Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s suggestion that Australia might recognise West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital won’t contribute to peace in the Middle East and has dangerous ramifications for Australia.

As has been extensively reported in Australia’s media, the proposal was clearly intended to influence voters in the Wentworth by-election, putting party interests ahead of Australia’s national interest. But this was not a vote-winner even in a seat with a very large Jewish voting population.

Morrison spoke of his discussion with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ‘recognition’ of the Jewish community’s ‘real concern’ following his meetings with the Israeli lobby groups but he has completely disregarded Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian, Arab and Muslim communities. That’s not fitting for a responsible prime minister who should be for all Australians and for Australia’s standing internationally.

Even the numbers don’t stack up. According to research I conducted based on the results of the last federal election and census, the Jewish community in Australia comprises around 91,000 people, less than 0.4% of the total population, and can influence two federal seats; while the Muslim community of 600,000 is over 2.4% of the population and can influence 27 federal seats, 20 of them marginal.

However, the Jewish, Arab or Muslim communities are not homogeneous in their voting.

Australian public opinion has repeatedly shown in surveys taken for more than 10 years that the majority are on the side of Palestinians and not Israel.

The result of the United Nations vote on whether Palestine should chair the G77 should alert Mr Morrison to the fact that Australia’s blind support for Israel is damaging to its credibility and international reputation. In that vote, 146 countries voted in favour of Palestine taking the chair. Only three—the United States, Israel and Australia—voted against, and 15 abstained.

There’s no moral, logical, commercial or national interest to justify Australia’s biased policy towards Israel and Netanyahu’s government.

It’s time for the Australian government and the opposition to review their Middle East policies and adopt an independent and credible policy based on Australia’s national interests, respect for international law, UN resolutions and the goal of international peace.

Morrison said he’d proposed to Netanyahu that defence attachés be appointed in the Australian and Israeli embassies to further enhance cooperation on defence. But defence relations with Israel, an occupying power, reflect poorly on Australia’s defence force and should be stopped.

The government cannot claim to support a two-state solution but then recognise one party and not the other, especially when Israel is swallowing what remains of the other state by planting Jewish colonies on what should be its territory.

If Morrison and his government are sincere in their commitment to a two-state solution, with West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and East Jerusalem as Palestine’s capital, then they need to recognise the state of Palestine and have Australian embassies in both parts of the city.

By doing that, Australia would play a constructive role, gain respect and lead the way internationally.

The state of Palestine is recognised by 138 countries, including the Western nations of Sweden, Iceland and the Vatican, and our neighbours Indonesia, Malaysia, China, Thailand and the Philippines. It’s also a full member of the League of Arab States, the Movement of Non‑Aligned Countries, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the Group of Asia‑Pacific States and the Group of 77. Australia recognised Israel even though it was declared unilaterally and without its borders being defined.

To recognise West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital without at the same time recognising the state of Palestine will be nothing but appeasement to Netanyahu and his government and encouragement for the building of more settlements. They’ll continue their oppression and that will damage Australia’s interests and relations with Arab and Islamic countries and people.

As for Morrison’s undertaking to review Australia’s position on the Iran nuclear deal, Iran’s facilities are subject to rigorous international inspection and it’s repeatedly stated that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

Iran and all the Arab countries are signatories to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and they all support a Middle East free of nuclear weapons.

Israel is the only state in the Middle East that possesses nuclear weapons. It refuses to sign the NPT and won’t comply with the many UN resolutions calling on it to allow international inspection of its nuclear facilities.

A report by the Counterproliferation Center at the US Air Force Air War College in September 1999 stated that Israel’s nuclear arsenal had grown from an estimated 13 nuclear bombs in 1967 to 400 nuclear and thermonuclear weapons. Israel possesses missiles which are capable of reaching most cities in the world with the support of its military satellites and its navy, which, according to the report, could deploy nuclear weapons on its six German-built submarines.

Australia should support the call for a nuclear weapons-free Middle East and urge Israel to sign the NPT, open its nuclear facilities to international inspection and get rid of its nuclear weapons.

The Israeli approach to counterterrorism (CT) is unique because terrorism there is ever-present and takes many forms; it may occur from within Israel, it may take place from Palestinian territories, it may come from across the border or from further afield. The attack may be a one-off suicide bombing or a knife or car rampage or the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier. The terrorists themselves are different too in that they may be Arab, Palestinian, Arab-Israeli or even Japanese.

The evolving nature of the threat led Israeli policymakers to eschew the idea of having an official counterterrorism doctrine. Instead Israel has taken a more organic, holistic approach to CT that relies on innovation and creativity and is aimed at deterring and creating divisions within terror groups, and between the groups and their constituencies through coercion and/or persuasion.

Israel’s approach to its security oscillates between Bitachon Yisodi (fundamental security threats) to Bitachon Shotef (continuous security). What this means is that Israeli CT employs tactics that are focused on systematically disrupting and weakening the infrastructure of terrorist entities, whether within Israel or beyond its borders. This may include large-scale military operations against terrorist cells or more targeted, special operations.

To deal with the threat, the Israeli CT architecture is multifaceted involving the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), specialist units, the police, the private sector and the broader community. The Israelis are also operating within the social media space, either through an aggressive public diplomacy (Hasbara) campaign aimed at explaining Israel’s CT operations or outlining the threat that Israel faces via the ‘Israel under fire’ hashtag. The IDF’s Information Security Department also carries out counter-intelligence operations aimed at identifying Hamas cyber activists seeking to use social media platforms such as Facebook to extract information from Israeli soldiers.

The origin of this multilayered approach began in the 1950s when the threat came from beyond Israel’s borders. The attacks were then led by fedayeen (irregular forces) based in Jordan and Egypt. These were small units armed with machine guns and grenades who carried out hit-and-run operations. The Israelis responded to these attacks by forming specialist military units such as Sayeret Matkal (General Staff Reconnaissance Unit) and Shayetet 13 (a naval commando unit whose name translates as ‘Flotilla 13’).

From the 1970s the threat evolved from guerrilla warfare to hijacking, kidnapping, suicide bombing, knife attacks, car attacks, smuggling, tunnels and kite terrorism. The IDF has adapted in response, forming specialist military units who now carry out counter-IED, urban warfare and counter-guerrilla warfare operations. These units play key roles when the IDF undertakes major military offensives against terrorist targets as seen with Operation Cast Lead in 2008.

A good example of how the Israelis have had to adapt to new terrorist tactics is by looking Hamas’ use of kite terrorism (attaching firebombs to kites, balloons and inflated condoms and flying them over the border, setting fire to forests and agricultural land). Hamas allegedly began using this method after seeing a kite with a Palestinian flag attached to it. The Israeli military initially didn’t have a ready response but is now using drones to shoot down or destroy the kites and is continuing an aerial campaign to destroy Hamas munition makers.

The Israel National Police (INP) also plays an important counterterror role. The INP is the first line of defence against terrorism within Israel. All its members receive basic counterterrorism training (coupled by the fact that all its members have also served in the IDF).

The INP has two components: the ‘blue police’ and the Border Guard (BG). The former operates in six districts, or Machoz: Northern, Tel Aviv, Central, Judea and Samaria (West Bank), Jerusalem and Southern. The BG is a distinct force in that it combines policing and military functions, with its members wearing a quasi-military uniform as opposed to the traditional blue uniform wore by sworn police forces around the world. The guards are responsible for security along the border and in areas that present special security concerns, such as Jerusalem. Officially, BG units are subordinated to the territorial commander of the blue police, but they specialise in internal security and CT operations as well as undertaking criminal investigations.

Within the INP there are specialist counterterrorism units, such as the YAMAM, a special weapons and tactics (SWAT) force, which carries out takeover and intervention as well as prevention and interdiction operations. Another important unit is the YAMAS, or Mista’aravim, which translates as ‘disguise as an Arab’. The unit began its life in the late 1980s operating as a specialist military unit and is composed of Arabists—individuals that know and understand every facet of Arab/Palestinian society and can easily operate within the indigenous populations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israelis have shown remarkable resilience when it comes to terrorism, refusing to be cowed by the perpetual threat of violence. The state and the people have also shown how important creativity and innovation is when designing, developing and implementing counterterrorism policies.

What Israel has shown is that terrorism is not something that can be defeated, but it is something that one can learn to live with. If Israelis are to move towards a world in which they needn’t worry about terror attacks and the continued cycle of violence, a solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict must be found.

Iran, like much of the Middle East and North Africa, faces a future of extreme weather and drought. Researchers have estimated that temperatures across the region are rising twice as fast as the global average. And ‘wet-bulb temperatures’—a measure of humidity and heat—are predicted to rise so high in the Gulf that the region could be all but uninhabitable by the end of the century.

In addition to rising average temperatures, much of Iran is already facing crisis conditions in its water supply. Iran is predominantly arid or semi-arid, and two-thirds of its rainfall evaporates before it can replenish local river systems. This means that Iran relies on two sources of water: upstream supply of water from neighbours, and subterranean aquifers.

Iran meets over half of its water requirements from aquifers. But its groundwater depletion rate is so high that, at the current rate of usage, 12 of Iran’s 31 provinces will entirely exhaust their aquifers within the next 45 years. Further exacerbating the situation, Iran’s government also predicts a 25% decline in surface water runoff from rainfall and snow melt by 2030.

Iran’s reliance on external sources of water means that it is also vulnerable to developments such as Turkey’s Southeastern Anatolia Project, which involves the construction of 22 dams along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and which will dramatically affect the volume of water in the river system.

Like Iraq, Iran has criticised Turkey’s dam project, claiming that it will worsen drought conditions and trigger a major environmental catastrophe in Iran by decreasing water flow by 56% in a river system that’s important to both Iraq and Iran.

Turkey’s dam project isn’t the only regional project that’s threatening Iran’s water security. Afghanistan’s project to build a dam on the Harirud River, which flows from Herat Province into Iran and Turkmenistan, will reduce Iran’s share of the river’s water supply from 30% to 13%. The dam will have a significant impact on Mashhad, Iran’s second largest city, which relies on the river for its water supply. Afghanistan is also pursuing dam-building projects on the Helmand River, which will reduce the water flow into Iran’s Sistan and Baluchistan provinces, both of which are economically poor and already prone to drought and instability.

Given that the effects of these projects are yet to be felt, it’s troubling that water shortages are already fuelling protests in Iran. Since early 2018, grievances over water shortages have led to protests around Isfahan and across eastern Iran. And parallels are being drawn between the current water crisis and drought in Iran and the pre-war situation in Syria, with researchers linking drought to the outbreak of the conflict in Syria.

It’s not surprising that water security is emerging as a flashpoint for conflict between Iran and its neighbours. Iran has acknowledged that water security needs to be addressed cooperatively, but there are signs that there’s more momentum towards conflict than cooperation. For example, Afghanistan has accused Iran of arming and training Taliban groups to sabotage dam and hydro power projects in western and southern Afghanistan.

The reasons for Iran’s water security predicament are varied, and much of the blame can be directed at the government. Population growth, an inefficient and corrupt agricultural sector, and mismanagement of water resources have all combined to undermine Iran’s already fragile water resources.

Iran’s government is alert to the unfolding water crisis—in 2016, former agriculture minister Issa Kalantari noted that if farming practices didn’t change and water consumption for agriculture remained at current levels, up to 50 million people in Iran’s eastern and southern areas would be forced to migrate.

Iran’s parlous water supply situation is also inextricably linked to the broader question of food security. Despite the fact that Iran uses 92% of its water supply for agriculture, it is still reliant on food imports, which account for approximately 34% of its food requirements.

It’s not clear whether Iran has the political will or capacity to implement solutions. The Rouhani government has taken some specific steps to build expertise in water management. Imperial College London’s water conservation expert Kaveh Madani was recruited as deputy head of the Department of the Environment to tackle Iran’s water challenges. However, Madani fled Iran after he was targeted by hardliners. The arrest of 40 environmentalists on spying charges by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRCG) also had a chilling effect on environmental reform.

Even if resistance to reform in the IRCG and other hardline groups could be overcome, the cost of new technologies, conservation practices and other measures to meet projected water needs in 2050 could be as high as US$3 billion a year. Iran will also need to normalise its relations with neighbours, particularly Turkey, Iraq and Afghanistan, if it hopes to secure critical water supply from them through water management agreements.

The great spoiler in all of this is the United States. The doubling down of the Trump administration on the question of regime change in Iran, combined with the re-introduction of punitive sanctions against Iran, dramatically diminishes the prospects for any serious water reform in Iran. The US—in welcoming and even encouraging anti-government protests in Iran—is ignoring the fact that these protests are also often about something much more fundamental than corruption and economic hardship. The re-imposition of broad-based sanctions will also likely limit Iran’s ability to leverage external technical expertise and technologies relevant to best practice in water conservation, and potentially even its capacity to meet a growing shortfall in food supply.

Iran’s water security crisis is a genuine existential threat. If it’s not addressed, Iran may follow Nigeria, Syria and Somalia down the path to civil unrest, mass migration, insurgency or even civil war. It is hard to believe that even the Trump administration would see that as a good outcome.

Israeli and Arab leaders have spent years warning of the rise of an Iranian-led Shia empire covering much of the Middle East. With Iran now linked to the Mediterranean through a land corridor that extends through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, many are claiming vindication. But fear of Iran as a regional hegemon is vastly overblown.

There is no denying that the Middle East is rife with localised conflict, often fuelled by rivalries among warlords. But a major conflagration is in no regional actor’s interest. This is particularly true for Iran, which is incapable of projecting conventional military power beyond its borders.

In fact, Iran’s nuclear program was intended to compensate for its conventional military weakness in a neighbourhood where it has more enemies than friends. Yet, by spurring the international community to impose crippling sanctions, Iran’s nuclear effort ended up undermining the country’s progress further, by impeding technological progress and military investment. Meanwhile, its enemies, particularly Israel and Saudi Arabia, which both have far larger military budgets, were acquiring the most advanced Western military technologies.

Given this weakness, Iran’s land corridor, which inspires so much fear in its regional neighbours, depends on unreliable local proxies, making it unsustainable. And that doesn’t even account for its vulnerability to American air strikes.

Iraq, a vital link in the corridor, was supposed to be Iran’s unconditional Shia fiefdom. But ending the dominance of the Popular Mobilization Forces (Hashd al-Shaabi), an Iran-sponsored umbrella of Shia militias, in areas vacated by the Islamic State (ISIS) is a top priority for Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who has the backing of Iraq’s supreme Shia authority, Ali al-Sistani.

The situation in Syria is more complicated, but not much more favourable to Iran, which, after years of propping up President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, has found that the real hegemon in the country is Russia. President Vladimir Putin knows that convincing the Sunni rebel groups to lay down their weapons as part of an effective peace agreement will be a lot more difficult if Iran retains a large presence in the country. Likewise, Assad knows that he cannot hope to build bridges with Syria’s Sunni majority if his regime is administering an Iranian protectorate.

Yet Iran’s biggest problems in Syria are the United States and Israel. The former has maintained its military presence in the country, even after having defeated ISIS, in order to prevent Iran from consolidating control. And Israel’s potent air force would never allow a meaningful Iranian military presence in Syria. Iran’s leaders know that risking a war there would leave their country’s nuclear infrastructure vulnerable.

Iran’s influence is also faltering in Lebanon. After years of service to the Assad dynasty, Hezbollah is now working to recover its domestic legitimacy, even pushing for the return of Saad Hariri, the Sunni leader of the anti-Iranian March 14 Alliance, to his post as prime minister. This reflects a strong desire to maintain some semblance of institutional order in Lebanon, and indicates that a war with Israel is no more in Hezbollah’s interests than it is in Iran’s.

To be sure, Iran, much like the Soviet Union, has long viewed expansion abroad as the best way to protect the revolution’s results at home. But, as both Soviet and Iranian experience has shown, failure to manage domestic challenges poses a greater threat to the regime’s legitimacy. While the future of Iran’s land corridor depends on its foreign proxies, the Islamic Republic’s future depends on its leaders’ capacity to deliver at home.

Yet Iran’s leaders seem to be placing their proxies above their citizens. Despite the failure of the 2015 nuclear deal to meet Iranians’ high economic expectations, the authorities continue to spend billions of dollars on the likes of Hezbollah, Hamas in Palestine, and the Houthis in Yemen. Iran has spent close to $10 billion in Syria alone to prop up Assad.

The resulting fiscal strain has forced Iran to slash some of the lavish subsidies that have long buttressed the regime’s popular support. Protests staged by mostly working-class young men against deep reductions in food and fuel subsidies quickly evolved into demonstrations against Iran’s theocracy, reflected in chants of ‘Death to Ali Khamenei’, the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader.

Three generations is a long time for any revolutionary utopia, whether Iran’s Islamic Republic or the Soviet Union, to survive, as citizens become increasingly disconnected from—and even sceptical of—the original cause. This is all the more true today, when digital technology has deepened the generational divide.

In the 1980s, in the face of a brutal assault by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Iranians rallied behind the regime to ensure their country’s survival. They will not submit to similar hardships today in the name of maintaining outposts in Syria and Yemen, or a land corridor to the Mediterranean. With about half of Iran’s population under the age of 30, and youth unemployment at around 25%, it should come as no surprise that some recent demonstrators chanted, ‘Give up on Syria! Think of us!’

Iran’s interest in avoiding all-out war should be good news for its enemies, which are not in a particularly strong position to manage further foreign military entanglements. Saudi Arabia, in particular, is facing difficult domestic reforms, including efforts to diversify its economy, while mired in its own military interventions in Syria and Yemen.

Iran can be a spoiler in the Middle East, but not a hegemon. To argue otherwise, as Israeli and Arab leaders are wont to do, merely makes more likely a horrifically bloody, destructive and destabilising conflict that all parties have a fundamental interest in avoiding.

Mohammed bin Salman, the young crown prince and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, has established two things beyond doubt since his father, King Salman, ascended the throne in 2015 and handed him the keys to the kingdom. He aims to end the House of Saud’s consensual model of an absolute monarchy with no absolute monarch and, instead, take all the reins of power. And he intends to power forward with social and economic reform in a kingdom established under theocratic tutelage, where change has traditionally been driven at speeds between slow and stop.

This is a breathtaking gamble by a headstrong and untried young prince, aged 32, who is seeking a new source of legitimacy by embodying the pent-up aspirations of a young people, two-thirds of whom are under 30.

At the beginning of November, only days after a so-called Davos in the Desert conference had brought global investors flocking to Riyadh, Prince Mohammed (or MbS, as he’s colloquially known) rolled the dice again by rounding up leading lights in the kingdom’s political and business elite. He ordered the detention of 11 princes, more than three dozen current and former ministers, and billionaires galore, packing them into the venue for the business summit—the capital’s regal Ritz Carlton hotel.

Among those caught in the crown prince’s gilded cage are Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the flamboyant multi-billionaire tycoon, and Prince Miteb bin Abdullah, minister and former chief of Saudi Arabia’s powerful National Guard. Also arrested was Sheikh Waleed al-Ibrahim, brother-in-law of the late King Fahd and billionaire media baron.

Billed as a crackdown on corruption, the MbS purge is political in two main senses.

First, ever since MbS deposed then crown prince Mohammed bin Nayef—his cousin and veteran interior minister—in a June palace coup, it was only a matter of time before he went after a just as powerful cousin: Miteb bin Abdullah, son of the late King Abdullah. Prince Miteb, 65, was a plausible rival for the throne, and his 100,000-strong and well-equipped National Guard, rooted in the kingdom’s intricate tribal networks, was the last remaining autonomous fief—another army MbS had to neutralise after seizing control of interior ministry forces this summer. Taking out Miteb has rekindled fevered speculation that King Salman, 82, will soon abdicate in favour of MbS, his favourite son.

Second, an anti-corruption swoop is profoundly populist, especially if MbS succeeds in separating the fabulously wealthy targets from big chunks of their assets.

Targeting an investor of global reach and renown such as Prince Alwaleed risks questions about the investment climate in Saudi Arabia, as Prince Mohammed pursues his much-trumpeted Vision 2030. This reform program aims to wean the kingdom off fast-diminishing hydrocarbon revenue, boost private investment and create what he hopes will become the world’s biggest sovereign wealth fund, built around the planned part-privatisation of Saudi Aramco, the state oil company.

A raid on the rich to top up a treasury crippled by falling oil prices may play well as Saudis accustomed to getting everything from jobs to houses from the state are being asked to accept austerity in place of cradle-to-grave welfare.

To populism at home MbS has added nationalism abroad—above all in the contest for regional hegemony between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran. As defence minister as well as economic tsar, Prince Mohammed has been pushing back against the Islamic Republic and its successful forging of a network of Iranian proxies from Baghdad to Beirut. But his hawkish foreign policy isn’t going well.

Saudi Arabia is still bogged down in Yemen after more than two years, against rag-tag Houthi rebels Riyadh could not deal with even before Iran and its allies gave them some support. His attempt to cripple the maverick and gas-rich emirate of Qatar with a blockade has had limited success and unsettled the Gulf’s investment climate.

Iran has won in Syria’s civil war and made new strides in Iraq as the Shia militias trained by its revolutionary guards help see off ISIS. MbS has now targeted Hezbollah, the Lebanese paramilitary force that serves as Tehran’s spearhead in this regional trial of strength. On the same day as the round-up in Riyadh, Saad Hariri, the Saudi-backed Lebanese prime minister, read out his resignation on Saudi TV—evidently under duress, now that MbS has decided to bring down a coalition in Beirut that includes and legitimises Hezbollah.

That move sent shockwaves through the region and was seen as reckless by European states anxious about a new conflict triggering more stampedes of refugees. But the crown prince may feel with some reason that he has the wind behind him, given President Donald Trump’s growing belligerence towards Iran, and Israel’s repeated threats that it will go to war to stop Iran and Hezbollah from establishing a permanent base in Syria and to destroy the Lebanese militia’s formidable and growing arsenal of rockets.

Yet the model the crown prince seems to be emulating is that of the United Arab Emirates of Mohammed bin Zayed, its crown prince, de facto ruler and MbS mentor.

That formula is to be: socially liberal, economically open, and firmly shut politically.

MbS has breathed fresh air into the stifling Saudi kingdom. He has defanged the notorious religious police, is chipping away at gender segregation and promoting mixed entertainment, and—in a move that must stick in the craw of the Wahhabi clerical establishment—will next year allow women to drive for the first time.

His next challenge—and arguably the biggest so far—will be to confront the entrenched power of these reactionary clerics, and above all seize back control from them of education. Saudi schools are stuck in a stew of rote learning and sectarian bigotry that cannot conceivably prepare young minds for either private enterprise or a stable society. MbS wants to build a more dynamic economy fired by private investment rather than dwindling oil revenue, yet his methods may be too arbitrary for investors to navigate. As he tries to jump-start the kingdom from the petro-paternalism of an absolute monarchy into a modern state, he seems to discern no link between pluralism and prosperity. His ambition is not in doubt. His judgement will be severely tested.