Mick Hartley

An interesting overview of the latest Middle East state of play from Jonathan Spyer in the latest Fathom. Concerns have been voiced that the anti-Iran alliance of Arab states alongside Israel may be crumbling, as American involvement declines and a number of states, including Saudi Arabia, are now talking to Tehran. Spyer disagrees – It’s too soon to write the obituary of the anti-Iran alliance in the Middle East:

[T]he notion of a collapse of a pro-Western alliance in the region in the wake of a US withdrawal is an exaggeration. But it derives to a degree from an earlier exaggeration in the opposite direction. The pro-Western alliance in the region was always a complex and somewhat fragile arrangement. Israel and the UAE, for example, while seeing a list of threats in common, have always prioritised different items on this list. For Israel, the Iranian threat is deemed paramount, the challenge of the Iranian nuclear programme front and center, and all other issues secondary. For the UAE, by contrast, the challenge of MB-style Sunni political Islam, and indeed the regional ambitions of Turkey itself and its alliance with Qatar, constituted threats of no less urgency to the Iranian challenge. The UAE also engages in a burgeoning trade relationship with Iran (it is Iran’s second largest trading partner, after China).

But these differences of emphasis do not detract from the long list of areas of commonality and shared concern between Israel, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt, as the core members of this alliance: in essence, this remains an alliance of status quo states, broadly aligned with the West, and hostile to political Islam, in both its Shia (Iran led bloc) and Sunni (Turkey led bloc, Salafis) forms.

It should be noted that while there is undoubtedly a sense of flux in the strategic picture of the region at present, deriving from the US change of focus, in the medium to long term this is likely to provide an additional advantage for Israel. Israel is the only country within this group of states that is able to provide a credible military threat against Iran, and specifically against the Iranian nuclear programme. It is becoming increasingly apparent to regional powers that the US, despite occasional statements by senior officials, has no intention of laying down a serious military threat to the Iranians, in the event that the current push towards a nuclear weapons capacity continues. In the absence of this threat, there is a risk that Teheran may see no disincentive toward pushing on to a threshold nuclear weapons capacity, while continuing in its efforts to seed proxies and exploit them for both political and military purposes throughout the region.

Only Israel can provide such a ‘plan B’. This is not, of course, to underestimate the very serious apparent limitations to Israeli options in this regard. A single operation to destroy the Iranian nuclear programme, of the type mounted against Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007 is probably not possible vis a vis the Iranian programme, because of its spread out and well defended nature. But Israel, in its current campaign against Iranian efforts in Syria, Lebanon and sometimes also Iraq, is demonstrating currently the only real hard power pushback to Iranian attempts at regional domination. The UAE, Saudi Arabia and other countries threatened by the prospect of Iranian hegemony, are likely to find an obvious utility in the maintenance of this pushback, particularly in a situation where an alternative hard power deterrent element is not available.

In this regard, it should be noted that while it is often stated that Iran has, through its use of proxies, succeeded in partially ‘surrounding’ Israel – through its control or partial control of proxies in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq – it is also the case that Israel appears to be following a diplomatic strategy which seeks similarly to surround Iran. This is attempted not, as in the Iranian case, by organising proxies, but rather by seeking alliance and closer relations with countries in close proximity to Iran. Such countries include Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and, notably, Azerbaijan, to Iran’s north.

The strategic contest between Iran and its allies, and the loose, interests-based alliance of West-aligned countries is thus set to continue in the Middle East. The contest is based on concrete issues, and on the impossibility for West-aligned countries of accommodating Iranian ambitions, because of the extent and scope of those ambitions – both in the nuclear field, in Iran’s efforts to subvert and dominate Arab states, and in its ambitions to destroy Israel. It is important to understand the deep rationale behind this process, and not to be caught up by momentary developments into concluding either that the anti-Iran alliance is about to break up, or, conversely, that it has greater depth, solidity and potential than it in fact possesses.