from the region, which also follows the end of the Saudi-led blockade of fellow Arab state Qatar. Yet, any further favourable development will depend on whether Biden will be able to maintain firmly the momentum of his liberalist approach and press on with it to make a real difference in the Middle East.

Although Biden is confronted with mounting domestic and other foreign policy challenges, he has made a well-intentioned start with the Middle East at a time when the regional environment appears to be quite conducive to his policy changes.

Biden’s Saudi balancing act

While a great deal has been written about US President Joe Biden’s Iran conundrum, there hasn’t been enough discussion about his projected approach to Saudi Arabia, the other major power in the energy-rich Gulf region. In some ways, Saudi Arabia is the polar opposite of Iran. It has been a longstanding ally of the United States both in strategic terms and in the arena of oil pricing and supply.

In the strategic domain, Riyadh has been Washington’s principal collaborator in US efforts to contain Iran. In the energy sphere, Saudi Arabia, as the swing supplier of oil, helped keep the market on a relatively even keel by using its excess capacity to increase or reduce the flow of oil in order to try to stabilise the international economy at critical junctures.

After the oil embargo of 1973, there were no visible strains in the US–Saudi relationship until the signing of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), which Riyadh had initially opposed but later accepted reluctantly. The rise to power of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his adventurist policy in Yemen has also cast a large shadow on US–Saudi relations by alienating leading members of both parties in the US Congress who are appalled at the enormous human cost of the venture.

US–Saudi tensions were heightened in 2018 after the assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, which the CIA indirectly holds MbS responsible for. While the Trump administration turned a blind eye to this heinous act, criticism of the Saudi regime in Congress, the media and the general public reached new heights.

Biden will have to conduct an intricate balancing act to preserve Washington’s strategic relationship with Riyadh while reprimanding it for its violations of human rights. During last year’s election campaign, Biden severely criticised MbS for Khashoggi’s murder and declared that Saudi Arabia should be treated as ‘a pariah’ for committing this crime.

During her confirmation hearings, Avril Haines, Biden’s director of national intelligence, declared categorically that she will declassify an intelligence report into the murder of Khashoggi. This means that the US is likely to officially assign blame for Khashoggi’s murder to MbS thus increasing friction between Riyadh and Washington.

The Biden administration has also put on hold the sales of precision-guided bombs to Saudi Arabia and F-35 aircraft to the United Arab Emirates, Riyadh’s principal regional ally, which the Trump administration had approved during its waning days. These decisions conform to Biden’s campaign pledge to ensure that American weapons aren’t used in the Saudi–UAE campaign in Yemen that has wreaked havoc on the country’s civilian population. The new administration has also reversed Trump’s decision to declare the Houthis a terrorist group because it could have highly negative consequences for the delivery of international aid to Yemen’s civilian population.

All of these actions point towards a major reassessment by the Biden administration of Washington’s relations with the Saudi regime. But what has the Saudis and their Gulf allies most worried is Biden’s explicitly stated intention of returning to the nuclear agreement with Iran, which would entail removing the stringent sanctions imposed by the Trump administration on Tehran. Revival of the JCPOA won’t be an easy matter and the new administration will have to clear major hurdles before a deal with Iran is reached. These include opposition from American lawmakers as well as the forthcoming presidential election in Iran that is likely to produce a hardline government. There’s also a serious lack of trust in Iran towards the US because of Washington’s unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018.

There is also a wide gulf between the American demand that Iran return to observing its obligations under the agreement before the US can contemplate removing sanctions and the Iranian expectation that the removal of sanctions and rolling back of Iranian actions would be undertaken simultaneously. However, despite these obstacles the Saudis, like the Israelis, are very worried that the US and Iran will return to the deal because of the express willingness of both governments to do so. This common concern has led to a rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia in order to present a common front on Iran before the US.

Notwithstanding the prognosis that the US–Saudi relationship is likely to face heavy weather under the Biden administration, Riyadh is far too important to the US for Washington to allow its ties to the kingdom to be determined by human rights concerns or its eagerness for a rapprochement with Iran. While the US is no longer dependent on Gulf oil, the importance of Saudi oil supplies for the health of the global economy on which US prosperity depends will act as a brake on the Biden administration’s inclination to punish Saudi Arabia for its transgressions.

Above all, the strategic importance of Saudi Arabia to the US in the context of its policy towards the Gulf region and the broader Middle East is likely to outweigh most other considerations. Under the Trump administration, the US military presence in Saudi Arabia increased manyfold. Several thousand American troops, jet fighters and other weaponry have been stationed at Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan Air Base since 2019 to respond to perceived threats from Iran. This is a process not easily reversible unless US–Iran relations improve radically and go beyond the nuclear deal to address Tehran’s regional ambitions and its ballistic missile program. Such a scenario sounds highly unlikely in the short term, which buttresses Riyadh’s strategic value for Washington.

Finally, Saudi Arabia’s support for the normalisation of Israel’s relations with the Arab world is very important. The recent spate of Arab countries establishing diplomatic relations with Israel would be unthinkable without implicit Saudi approval and encouragement. Therefore, while US–Saudi relations may have to traverse a rocky road in the immediate future, they are likely to emerge relatively unscathed in the long run.

The legacy of the Arab Spring

When the struggling street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself alight in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, on 17 December 2010, he could not possibly have imagined how consequential his desperate protest would be. By sparking a wave of civil unrest across the Arab world, he touched off the region’s most profound transformation since decolonisation.

First, Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution erupted, leading to the ouster of the country’s longtime president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Protests quickly engulfed other Arab countries, and more autocrats—namely, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, and Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh—were toppled.

In Syria, President Bashar al-Assad managed to hold onto power—at the cost of plunging his country into a brutal civil war that has killed more than half a million people, forced millions to flee the country and left millions more internally displaced. The conflict returned Syria to the Russian fold, and turned its territory into an Iranian-Israeli battlefield.

Most of those who managed to overthrow their autocrats in the so-called Arab Spring didn’t see their democratic hopes blossom. Yemen’s ‘Coffee Revolution’ quickly evolved into a civil war between the central government and the Iran-backed Houthi rebels. Though Saleh eventually resigned, the Yemeni people got no relief. On the contrary, Saudi Arabia led a brutal intervention against the Houthis, turning Yemen into the site of a savage proxy war with Iran. The result has been the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe.

As for Libya—already an artificial colonial creation—its regime change, brought about by Western humanitarian intervention, was chaotic. Since 2011, the country has been subsequently torn apart by fighting among forces backed by a variety of external actors, including Egypt, Russia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, as well as renegade generals and local warlords.

The dominos continued to fall for years, with Algeria’s Hirak Rif Movement erupting in February 2019—six days after Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced his candidacy for a fifth presidential term. The protests drove Bouteflika to resign and resulted in a large-scale boycott of the presidential election in December of last year. The winner of that election, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, is merely a new civilian face for seemingly eternal military rule.

The Arab Spring exposed the innate fragility of many of the affected states. While some leaders managed to hold onto power, and some repressive military apparatuses remain robust, weak legitimacy, often based on rigged elections, leaves them highly vulnerable, especially in the face of tribalist and Islamist sentiment. (It is no coincidence that the Arab monarchies—Morocco, Jordan and Saudi Arabia—which derive their legitimacy largely from religious sources, fared much better than the pseudo-presidential republics.)

By exposing state weakness, the Arab Spring opened the way for the rise of the Islamic State, a Sunni terrorist group, in parts of Syria, Iraq and the Sinai Peninsula where central governments had no control. Though local and international forces eventually dismantled IS’s ‘caliphate’, the group still has affiliates in Egypt, Syria and Libya. As long as the problem of state weakness goes unaddressed, Sunni warlords will continue to emerge.

People seem to be pinning their electoral hopes on political Islam, which has emerged as the main alternative to secular autocracy over the last decade. Wherever free elections took place, Islamist parties won power. Tunisia’s moderate Ennahda party, for example, was integral to making the country the Arab Spring’s only true success story, with all three elections since 2011 having led to peaceful transfers of power.

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi won the presidency in 2012. But, after just over a year in power, the military, led by Field Marshal Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, ousted him and installed a regime even more repressive than Mubarak’s.

No story of the Middle East’s recent transformation can be complete without the United States. In his recently published memoir, Barack Obama confessed that if he were a young Egyptian, he would have joined the protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in 2011. Instead, as US president, he sacrificed America’s two closest regional allies, Mubarak and Ben Ali, opening the way for a redrawing of the Middle East’s strategic map.

As Mohammed bin Zayed, crown prince of Abu Dhabi and deputy commander of the UAE Armed Forces, made clear to Obama, allowing Mubarak’s ouster and accepting Morsi’s electoral victory gave the impression that the US was not a reliable long-term partner. Compounding this sense of betrayal among America’s Arab allies, Obama subsequently negotiated the Iran nuclear deal and rebalanced US strategic priorities toward Asia, opening the way for Russia to expand its influence in the Middle East.

Non-Arab regional powers—Iran, Turkey and Israel—have also been quick to capitalise on Arab woes. While America was busy fighting IS, Iran helped rescue the embattled Syrian regime and deployed its own forces along Israel’s borders. Its reach now extends from Syria and Iraq to the shores of the Mediterranean in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, Turkey has become the dominant force in northern Syria, where it claims to be preventing an autonomous Kurdish state from emerging on its doorstep, and has consolidated its military presence in Qatar. Even the influx of Syrian refugees to Turkey has become a powerful bargaining chip for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has threatened to send millions to Europe if its leaders criticise his dictatorial practices.

But perhaps the most shocking outcome of recent upheaval in the Arab world relates to Israel. Viewing the country as a necessary power broker in America, and now a reliable ally in the fight against Iran, a number of Arab states—Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco and Sudan—have normalised bilateral relations. Once Saudi Arabia follows suit, the Arab-Israeli conflict will effectively end, even though the Palestinian question remains unresolved. This is a dramatic paradigm change in Middle East politics.

As 2021 begins, the geopolitical terrain in the Arab world will continue to shift. The outcome will depend on a number of factors, not least whether—or when—the goal of democracy mobilises Arab populations once again.

Biden’s options in the Middle East

Leaving aside President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated wrangling about the legitimacy of the US election, President-elect Joe Biden is set to engage in a policy of rectification on both the domestic and foreign policy fronts. In US external relations, he can be expected to be a multilateralist and liberal realist in promoting America’s global role.

One key focus will be the Middle East and, in contrast to Trump, Biden is most likely to follow his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, in dealing with the troubled region. There are four areas where he could seek to make a difference.

The first is the July 2015 landmark Iran nuclear agreement (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA). A longstanding critic of the deal, Trump withdrew from it in May 2018. He lambasted the Iranian Islamic regime as an aggressive and destabilising actor in the region and beyond, and adopted a policy of maximum pressure. His aim was to force a defiant Tehran to renegotiate the JCPOA and reduce Iran’s missile capability and regional influence, which would also please Iran’s regional archrivals and Trump’s favoured US allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Trump ignored the fact that the JCPOA was a multilateral agreement. The other signatories, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, opposed his measures and maintained their support for the deal as important for international security, causing a major rift in the transatlantic alliance. Trump’s approach has failed: the Iranian regime has resisted and survived Washington’s pressure, though it has taken a heavy toll on Iranian society.

Biden has indicated that he will restore US participation in the JCPOA and reach out to Iran, as Obama had done, to make the agreement work and thus also remove one of the obstacles in America’s relations with its traditional European allies. He will face strong opposition from the Trump-dominated Republican Party at home, and from Israel and the Saudi-led Arab states in the region. But he should be able to override their objections as Obama did.

Some kind of rapprochement with Iran would allow Biden to focus on bigger foreign policy issues, such as dealing with China as an emerging rival superpower and Russia as an increasingly assertive power.

The second area relates to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Trump dispensed unprecedented friendship with Israel at the cost of the Palestinians’ struggle for freedom and independence. Biden is likely to pursue Obama’s approach. He has made it clear that he will adhere to international law and United Nations resolutions by not recognising Israeli settlements in the occupied territories as legitimate, by opposing any annexation of the West Bank and by favouring the two-state solution as the best option for a political settlement of the conflict.

Given Israel’s bipartisan support in the US Congress, Biden is unlikely to be able to reverse some of Trump’s measures, such as shifting the American embassy to Jerusalem. But he would be well placed to seek a revival of peace talks for a negotiated resolution of the conflict.

The third arena is America’s relationship with Saudi Arabia. Trump treated the oil-rich kingdom as a highly favoured nation and valued its purchasing of American arms. He developed very close relations with the controversial Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) and strongly backed the Saudi-led Arab coalition’s military operations in Yemen. He brushed aside congressional concerns and the UN findings about MbS’s involvement in the brutal killing of the Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in October 2018. He went to extraordinary lengths to protect MbS, and the kingdom became central to his plan to generate an anti-Iran, Arab–Israeli front.

Trump showed no qualms over the human and material devastation that Saudi-led air strikes inflicted upon the Yemeni people. In contrast to Obama, who halted US support for such strikes during his final year in office, Trump provided logistical backing for them.

Biden and his Democratic entourage are set to take a different view of Saudi Arabia. While not sidelining the kingdom, they will find it compelling to rationalise relations with it to whatever extent possible. This would include softening America’s backing of MbS for both political and moral reasons, and curtailing support for Yemen operations.

The fourth area is the dominance of authoritarianism in the Middle East, from the Arab monarchies in the Gulf to Egypt in North Africa—all US allies. Trump’s authoritarian populism underpinned his admiration for autocratic rulers. In contrast, Biden will have an opportunity to emphasise the need for anti-authoritarian reforms across the region. This is not to suggest that he would make democratisation a centrepiece of his foreign policy, as his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, tried, unsuccessfully, to do. He is most likely to lean against illiberalism in his administration’s dealings with autocracies.

The Middle East has confounded expectations of the US as the traditionally dominant power in the region in the past. However, a non-hegemonic Biden approach stands a better chance of contributing to regional stability than Trump’s policy of ‘divide and rule’ at home and abroad that robbed the region of any opportunity for meaningful regional cooperation. Of course, all this will depend on what Trump’s refusal to concede electoral defeat brings about, and how successful Biden will be in addressing the domestic challenges, especially if he is faced with a Republican majority in the Senate.

Arab–Israeli normalisation could have unintended consequences

The images were touching. In early October, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas visited the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin with his Israeli and Emirati counterparts. How better to celebrate the recent normalisation of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates? In fact, the establishment of diplomatic ties under the Abraham Accords had little to do with honouring the past. If anything, the deal is an attempt to escape from history altogether.

For most of my lifetime, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict was the defining issue in the Middle East. From the Western perspective, ensuring Israel’s right to exist was a way of repaying a historic debt to the Jewish people: Israel, as a homeland for global Jewry, was insurance against future anti-Semitism. But in the Arab world, the displacement of the Palestinians in 1948, and the ongoing experience of Israeli occupation since 1967, was a perpetual rallying cry for successive regimes, most of which capitalised on Palestinian suffering to divert attention from their own failures at home.

With these lines drawn in the sand, the conventional wisdom was that both the Israelis and the Palestinians would need to be compensated for historic wrongs in order to guarantee stability and peace in the Middle East. The Israeli–Palestinian conflict was the key to unlocking a process of diplomatic normalisation across the region. Thus, by agreeing to normalise relations with Israel in the absence of a deal for the Palestinians, the UAE has essentially swept all of this history under the rug. Its embrace of the Abraham Accords, where it was quickly joined by Bahrain, marks a regional paradigm shift.

In recent years, Arab elites’ threat perceptions have changed. If their primary enemy in the 1960s and 1970s was Israel, today it is Iran, followed by Turkey. As the United States has pulled back from the region, many Gulf leaders have come to believe that a regional axis with Israel will be crucial to safeguarding their interests. And on the Arab street—where most of the population had not yet been born when Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin agreed on a path to a two-state solution—public opinion has followed suit. Moreover, in recent years, the Palestinians have been out-victimised by other waves of oppression and violence, whether in Iraq after the US invasion, in Libya under Muammar Gaddafi, or in the conflicts in Yemen and Syria.

The UAE leadership is surprisingly frank about its decision to make peace with Israel. While it continues to support the idea of a Palestinian state, it no longer trusts the Palestinian leadership to leverage Emirati support effectively. In response, Palestinian critics argue that the UAE has thrown away the most powerful card that could be played on their behalf. But the reality is that the UAE, like most others in the region, has wider interests beyond creating a Palestinian homeland. Strengthening ties with the US, and securing US-made F-35 fighter jets, is a higher priority. As Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz put it this month, ‘The Palestinian cause is a just cause but its advocates are failures, and the Israeli cause is unjust but its advocates have proven to be successful.’

For their part, the Israelis are hoping that the Abraham Accords will open the way for a new wave of normalisation with other Arab powers, so that the road to regional security will no longer run through Jerusalem. By separating the Palestinian question from relations with other countries in the region, Israel has managed to turn it into merely a domestic problem. The position of the ‘international community’ on the issue will now be more diffuse and thus weaker. With each new normalisation accord that Israel secures, it will gain an ever-more explicit endorsement from the Arab world.

The deals with the UAE and Bahrain amount to a triumph for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy of the past decade. But Netanyahu would do well to remember that a victory in the Middle East always contains the seeds of its unravelling. If he makes the two-state solution impossible, he will have laid the groundwork for a challenge to Israel’s future as a Jewish-majority democratic state.

After all, if the Palestinians can no longer negotiate for their own state, their best alternative will be to pursue a one-state solution by pressing for civil rights within Israel. The writing is on the wall. According to the United Nations’ 2019 demographic profile of the Palestinian territories, there are five million Palestinians who could potentially join with the 1,916,000 Arabs living in Israel, thus outnumbering the 6,772,000 Israeli Jews.

Considering how ineffective and divided the Palestinian leadership is, an organised challenge seems unlikely anytime soon. Yet long before Palestinians become capable of winning an electoral majority in Israel, a more competent leadership could start to raise serious questions about the health of Israeli democracy itself. Such arguments would reignite debates about whether Israel is an apartheid state, potentially leading to a renewal of international pressure. And that, in turn, could have far-reaching implications for how other powers relate to Israel, not least the European Union, which accounts for about a third of the country’s total trade.

For these reasons, leading Israeli national-security analysts have argued that if a negotiated two-state solution is not possible, Israel should develop an unnegotiated one, by establishing a viable Palestinian state unilaterally. But this approach would seem to require a complete reconfiguration of the occupation in the interest of Israeli settlements, which could fatally undermine the legitimacy of any eventual Palestinian state. That is why other Israeli leaders with a more strategic outlook—including six former Mossad directors—have begun to look for ways to develop real statehood for the Palestinians through a process of de-occupation.

If Netanyahu fails to develop a viable Palestinian state, his escape from history could prove very short-lived. As William Faulkner observed, ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’

A post-Erdogan Turkey: much ado about nothing

It’s no mystery that the radical changes Turkey has undergone since 2002 can be attributed to prime minister-cum-president Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP), or Justice and Development Party.

Once a shining star in the region and international arena for its economic and political acumen, Turkey now finds itself a bête noire to former allies and regional powers alike.

Turkey is in the middle of an economic crisis and is politically polarised. Ankara is regionally and internationally isolated given its continued bellicosity towards NATO allies and assertive foreign policy in the Middle East and the Mediterranean.

There has been a slow and steady slide towards an authoritarian consolidation of power by Erdogan and the AKP since 2011. The 2016 coup attempt and subsequent purging of the bureaucracy, university sector, military and police have increased the speed of the country’s transition away from democracy.

These critical state institutions are now filled with loyalists, and Turkey’s once vibrant economy is run through patrimonial networks similar to those in other authoritarian regimes. There’s limited space these days for civil society groups, and while the opposition finds avenues for areas of protest and contention against Erdogan’s government, the scales of Turkey’s political system are now heavily tipped against them.

A common argument among Turkey analysts is that if Erdogan and his executive presidential system, à la Turka, were replaced, Turkey’s ills would also disappear. But unravelling Erdogan’s influence is unlikely to be that simple. Would his departure mean that Turkey would go back to being a stalwart ally, polarisation would decrease and democracy would return? The answer is yes, and no.

According to recent polling, the AKP’s support oscillates around 35%. This suggests that the polarising, nationalist rhetoric that Erdogan employs is part of a bigger cultural shift that has been happening for decades.

With the 1980 coup, the military junta ushered in an ideological and cultural movement that sought to merge nationalist and Islamic elements of Turkish culture and politics. Its current manifestation, Turkish Islamic nationalism, is a reimagining of this original synthesis and is promoted by ultranationalist elements in Turkish society and, more recently, by the AKP and Erdogan.

Through AKP-controlled media, education and political discourse, Turkish Islamic nationalism has had a transformative effect on Turkish civil society. It manifests in a populist, nationalist and nativist understanding of Turkish culture and politics.

There are already individuals who are being groomed as potential leaders of the AKP after Erdogan goes. Possible contenders for leadership in a post-Erdogan Turkey include two key names, Erdogan’s son-in-law Berat Albayrak and Minister for the Interior Suleyman Soylu, who represent two different sides of the same coin of this populist and nativist form of politics.

In a post-Erdogan Turkey with an AKP or opposition successor, it’s highly unlikely we’ll see any immediate change in its foreign policy. Turkey has shown itself to be an independent actor in the region, inclined to use force to bring its interests to the table. It is no longer anchored to an East or West orientation and views itself able to move multidimensionally in its neighbourhood and beyond.

The alliances that once were important, such as NATO and the tenuous partnership with the US, will remain. But they will be more varied as Turkey continues to engage in an increasingly multipolar international order.

It’s also unlikely that Turkey post-Erdogan will engage constructively with the EU, given the reluctance from both sides for future membership.

Issues surrounding Turkey’s ally Azerbaijan’s claim to Nagorno-Karabakh and the fight against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party were points of contention long before the AKP came to power and will continue long after. And the Mavi Vatan (Blue Homeland) doctrine in the Mediterranean is one example of a strategy that will outlast Erdogan and will continue to shape Turkish foreign policy for some time.

But all is not lost for the country’s supporters of democracy. The Turkish opposition has upped its game recently and presents an antidote to the many failures of Erdogan’s populist politics. The opposition has grown in popularity and is personified by caring and responsible political leaders such as Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu and Ankara mayor Mansur Yavas.

The return of a popular opposition challenges the final consolidation of authoritarianism by the AKP and its cronies. The regime is looking tired, unable to muster the will to address the economic ills the country faces. Its foreign policy adventurism and aggressive posturing make it look less like a ruling regime on the rise and more like a strategically directionless elite, employing desperate measures to regain domestic popularity.

But despite the AKP’s many missteps, a transition back to democracy won’t be easy. The polarisation of Turkish society and deterioration of both the formal and informal norms of democracy will take time to heal.

On the economic front, Turkey will need to break away from populist economic policies that favour regime loyalists. If it doesn’t, the combination of economic cronyism and an increasingly pugilistic foreign policy is likely to continue to scare away the vital foreign investment from Europe and the US that underwrites Turkey’s economy. This will only accelerate the downward trend of the economy, further destabilising the regime.

Another complicating factor is the Kurdish issue. Until a viable solution is brokered, the conflict will continue to feed the country’s authoritarian dynamics.

A push towards a more democratic and pluralist Turkey is highly likely after Erdogan, but the ability of democratic forces to undo the ideological and structural damage of AKP’s long rule is less certain.

UAE’s and Bahrain’s normalisation of relations with Israel could be an opportunity for Palestinians

Israel’s normalisation agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, signed on 15 September, signify a potentially tectonic shift in the Middle East and represent perhaps the greatest advance towards peace there in 25 years.

These developments have been broadly welcomed by those who aspire to a better, safer and more prosperous Middle East. Predictably, they have also been condemned by those who measure success in the region not by the welfare of its population, including the Palestinians, but by how bad things are for Israel.

Unlike Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinians, the partners in Israel’s three previous agreements, neither the UAE nor Bahrain has ever had an armed conflict with Israel. Both theoretically observed a total boycott of Israel, but it was an open secret that they had been cooperating under the table on matters of mutual interest for some time out of concern about Iran.

Iran has been an increasingly destabilising influence in the Middle East as it adheres to the doctrine of exporting its Shia fundamentalist revolution throughout the region. In pursuit of this aim, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force has established and supported proxy forces, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, various powerful militia forces in Iraq, and the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The IRGC also took the lead in buttressing the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria’s bloody civil war. And Tehran has been pursuing nuclear weapons, despite its claims to the contrary.

The Gulf states felt increasingly threatened by this Iranian activity and, with the US withdrawing forces from the region, have been seeking a regional power with the ability and willingness to stand up to Iran. Israel was the obvious candidate.

It has long been clear to them that Israel poses them no threat, unlike Iran, and there’s been ongoing, if covert, cooperation on matters of defence and intelligence.

The UAE and Bahrain also have much to gain from Israel beyond security. As rich and technologically advanced nations, there’s great potential for mutually beneficial trade, and shared high-tech development.

Other Muslim countries, such as Oman, Sudan and Morocco, may also be ready to conclude deals with Israel in the near future. Saudi Arabia may be more reticent given its position in the Arab world, but it has quietly demonstrated that it supports the arrangements.

The paradigm of the Arab states had long been that there could be no normalisation with Israel until there was a deal establishing a Palestinian state. This, however, has been counterproductive, as rejection by the Palestinian Authority has always been the principal obstacle to a two-state peace.

Giving the Palestinian Authority an effective veto over Israeli relations with other Arab countries simply encouraged this rejectionism, which saw Yasser Arafat refuse offers of a state in 2000 at Camp David and 2001 at Taba. Current president Mahmoud Abbas rejected Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert’s offer in 2008, and has refused, since torpedoing negotiations in 2014, to even engage in peace talks.

The Palestinian Authority has virulently condemned the normalisation deals as a stab in the back for Palestinians. Iran and Turkey have made similar statements.

While US President Donald Trump’s peace plan released early this year may need some fine-tuning before it could be the basis of a two-state peace, the Palestinians could have taken advantage of its promise of a state as a starting point for negotiations. And the Trump administration’s efforts did help facilitate the UAE deal, allowing leader Mohammed bin Zayed to counter any regional backlash by pointing out that he had prevented Israel from extending its sovereignty to some areas of the West Bank, as the Trump plan permitted.

The normalisation between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain could be a significant opportunity to kickstart the Israeli–Palestinian peace progress, for a number of reasons. First, if the Palestinian leaders recognise that time is no longer on their side, they should prove more willing to genuinely negotiate difficult compromises. Despite the recent history of Palestinian rejectionism and terrorism, the majority of Israelis still support a two-state peace if it does not compromise their security.

The UAE and Bahrain have made it clear that they still support the Palestinians and their aspirations for statehood, and history proves that states that have normalised relations with Israel are far more effective intermediaries than those who deny Israel’s right to exist. Egypt and Jordan have been effective advocates for Palestinian interests on numerous occasions, as well as successful brokers of various temporary arrangements.

In addition, Israelis have genuine and well-founded concerns about their security after the establishment of a Palestinian state. Having friendly Arab states willing to act as guarantors should help assuage those fears, again making a Palestinian state more achievable.

Finally, the deals will lead to a stronger regional front against the threat to peace posed by Iran, which is funding and arming numerous groups dedicated to sabotaging any progress toward Israeli–Palestinian peace, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah.

Increased interaction between Israelis and citizens of Arab countries will also lead to greater mutual understanding, greater cooperation and less hostility. This can only be a benefit for all those in the region who aspire to a peaceful and prosperous future.

If the Palestinian leadership genuinely wants a Palestinian state, it should act now to take advantage of changing but potentially propitious circumstances. It would be a tragedy for the Palestinian people if the ageing leadership’s inability to rethink entrenched positions—such as rejection of any normalisation with Israel—were to cause them to miss yet another opportunity to advance a two-state peace.

Russia’s quest to make itself indispensable in the Middle East

Although it has neither the desire nor the financial or military capacity to actually displace the United States in the Middle East, Russia has become adept at planting itself firmly in the middle of crises and conflicts and establishing itself as an indispensable intermediary at relatively little cost. This has been most visible in Syria and Libya, where Russia and other regional powers manage the complicated political and military dynamics while the US focuses on counterterrorism operations.

Less often discussed, however, are Russia’s attempts to become a key player in both the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and Lebanon. Recent developments in both arenas may well give Russia the space to finally make itself a vital fixture.

The successful Russian intervention in Syria in 2015 is ground zero for Moscow’s ever-expanding presence. Coinciding with abortive US attempts to form an alliance with Russia against jihadist groups in Syria in September 2016—a deal that implicitly guaranteed Bashar al-Assad’s continued rule and allowed Russia to turn its attention elsewhere—Russian President Vladimir Putin offered to host a summit in Moscow between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Relations between the Palestinians and Russians picked up dramatically, however, following US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017, which led the Palestinian Authority to cut off all contacts with the US, including security ties with the CIA. Abbas himself led a high-ranking delegation to Russia in early 2018 to discuss a new multilateral format for Israeli–Palestinian negotiations with Russia at its centre.

In 2018, Russia also began meeting directly for the first time with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an Iranian proxy it once reportedly considered a terrorist group. Direct contact with Hamas, which Russia never considered a terrorist group, also increased, culminating in an intra-Palestinian summit involving all factions in Gaza and the West Bank, including the Palestinian Authority, in February 2019. Although Russia failed to get Hamas and Islamic Jihad to sign up to its ‘Moscow declaration’, which was intended to push back against US announcements, close consultation with all the Palestinian factions continued, with Russia pressing them to unite under the political program of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

While that goal is likely impossible, Russia did manage in a phone call in July 2020 to persuade Jibril Rajoub, secretary-general of the Fatah Central Committee, to hold a joint videoconference with Hamas to present a united front. Since late August, Russia has consulted almost daily with senior Palestinian leaders from several major groups, culminating in a 3 September videoconference between the 14 major factions. Both before and especially since the videoconference, Russia has been pushing all the factions to attend another pan-Palestinian summit in Moscow to help nudge unity efforts along.

On the centrality of Russia to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, at least, the factions are already united. Senior Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzuk stated in July 2019 that only Russia could help the Palestinians against the US, while Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki said in June this year, ‘We trust President Vladimir Putin … Palestine is willing to have talks with Israel via video conferencing and under Russian auspices.’

Russia’s growing presence in Lebanon flows out of its intervention in Syria, with which Lebanon has been inextricably entwined for decades. A 2019 investigative report by Novaya Gazeta found that a business jet associated with Yevgeny Prigozhin—the nominal owner of ‘Wagner’ mercenaries who are fully controlled by the Russian military intelligence agency GRU—had been making monthly flights to Beirut since at least December 2016. From there they would fly to various Wagner theatres of operation in Syria and Africa. Coupled with claims that GRU chief Igor Sergun’s sudden death in January 2016 occurred in Lebanon and not in Moscow, there’s circumstantial evidence to suggest Beirut is an operational centre of Russian activity in the Middle East.

Russian attempts to become a major political player in Lebanon mostly failed until late 2018, when Lebanon accepted an important, if symbolic, US$5 million in Russian military aid. Although Moscow has thus far been unable to get a Lebanese signature on a draft military agreement, the two sides have since 2019 grown closer politically and Russia has become more active in Lebanon’s energy sector.

Yet, until the recent explosion in Beirut and subsequent resignation of the government, Russia was simply not a significant actor in Lebanon. The political vacuum that has now developed, and Moscow’s close relations with all sides, may have opened a door for Russian influence in Lebanese politics. For instance, on 17 August, former Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri sent an adviser to consult with Putin’s Middle East envoy Mikhael Bogdanov on future political developments in the country. Bogdanov also had phone conversations with Hariri, Druze powerbroker Walid Jumblatt and the Free Patriotic Movement’s Gebran Bassil, and met in Moscow with Lebanon’s ambassador to Russia and with an adviser to Lebanese President Michel Aoun, with final consultations taking place on 27 August.  A new prime minister, Mustapha Adib, was designated on 31 August, though the actual future of the government is still unknown.

It is unclear whether the crushing US sanctions on both Iran and the Assad regime, which necessarily have an impact on Lebanon, along with severe international pressure for reform, will hinder or help Moscow’s influence. What will certainly help it, though, is its increasingly close partnership with France, which has taken the lead role in Lebanon after the Beirut explosion across a spectrum of political and military issues, as well as its alliance with Iran, Syria and Hezbollah, the most relevant actors in the country.

As Lebanon sets out to rebuild its capital, Russia, the only country to maintain close relations with every state and non-state actor involved, could become supreme arbiter as it effectively has in Syria and Libya.

The consequences of the Israel–UAE peace deal

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has hailed the agreement normalising relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates—which the two countries will sign at a White House ceremony today—as a historic step that equals Israel’s previous peace deals with Egypt and Jordan. The Israeli leader also boasted that the agreement with the UAE vindicated his ‘Netanyahu doctrine’ of peace for peace, rather than land for peace.

But even peace with a country with which Israel doesn’t share a border and has never fought a war required Netanyahu to give up his plans to annex large parts of the West Bank. So, there was a ‘land for peace’ aspect to the deal after all.

More important, Netanyahu’s ‘doctrine’ practically buries the concept underlying the 2002 Arab peace initiative: that an Israeli–Palestinian peace should be the precondition for normalisation of Arab states’ relations with Israel. The Arab League itself has rejected the Palestinians’ request to condemn the Israel–UAE deal, and the pact also signals the defeat of the Israeli left’s vision of Palestine as the key to peace with the Arab world.

Throughout the many decades of Arab–Israeli antagonism, Arab states have betrayed the Palestinians no less than Israel has. In his 1979 peace agreement with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin made far-reaching commitments on the Palestinian question. But both leaders knew that theirs was a separate peace driven by vital strategic needs—as shown by its survival despite Israel’s ever deepening occupation and settlement of Palestinian lands.

Why, then, has Mohammed bin Zayed, the UAE’s ruler, invited the rage of the betrayed Palestinians by normalising relations with the Jewish state? First, he proved to be a man with the courage to call things by their name. Gulf states including the UAE and Saudi Arabia have had discreet security relations with Israel for years. As a major military and technological power in the Middle East, Israel has become a necessary ally for conservative regimes shaken by the 2011 Arab Spring, the threat of Islamist radicalism and Iran’s growing regional clout.

But it is mainly the fear of a withdrawal from the region by the United States that is bringing Arab states closer to Israel. They saw how US President Donald Trump refrained from any direct military response to Iran’s devastating September 2019 attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil installations. Moreover, Trump didn’t even respond to Iran’s downing a few months earlier of a sophisticated US surveillance drone over the Strait of Hormuz.

The idea that peace with Israel also means peace with America had always been a fundamental motive behind the Arabs’ decision to consider reconciliation with the Jewish state. Sadat signed the 1979 peace agreement because he wanted to shift Egypt’s strategic orientation from the Soviet Union to the US. The US$2 billion in annual military aid that Egypt still receives from the US is a direct product of that peace. And Syria, Israel’s staunchest Arab enemy, became interested in peace only after the Soviet Union collapsed.

The Emiratis don’t need America’s money, but they do need its continuous involvement in Middle Eastern affairs. Israel is the guarantee that America will always be around, and offers the UAE a path into the US Congress, where arms deals and financial packages are approved.

The Trump administration’s apparent decision to sell F-35 stealth fighter jets to the UAE has been an important objective in the Emirati peace strategy towards Israel. These advanced warplanes—which only the US and Israel currently possess—will secure America’s engagement with the UAE, and add muscle to a small country that has global ambitions and many enemies.

Chief among these foes are Qatar and Turkey. Both countries support the Muslim Brotherhood, a UAE nemesis, which explains Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s virulent reaction to the normalisation deal. In Libya, the UAE is fighting together with Egypt and Russia in support of the Tobruk-based Libyan National Army led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, while Turkey and Qatar are backing the internationally recognised government in Tripoli. The UAE has also sought to check Turkey’s punitive incursions against Kurdish forces in northern Syria.

Framing the Israel–UAE agreement as part of the continuous effort to contain Iran, as Netanyahu and the Trump administration are doing, is a convenient way to make the F-35 arms deal palatable to increasingly isolationist US public opinion. The truth is that the UAE has been pursuing a prudent strategy vis-à-vis Iran. It recently abandoned the Saudi-led coalition in the war against Iran’s Houthi proxies in Yemen, and has even disengaged from Trump’s sanctions regime against Iran.

Be that as it may, Netanyahu is right to say that the Palestinians are losing their most important strategic asset: their veto power over an all-Arab peace with Israel. Bahrain has already announced that it will follow in the UAE’s footsteps, and more Arab countries are likely to do so as well. The region is changing, and the Arabs are accepting that Israel is a legitimate strategic player. Palestine, the supposed epicentre of the region’s worries, has become a disposable cause.

The Palestinians must recognise that they have brought this situation on themselves by their serial rejection of peace offers in the past. How could they assume that the Arab states would forever mortgage their national interests in a changing region to fulfil Palestine’s implausible expectations? Should they not now shift strategy, stop their ‘boycott’ of the US and engage Israel in the search for a realistic peace plan?