Mick Hartley

An interesting and somewhat depressing analysis from Michael J. Koplow, who looks at Trump's betrayal of the Kurds from an Israeli perspective:

Trump’s erratic swings and turn-on-a-dime foreign policy, embodied in their purest form by his Syria announcement, have introduced unprecedented uncertainty into American policy decisions. Two of the most valuable commodities in international relations are credibility and predictability, since they establish basic rules of the game that produce deterrence and lead to measured responses. Trump’s behavior means that neither allies nor foes can rely on any type of a predictable American response to certain actions, which in turn encourages risk-taking and independent – rather than coordinated – action.

In Israel’s case, this makes the prospect of conflict with Iran more likely. Leaving aside Netanyahu’s Iran deal miscalculation stemming from his misreading of Trump, where he assumed that lobbying Trump to exit the JCPOA would also result in eventual U.S. military action to contain Iran, it seems to now be clear to the Israeli government that it cannot and should not rely on the U.S. to deter Iranian aggression in any sphere. An Israeli preemptive attack on Iran is now likelier than at any point in the past, as even during the Obama administration the Netanyahu government was sufficiently convinced that there were circumstances in which the U.S. would take military action. On the Iranian side, the lesson that it will take from the Kurdish turnaround and from Trump’s dithering over whether and how to respond to the Iranian cruise missile attack on Saudi oil facilities is that it can be even more aggressively adventurous in targeting American allies and partners, including Israel. Perhaps that will be an overreaching misread and perhaps it won’t, but there is simply no way to tell given Trump’s behavior, which is what creates such a combustible and dangerous environment.

It also makes it more likely that Sunni states, which have been aligned with Israel in trying to balance against Iran under the assumption that ultimately the U.S. will not abandon them, will shift to bandwagoning with Iran in order to stave off Iranian aggression. After all, if the U.S. cannot be relied on to back up its allies and will instead abandon them at Trump’s whim, the calculus for how to deal with an Iranian threat will change. There are already reports that Saudi Arabia is rethinking its stance toward Iran and is looking to reach a rapprochement with the Islamic Republic, which if it happens will open the floodgates for other states to follow. This isn’t surprising in an environment where the wide perception is that the U.S. is trying its hardest to exit the Middle East.

The clear loser in all of this will be Israel, not only because it will be alone in countering Iran but because it will also quickly lead to the end of the much heralded but overhyped development of quiet ties between Israel and Gulf states. It has been the large and looming presence of the U.S. standing behind Israel and Arab states that has given them the ability to present a united front against Iran, and while Israel is always going to see Iran as a threat so long as the ayatollahs’ regime is in power, Arab states’ balancing behavior is far more contingent on the presumption of reliable U.S. backing. Those close ties that Israel has so often touted are now in precipitous danger.