www.agsiw.org/the-hamas-israel-conflict-may-upend-saudi-and-u-s-calculations/

Washington and Riyadh will be watching the next steps before reassessing the potential for a triangular agreement with Israel.

Hamas’ ruthless and audacious killing spree in southern Israel, which is provoking the Israeli wrath it sought, has frozen Washington’s efforts to craft a triangular deal with Saudi Arabia and Israel predicated on the two states normalizing diplomatic relations. From a Saudi perspective, negotiations cannot proceed because this upheaval involves too many open-ended questions. It is not surprising, therefore, that Saudi Arabia has publicly said that it has frozen negotiationsover a potential triangular agreement with the United States and Israel. How long and deep that freeze will be depends entirely on events that will be played out in the coming days and weeks.

Strategic calculations will depend on an understanding of the regional diplomatic, strategic, and military equation and the impact of recent events on public opinion in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab countries, the broader Arab world, and even Muslim-majority countries globally. So, likely nothing will be done until Riyadh has a sense of the fundamental contours of the conflict and its probable implications. Saudi, and even U.S., calculations and policy adjustments will be shaped by what happens next. There are three main potential scenarios that can be extrapolated now, although other developments may emerge over time.

Scenario 1: Limited Conflict in Gaza

By engaging in spectacular terrorist overreach, Hamas intended to outrage Israel and provoke it into an emotional overreaction. Historically, this is the strategic intention behind such spectacular overkill by guerrilla organizations that seek to unnerve and destabilize the dominant power and goad it into irrational acts that amount to far worse self-harm than the insurgency could possibly inflict. One example painfully familiar to Americans is the al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001, which culminated in the colossal miscalculation of invading Iraq in 2003. Al-Qaeda could not be sure what the U.S. overreaction might be, but Osama bin Laden and his cohorts were confident that the United States would lash out in rage and severely damage its own interests.

There is no doubt that Hamas was seeking to lure Israel into a trap by compelling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israel Defense Forces into a ground attack inside the city, towns, and refugee camps of Gaza. Hamas, with its foreign backers, would not have so meticulously planned the attack on southern Israel without also assiduously preparing to meet the Israeli counterattack on the ground in Gaza. Israeli forces are undoubtedly going to encounter stiff defenses, although how effective both sides will prove remains to be seen.

Hamas was also counting on Israel to act with disregard to civilian suffering and deaths. Israel has already obliged, attacking many civilian targets and killing more than 2,700 Palestinians, most of them civilians. Israel has also ordered over one million Palestinian civilians to evacuate northern Gaza, even though these masses of impoverished people have nowhere to go. The stage appears set for a massive Israeli retaliation involving incredible damage to the infrastructure that makes life possible in Gaza and could involve tens of thousands of civilian deaths. If Israel is serious about preventing the return of Hamas rule in Gaza, then it also must be contemplating a prolonged occupation of the territory, because there is no obvious alternative. This will undoubtedly be met with an organized insurgency that will gain potency and steam over time. It is also not clear when Israel would allow these northern Gaza residents, ordered to evacuate to the south, to return to their homes.

This “limited” scenario, in which the fighting is contained to Gaza and possibly parts of southern Israel, still poses serious challenges to Saudi strategic planning. Saudi leaders will carefully consider domestic political and regional reputational questions, and decision making will therefore depend on Saudi and other Arab perceptions of Israel and Hamas as well as other Palestinians. If the fighting is contained, Israel acts with relative restraint and avoids a prolonged direct occupation of Gaza, and the evacuated Palestinians in Gaza are eventually allowed to return to their homes in the north, it’s possible that progress could resume on the triangular agreement Washington was seeking.

That depends on many factors, but the Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization could play a significant role in facilitating a quiet resumption of that process, although it might have to be delayed into a second term of President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s administration, assuming he is reelected. Contrary to much public opinion, Saudi Arabia is not negotiating with Israel about Palestine or the Palestinians, although Saudi support for Palestinian statehood and human rights persists.

Instead, Saudi Arabia is negotiating with Washington over bilateral issues, especially a new defense agreement. Washington is negotiating with Israel over what has been dubbed the “significant Palestinian component,” which will have to satisfy Saudi Arabia and should be minimally acceptable to the Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization. But one of the domestic political aims of the Hamas attack on southern Israel was to prevent a political and financial windfall, no matter how insufficient from a national perspective, to Hamas’ arch rivals in the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization by making the triangular agreement impossible.

Israeli restraint and a relatively quick withdrawal from Gaza, even involving swallowing the bitter pill of Hamas emerging from the rubble to declare victory, is almost certainly in the interests of Saudi Arabia and the United States. It’s also in Israel’s interest, because the alternative is a prolonged and bloody direct occupation of the streets of Gaza, precisely what Hamas hopes to provoke. Ironically, Hamas’ killing spree in southern Israel may raise the price of the Palestinian component for Israel, since strengthening Fatah would be an obvious response by Saudi Arabia, the United States, and even Israel to the attack.

Moreover, Saudi policymakers may feel that Hamas and its Iranian backers were attempting to assert a kind of veto over their own decision making and national security policy, in particular the possible three-way deal being pursued by the Biden administration. There may be a real desire in Riyadh, especially if the conflict can be limited, to decline to accept such a veto and instead to act independent of these pressures. That could limit Palestinian gains through any significant Palestinian component to a deal, although both Riyadh and Washington would still have incentives to push for significant gains for Hamas’ Palestinian rivals in the West Bank. Saudi analyst Mohammed Alyahya noted in a conversation that the significant Palestinian component “is part and parcel of the Saudi national security component of any agreement with Israel and the United States.”

Scenario 2: Conflict Spreads to the West Bank and East Jerusalem

One of the primary immediate goals of the Hamas attack is for the violence to spread into the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem and the holy places there. The Al-Aqsa Mosque, in particular, is a religious icon that tugs at the heartstrings of Muslims worldwide in a way that nothing in Gaza can. From the outset, Hamas branded the attack “The Al-Aqsa Deluge,” marketing the violence against southern Israel as somehow connected to the protection of the mosque and Haram al-Sharif, or Temple Mount. Hamas called for a “day of rage” the Friday after the attack, urging Palestinians and other Muslims to express anger over Israeli provocations regarding Muslim holy places. In the event, the day passed relatively quietly, but Fridays to come are another matter.

Nothing discomfits and complicates matters for Gulf Arab countries seeking to deal with Israel more than emotive and religiously resonant violence in and around the Al-Aqsa Mosque or anywhere in Jerusalem. Saudi concern over these highly emotive issues is demonstrated by the most recent Friday sermon, on the “day of rage,” at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, where the preacher emotionally begged God to “liberate the Al-Aqsa mosque” and “support our brothers in Palestine.”

None of that means that what has already occurred or is yet to come in Gaza has precluded Saudi Arabia’s ability to make a triangular deal with the United States and Israel. But if there is significant fighting in and around Jerusalem’s holy places, especially the Al-Aqsa Mosque, that is likely to constrict Saudi wiggle room and throw negotiations into a deep freeze that will be difficult to thaw.

Scenario 3: The Conflict Spreads to Hezbollah and Lebanon

The most dangerous scenario involves the potential entry of Hezbollah into the conflict. At the moment, this does not seem imminent or likely. Given the parlous socioeconomic and political circumstances in Lebanon, Hezbollah presently has much more to lose than to gain from a war with Israel. And Iran probably wishes to retain Hezbollah as a potent deterrent against Israeli strikes aimed at its nuclear facilities or other targets inside Iran. It appears to make little sense for Tehran to risk wasting such a powerful deterrent force on an ultimately marginal theater and strategic consideration such as Gaza.

Yet there are numerous scenarios in which Hezbollah may feel compelled to act or Iran may pressure its dependent client in Lebanon to bring its potent military and missile arsenal into play. If unrest spreads into occupied East Jerusalem and involves the Al-Aqsa Mosque, for example, Hezbollah may feel that acting in the name of “Al-Quds al-Sharif” (Holy Jerusalem) suddenly offers more benefits than costs. Iran may reach the same conclusion and may well have the leverage over Hezbollah to compel it into action despite its own potential doubts. Alternatively, smaller groups in Lebanon may act against Israel, prompting Israeli retaliation inside Lebanon, which could then force Hezbollah’s hand. There are a number of other scenarios, none of them particularly far-fetched, that could bring Hezbollah into the current conflict.

This is potentially explosive. Hezbollah has developed into a far more potent nonstate fighting force than Hamas. Hezbollah has been battle hardened by decades of insurgency against Israeli occupation and, more recently, deep engagement in the brutal war in Syria in which the group was one of the main forces that came to the rescue of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It has a vast missile and rocket arsenal capable of striking anywhere inside Israel with potentially devastating effects. Israeli military and intelligence leaders do not underestimate the potency of Hezbollah as they did that of Hamas. Hezbollah, Iran, and Israel all have ample reasons to wish to avoid adding the Lebanese militant group to the fray. Yet it’s not hard to see how those calculations could change, and Hezbollah could open a second front to Israel’s north.

Israel also potentially faces another front in Syria adjacent to the Golan Heights, which it annexed with apparent U.S. acquiescence during the administration of former President Donald J. Trump, and additional ones in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, and even from pro-Iranian militia groups in Iraq. The Wall Street Journal, followed by The New York Times, reported that Iranian expeditionary commanders and Hezbollah officials met with Hamas leaders in Beirut several times over the past year to plan and approve the attack on southern Israel, echoing much earlier reports about such cooperation in the Arabic-language Lebanese media. U.S. and Israeli senior military commanders and civilian officials have stated they do not have intelligence demonstrating this link, although most believe years of Iranian support for Hamas make Tehran generally complicit.

Should Israel find itself in a protracted multifront war with nonstate pro-Iranian groups on all sides, or even simply to the north and south, Israel’s calculations may change dramatically. Israel might decide that it is foolish to combat Iranian client groups in the Arab world while the government it is convinced is the author of this predicament sits safely in Tehran. In short, if the cascading series of events Hamas was hoping to set in motion with its attack against Israel is taken to its logical conclusion, Israel might end up striking Iran, possibly at its nuclear facilities or other sensitive targets.

At that point, Iran can be expected to retaliate not merely through its already engaged proxies but directly itself, and it might not stop at Israeli targets but hit U.S. ones or even those of Gulf Arab countries. If the Gaza conflict cannot be contained and instead spirals out of the control of all parties, it has within it the seeds of unparalleled regional conflagration. It is a Saudi, and indeed U.S., imperative to prevent anything like this from taking place, but there may not be much that Riyadh and Washington can do if the combatants submit to a process of continuous escalation with little or no restraint.

This scenario is so dramatic that it would have highly unpredictable effects on Saudi calculations regarding ties with Israel. It may raise the stakes to the extent that the very idea of such open cooperation would become untenable. Or, conversely, it may render regional circumstances so dangerous that Saudi Arabia concludes that it needs closer ties not only to Washington but also even Israel. At that point, negotiations could proceed very quickly, albeit in a highly volatile and unpredictable regional landscape.

From the Saudi point of view, with the situation as it exists now, a triangular agreement with Washington and Israel is still possible. Predicated on the normalization of ties with Israel, a new defense agreement with Washington would be ratified by the Senate and therefore protected from foreign policy shifts created by electoral changes in the White House. On the other hand, volatile circumstances are in place for potential dramatic developments that could make progress on such an agreement politically untenable, diplomatically too costly, and strategically unwise.

Both Riyadh and Washington will be watching with bated breath to see what Israel chooses to do following Hamas’ extreme provocation in southern Israel and the responses of various neighboring powers, especially Iran’s network of potent substate actors. The fate of the potential triangular agreement hangs delicately in the balance, most profoundly threatened by a potential wider regional conflict.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/10/israel-hamas-war-iran-trap/675628/

Storming into Gaza will fulfill Hamas’s wish.

It’s a trap. Hamas’s ruthless and spectacular attack on southern Israel last Saturday was many things: an atrocity, a display of militant ingenuity, and a demonstration of the weakness of Israeli intelligence and defenses. Israel and the Palestinians have a long history of brutality against each other, but the Hamas killing spree outdoes anything since Israeli-controlled Christian militias massacred unarmed Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps outside of Beirut in 1982. It may even have been the single most brutal act by either side in the 100-year-old conflict. But above all, it was intended as a trap—one that Israel appears about to fall into.

Hamas’s leaders and their Iranian backers have a conscious strategy. Like almost all other acts of spectacularly bloodthirsty terrorism, Hamas’s assault on southern Israel was designed to provoke an emotional and equally or even more outrageous response by the targeted society. Hamas and Iran are attempting to goad the Israelis into Gaza for a prolonged confrontation—which is to say that the intended effect is precisely the ground assault Israel is now preparing in order to root out and destroy Hamas as an organization, kill its cadres and leadership, and destroy as much of its infrastructure and equipment as possible.

Hamas surely would not have meticulously planned its audacious assault without also extensively planning a response to the hoped-for Israeli counterattack on the ground. The Israeli military will likely encounter a determined insurgency in Gaza. After all, Israel has had control of the land strip from the outside, but not on the inside. Israeli dominion over Gaza’s coastal waters, airspace, electromagnetic spectrum, and all but one of its crossings, including the only one capable of handling goods, has made Gaza a virtual open-air prison—run by particularly vicious inmates but surrounded and contained on all sides by the guards.

Hamas evidently decided to destroy that status quo, which was no longer serving its interests. The Islamist group also hopes to seize control of the Palestinian national movement from its secular Fatah rivals, who dominate the Palestinian Authority and, more important, the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is the internationally recognized representative of the Palestinian people. Hamas has never been a part of the PLO, in large measure because it is unwilling to accept the PLO’s treaty agreements with Israel. The most notable among these is the Oslo Accords, which included recognition of Israel by Palestinians but no Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state or a Palestinian right to statehood.

Hamas is attempting to seal the fate of Fatah, and maneuver to eventually take over the PLO and its international diplomatic presence, including UN observer-state status and embassies around the world. By taking the battle directly into Israel, claiming to be defending Muslim holy places in Jerusalem by branding the attack the “Al-Aqsa Deluge,” and hopefully breaking the Israeli siege of Gaza, Hamas seeks to belittle Fatah and demonstrate the primacy of its policy of unrestrained armed struggle over the PLO’s careful diplomacy.

Moreover, Hamas and its Iranian patrons want to block the diplomatic-normalization agreement that the United States has been brokering between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Such a deal poses a danger to Hamas because the benefits of its “significant Palestinian component” would have accrued to Fatah in the West Bank, at Hamas’s expense. For Iran, the agreement would be a major strategic setback. Should Israel, the most potent U.S. military partner in the region, and Saudi Arabia, Washington’s most financially powerful and religiously influential one, normalize and build cooperation, Tehran would face an integrated pro-American camp. American partners, including the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, and Jordan, would effectively ring the Arabian Peninsula, securing control of the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, and the Persian Gulf through their three crucial maritime choke points: the Suez Canal, the Bab el-Mandab Strait, and the Straits of Hormuz. Saudi-Israeli normalization would largely block Iran’s regional aspirations in the short run and Chinese ambitions in the more distant future.

So, Hamas for domestic Palestinian reasons and Iran for regional strategic ones decided to set off an earthquake that would at least postpone such a reckoning. Iran and Hamas are counting on Israel to attack Gaza with such ferocity that the international sympathy of the past week toward Israel, even in the Arab world, evaporates quickly and is replaced by outrage at the suffering inflicted on the 2 million residents of Gaza. Those civilians have already been cut off from electricity, water, food, and medicine, all of which are controlled by Israel. Existing supplies will quickly dwindle as Gaza and its inhabitants are pounded from the air. Israel appears prepared to inflict many thousands of civilian casualties, if not more. It has adhered to a doctrine of disproportionality for deterrence predating the founding of the state: Jewish militias embraced it when dealing with the Arabs in Mandatory Palestine, and at no stage since have more Jewish civilians been killed than Palestinian ones, with the ratio usually closer to 10 to 1 than 2 to 1.

Israel appears poised to fulfill Hamas’s intentions. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed retaliation that will “reverberate for generations” among Israel’s adversaries. The Israeli general Ghassan Aliyan warned, “You wanted hell—you will get hell.” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared, “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.” None of these speakers made any effort to distinguish between Hamas militants and the 2 million Palestinian civilians in Gaza. The “human animals” comment is telling. For decades, and especially in recent years, the people of Gaza have indeed been treated like animals. Perhaps not surprisingly, guerrillas emerging from their ranks indeed acted like animals when they attacked southern Israel. So now Israel will triple-down on the dehumanization and collective punishment of all of these “human animals.” Tehran couldn’t ask for more.

Hamas and Iran hope that Israel will refuse to return to the status quo ante and will instead institute a prolonged ground occupation of Gaza, declaring that Hamas can no longer be allowed to pose such a threat. But Gaza, they trust, will be a slaughterhouse for Israeli soldiers, both during the immediate incursion and over time as the anticipated insurgency gains its footing.

Israel’s apparent eagerness to fall into this trap is understandable, and indeed predictable, which is why Hamas was confident in laying it. Outrageous overreach by terrorists typically aims to provoke overreach. Washington and other friends of Israel who are now seized with sympathy should immediately caution Israel not to make this blunder. If Israel instead exercises restraint, however difficult doing so might be both politically and emotionally, it can thwart the goals of Hamas and its Iranian sponsors. Restraint would go a long way toward ensuring that the diplomatic opening with Saudi Arabia continues to move forward, dealing a major blow to local revisionist powers, such as Iran, and global ones, such as China and Russia, that wish to supplant a rules-based order with one based on “Might makes right.”

Unfortunately, in the efforts to eliminate Hamas, which cannot be done by force, and to ensure that such a threat can never be allowed to reemerge, which is equally impossible so long as the occupation continues, Israel seems ready to jump right into the briar patch.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/does-hamas-care-what-happens-to-palestinians-in-gaza?preview=true

After the group stormed southern Israel in a brutal assault last week, what impact does it have on its popularity among Palestinians?

On Friday, October 6, the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a daring, brutal and highly effective attack on southern Israel. Easily breaching supposedly impenetrable Israeli defenses and encountering little Israeli military resistance, Hamas beseiged numerous communities and killed at least 800 Israelis, most of them civilians. They spirited dozens of military prisoners and civilian hostages into Gaza on motorcycles, in golf carts and even on foot. It was the most devastating surprise assault in Israel in over 50 years and unprecedented in its impact on its sense of stability and security.

Hamas is the paramilitary wing of the Muslim Brotherhood among Palestinians, formed in 1987 as grassroots Palestinian organizations led a spontaneous uprising against Israeli occupation that focused on protests and stone-throwing. In contrast to that grassroots uprising and the diplomatic strategy of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) that had already decided to seek a two-state peace agreement with Israel, the Brotherhood in Gaza created Hamas to pursue a religiously-sanctioned armed struggle against Israel.

Hamas proved popular in Gaza, which had been highly influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood during Egypt’s rule of the Strip between 1948-1967. Cairo had allowed some Egyptian Muslim Brothers to operate in the Palestinian territory it controlled as a kind of safety valve while cracking down on it inside Egypt itself. So, the cultural groundwork for Hamas’ militancy and socially reactionary political agenda already existed inside Gaza. But it proved a harder sell among Palestinians more broadly.

Hamas quickly discovered that it could strengthen its political foothold among Palestinians by yoking its non-compelling social agenda with an uncompromising armed struggle against Israel. As the PLO’s diplomatic agenda appeared to bear fruit with the 1993 Oslo Accords and with the establishment of Palestinian self-rule in populated enclaves of the West Bank and in Gaza, Hamas increasingly turned to violence. But the Islamists continued to play second fiddle to the secular party Fatah which dominates the PLO and came to control the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Hamas’ big break came with the brutal second intifada–or uprising–which began after the failure of the 2000 Camp David peace talks summit. By the fall of 2000, although PLO negotiations with Israel were continuing, Hamas began introducing both religious themes into the “Al-Aqsa intifada,” forcing Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to use such religious terminology that was very foreign to the PLO. Hamas began a series of brutally effective suicide bombings against Israeli targets that proved the main means through which Palestinians were able to take the conflict into Israel and remind ordinary Israelis that they were at war with their subject populations

The second intifada radicalized both Israelis and Palestinians to an unprecedented degree, destroying the Israeli “peace camp” and its Palestinian equivalent. While Israelis turned to the extreme right, electing Ariel Sharon, Hamas rose in popularity and became a real competitor, for the first time, against their secular rivals. In the two Palestinian elections following the death of Arafat, Hamas lost the presidency decisively both times, but they and their allied candidates performed well in both parliamentary votes.

In 2007, Hamas brutally expelled Fatah cadres from Gaza and the PA drove Hamas members either underground or out of the West Bank. That split between Palestinians continues to this day, hobbling the national movement, and no election has been held since. Both groups have appeared content to rule in their respective fiefdoms, at least until last Friday.

Hamas’ popularity is hard to gauge. Like other Arab Islamist groups, they tend to do better in legislative elections than all-or-nothing presidential balloting. It’s likely that something like 25-35% of Palestinians are sympathetic to their Islamist social agenda. In parliamentary elections, they been able to add another 10% or so that seems to sympathize with their “armed struggle until victory” rhetoric or wanted to protest Fatah corruption and mismanagement.

It’s hard to speculate about the impact of Friday’s assault on southern Israel for Hamas’ popularity; they have clearly grabbed for the mantle of national leadership. While Palestinians brace themselves for Israel’s doctrinally disproportionate retaliation, there is also a good deal of rallying around the flag.

There is no way of discerning how many Palestinians approve of Hamas’ brutality, but there is no doubt many will agree that Israel brought the calamity upon itself. Israelis lulled themselves into a false sense of security, believing that while unaffiliated armed youth groups like the “lion’s den” gang in the West Bank posed a limited new security headache, the situation in both Gaza and the West Bank was basically under control. Israelis assumed they were capable of casually denying millions of Palestinians both citizenship and a state of their own, keeping them stateless, disenfranchised and under military occupation for the past 60 years with no end in sight.

Israelis are now awakened to the fact that they are still in a brutal and existential conflict with the Palestinians. The Palestinians living under occupation in Gaza, which Israel rules from the outside, controlling the coastal waters, the airspace, the electromagnetic spectrum and all of the crossings, except one small crossing controlled by Egypt, have been living in a kind of open-air prison run by especially vicious inmates for two decades. Palestinians in the West Bank also live daily lives in which they can never avoid the rule of a hostile foreign military. The occupation is its own form of grinding violence, and the extreme ethnic discrimination Israel practices in the West Bank has no analog anywhere in the contemporary world.

Yet most Israelis have been able to ignore the occupation as it intensifies, setting the stage for potential large-scale annexation in the West Bank, and likely mass expulsions. They’ve had numerous recent elections in which the occupation went effectively unmentioned while the price of cottage cheese was a hot button issue.

Even in the recent brouhaha over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “judicial overhaul” self-coup against Israel’s “Jewish democracy,” the inspiring protest movement similarly ignored the occupation. For many Palestinians, the harsh authoritarianism Israel has imposed on them in the occupied territories was coming home. How could Israel’s “Jewish democracy” remain untainted by its remarkably repressive regime against a captive people?

With bodies littering the streets of southern Israel and dozens spirited off to Gaza to serve as bargaining chips or human shields (two atrocious practices routinely employed in recent decades by the Israeli military), Israelis have been brutally jolted awake. Their self-induced slumber is over.

This awakening will be welcomed by Palestinians, even if they disapprove heartily of the tactics Hamas employed in the butchery. And despite anxiety about Israel’s response, Hamas’ popularity has probably soared. There is a typical rally-around-the-flag effect on both sides. But it’s by no means guaranteed that Hamas will emerge with greater popularity.

After its last major war with Israel in 2006, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah felt compelled to apologize on Lebanese TV and claim he had not anticipated the intensity of Israel’s response. He even said he wouldn’t have authorized the July 11 attack on Israeli soldiers at the Israel-Lebanon border if he had understood the likely outcome. It was absurd, given the Israeli military’s deep attachment to the doctrine of disproportionate retaliation (which even predates the state of Israel), but it was a measure of how damaging the outcome of the war had been to Hezbollah’s reputation in Lebanon.

Hamas is unlikely to ever apologize, but it might suffer a similar backlash depending on what happens. The biggest mistake Israel could make would be directly re-occupying the Gaza Strip. That might be tempting under the rubric of not allowing Hamas to continue to run the territory and pose the threat of a repetition of the attack. But it would create a virtual abattoir for Israeli conscripts, who would be picked off by guerrilla forces in Gaza, most notably a resurgent Hamas.

It might be galling for Israel to see Hamas emerge from the rubble and proclaim victory. But as long as there is an occupation, Hamas and more extreme groups will continue to find a constituency for their extremism. The only entity that can possibly control such militancy is a Palestinian state.

Yet not only has Israel never recognized the Palestinian right to a state, let alone Palestinian statehood, since the failure of the Camp David summit in 2000 it has been moving steadily to lay the groundwork for annexation. The annexation movement will undoubtedly point to the recent attacks as necessitating annexation plus the expulsion of Palestinians from key areas in the West Bank, all as a “sad necessity.”

While Israel goes to war with Hamas in Gaza, it’s working overtime to strengthen it politically. Israel’s actions in the coming days will determine whether the attack on southern Israel increases Hamas’ popularity. Unfortunately, Israel appears to be preparing to fall into the trap that has been set for it by preparing a land invasion of Gaza that will probably be followed by a resumed direct occupation, at least for the time.

That will almost certainly prove a tragedy for all parties–except Hamas and Iran.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2023/10/08/has-hamas-ended-bidens-bid-for-a-saudi-israel-deal/

The short answer is no, but many stars will need to align before negotiations can resume.

On Friday morning, the Biden administration awoke to the fact that a massive attack on southern Israel by Hamas had probably demolished its ambitious efforts to reshape the Middle Eastern strategic landscape. US officials were amazed that Israel was caught by surprise, despite the intense surveillance and human and signals intelligence that tracks activity in the Gaza Strip.

For now, the game-changing and increasingly plausible effort to redraw the Middle Eastern strategic landscape by brokering Saudi-Israeli normalisation, and strengthen the US hand against Iran in the immediate term and China in the long term is, at the very least, on hold. It could be the case that Tehran even strongly encouraged Hamas to launch the offensive precisely to sabotage a Saudi-Israeli rapprochement.

Israel has vowed to respond with crushing blows against Hamas, which has apparently seized dozens of Israeli hostages. So the likelihood is a prolonged military campaign with little restraint by Israel’s powerful military to kill as many Hamas leaders, militants and supporters, and destroy as much of its infrastructure and equipment, as possible.

The track record of powerful militaries taking on much weaker guerrilla forces in smaller territories is replete with a chronic inability to prevent huge civilian casualties and, typically, massacres, whether intended or accidental. The Israeli military has undertaken numerous operations of this kind, mainly in Lebanon and Gaza. Israelis will probably feel less compunction than ever about Palestinian civilian casualties, given the scale and intensity of the Hamas attack. But others, especially the Arab world, will be enraged and appalled, potentially inhibiting Saudi normalization with Israel.

The Saudi government’s initial statement called on all sides to show restraint but also cited Riyadh’s “repeated warnings of the dangers of the explosion of the situation as a result of the continuation of the occupation, the deprivation of the Palestinian people of their legitimate rights and the repetition of systematic provocations”. That language, in particular, caused considerable consternation among several key Biden administration officials.

One of the goals of the attack, already at least partially successful, is surely to drive a wedge between Riyadh and Washington, because there remains a fundamental difference between them regarding the occupation and the Palestinians, in policy but even more in attitude.

The instinct of Saudi leaders, cognisant of not only their pro-Palestinian domestic audience, but also their country’s role as a regional Arab and global Muslim leader, is to never lose sight of Palestinian rights and grievances. US politicians, on the other hand, tend to compete over who can be more pro-Israel, especially when Israelis are being killed.

Indeed, former president Donald Trump and several other Republican presidential candidates sought to directly blame the Biden administration for the Hamas attack by pointing to Mr Biden’s recent decision to unfreeze $6 billion in South Korean payments for Iranian oil in order to secure the release of Americans being held hostage by Iran. Mr Trump falsely described this money as “American taxpayer dollars” that “helped fund the attacks”.

In reality, the South Korean money was transferred to a third-party account in Qatar and can only be used for humanitarian purposes. Moreover, none of it has yet been spent. Nonetheless, his Republican opponents will seek to pummel Mr Biden for somehow being responsible for the Hamas attack on Israel, if nothing else because they allege he has created an atmosphere of American “weakness”.

The future of Mr Biden’s triangular normalisation initiative depends on Israel’s response to the attack. Given the scale of the assault and the radical failure of Israeli security measures regarding Gaza, a return to the prevailing status quo in Gaza may not be acceptable to most Israelis. But the alternative may mean the direct reoccupation of all or much of Gaza.

Hamas and its Iranian backers are undoubtedly hoping the violence spreads to the West Bank and, especially, occupied East Jerusalem. And Iran may press Hezbollah in Lebanon to enter the fray, plunging Israel into a protracted, multi-front campaign that would tempt Israeli hardliners to create a new security structure by, among other things, annexing large chunks of the occupied Palestinian territories and possibly expelling Palestinians. Hezbollah has already obliged by firing some missiles in the Shebaa farms.

But it’s also conceivable that Israel will have the wisdom to recognise that this attack is an effort to goad them into an overreaction and will, instead, limit their military response in Gaza and do their utmost to prevent violence spreading to the West Bank, Jerusalem or Lebanon. Saudi leaders, too, may recognise that this is an all-out effort to sabotage their own diplomatic overtures towards Israel and thereby obtain a much-coveted formal security guarantee from Washington.

There are many local and domestic reasons for Hamas’s attack but it’s also certainly an effort to scupper a US triangular agreement with Israel and Saudi Arabia. It may well succeed. But the three parties might recognise the attack for what it is, and move as quickly as possible to resume talks and redouble efforts to bridge remaining differences. If it’s this threatening to their mutual enemies, what more evidence is required of the potential benefits of such a deal?

The Biden administration is certainly going to try to make that point, both at home and abroad. Whether they can convince Israel to show restraint and Saudi Arabia to remain open to normalisation despite the coming violence remains to be seen.

The final question for Mr Biden is that, assuming the current conflict makes his grand bargain impossible before the next presidential election, if he gets a second term can the parties pick up more or less where they were a few days ago?

That doesn’t only depend on him winning re-election. It also hinges on what new “security arrangements” Israel decides to impose on Gaza, and possibly the West Bank. It’s almost impossible that the context for a “Significant Palestinian Component” of such a deal won’t be significantly altered at the end of the current fighting. So, all parties, especially Riyadh, are going to have to recalculate when the dust settles.

For Mr Biden, the best-case scenario may be making the triangular deal with Israel and Saudi Arabia a second term agenda item. If Hamas and Iran wanted to upend, and at least postpone, Mr Biden’s proposed US-Saudi-Israeli agreement, they’ve probably already succeeded

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/2023/10/02/republicans-seeking-a-government-shutdown-were-playing-a-self-defeating-game/

Were the House extremists deliberately trying to sabotage the US economy?

“There has to be an adult in the room,” declared House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, explaining why he finally decided to ignore the handful of extremists within his Republican House of Representatives caucus and partner with Democrats to continue to fund the US government for another 45 days.

Republicans were going to face a huge blowback for an unnecessary shutdown because a small group of them simply would not agree with anyone, or even each other, about what they wanted. Their endless grievances changed daily. It was, as I noted in these pages last week, a government shutdown over nothing.

Such a total meltdown within Republican ranks, would undermine claims that the House should remain in Republican hands, let alone the Senate or the White House.

Mr McCarthy, and almost all Republicans, are aware that historically the party forcing the shutdown has paid the political price. As Representative Patrick T McHenry of North Carolina, a staunch ally of the Speaker, explained with evident exasperation: “It’s been tried before.”

The extremists, however, were utterly unmoved. While Democrats naturally spun the 45-day funding extension as a victory, Republican extremists painted it as a pathetic cave-in by Mr McCarthy and most other Republicans, and a victory for the “uni-party”, which they claim unites other Republicans and all Democrats in a de facto coalition representing the wealthy and elites.

The Republican extremist fringe was so outraged that they’ve decided the Speaker has to go. It’s a confrontation they’ve been longing for.

Mr McCarthy agreed that any individual House member could bring a “motion to vacate”, which could remove him from the Speaker’s chair. One of his most voluble detractors, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, has vowed to do just that. Yet party establishment figures and their media allies are now asking if Mr Gaetz is secretly working for the Democratic Party.

The most substantive issue in this sorry spectacle is increased aid to Ukraine, which is anathema to pro-Moscow Republicans. Mr Gaetz accused Mr McCarthy of making a secret deal with Democrats for additional aid for Ukraine in the near future, which the Speaker flatly denies. But this strongly pro-Russia sentiment among Maga Republicans is why Mr McCarthy inexcusably barred Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy from addressing the House last month. Yet most Republicans, even in the House, and certainly in the Senate, and the overwhelming majority of Democrats favour the funding that the Biden administration has prepared to provide to Ukraine.

The 45-day stopgap spending bill is an obvious victory for US President Joe Biden and the Democrats and seems to usher Mr McCarthy into the realm of governance-minded American leaders, aka “the adults”. The conclusion is unmistakable: not only did he find it impossible to work with the radical fringe of the Republicans, but he also ultimately preferred to partner with Democrats to keep the government funded and prevent the Republican Party from incurring yet another brutal self-inflicted wound.

The outcome raises two important questions. Can Mr McCarthy remain in power? And what will happen in 45 days when the stopgap spending measure expires?

If Mr McCarthy remains Speaker, he has a solid coalition of Democrats and Republicans that do not wish to see a shutdown in 45 days or at any other time. But preventing a replay of the bizarre near-miss last week depends on a Republican Speaker being willing to partner with Democrats in passing rational spending bills acceptable to the Senate and the White House.

Mr McCarthy will effectively be at the mercy of Democrats if the extremists present a motion to vacate. Democrats might vote to keep him in place in order to avoid repeating a shutdown when the next deadline approaches. However, Mr McCarthy has caved to the extreme right at every stage, including recently launching a baseless impeachment inquiry into Mr Biden. So, there are ample reasons for Democrats to relish watching him suffer the disaster he allowed to be baked into his, from their perspective, corrupted at birth, speakership.

But the national interest, and the agenda of the administration, militates towards keeping Mr McCarthy in place, rather than allowing the extremists to oust him and sending the House into even greater chaos. Nonetheless, Mr McCarthy may be even more disliked by most Democrats than his internal Republican opposition. So, even if Mr Biden pushes for it, as he likely will, it might be difficult for House minority leader Hakeem Jefferies to get Democrats to support Mr McCarthy even if that’s what the party hierarchy decides it wants.

But even if Mr McCarthy remains in place, with an overwhelming majority of Republicans and Democrats who wish to see the US government continue to function without a shutdown, nonetheless the biggest bone of contention remains aid to Ukraine. That’s categorically opposed by the proto-fascist Maga Republicans, plus a handful of neo-isolationist leftist Democrats and Republican libertarians who oppose almost all US international engagement.

Both parties, particularly Republicans, walked right to the edge of a shutdown last week but ultimately concluded they wanted no part of it because of the political consequences, not to mention the national interest involved. The US economy has recovered to an amazing extent, but most credible economists agree that the recovery is fragile. The country simply cannot afford a shutdown at this crucial stage, which could, especially if it were protracted, send the whole economy into a tailspin and ruin a remarkable comeback.

Do the Republican extremists really deliberately intend to sabotage the national economy for political purposes, either to attack their own party leadership and/or try to bring down Mr Biden and help their hero, Donald Trump? Alas, even such cynical machinations may be beyond the infantile calculations of these nihilistic radicals, who simply seem bent on pointlessly defying everyone else and demagoguing in their own personal interests as much as possible.

Thus, the most likely scenario going forward is that Mr McCarthy will remain Speaker with some Democratic support to defend the coalition that prevented the absurd Seinfeld-like “shut down over nothing” and keep the status quo alive in the interest of both the Republican Party establishment, and Mr McCarthy, as well as Mr Biden, the White House, and, ironically, the President’s re-election bid. The old adage holds that “politics makes strange bedfellows”. But it becomes even stranger when the lunatics make a plausible, narrowly averted bid to take over America’s political asylum.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2023/09/26/biden-stares-at-a-possible-us-government-shutdown-but-he-neednt-worry/

The Republican Party has been responsible for recent shutdowns, but this time it’s blindingly obvious to the public.

Yet another federal government shutdown is looming in Washington, with the public and hundreds of thousands of civil servants bracing for the impact, including a complete suspension of nutrition, vaccination and other services for impoverished mothers and children.

Such government shutdowns are nothing new, having occurred more than 20 times since 1976. But the instances are becoming more frequent and disruptive over time, with the current impasse breaking new ground in two alarming ways.

First, the current dispute is not between Republicans and Democrats, or even the House of Representatives and the Senate. Instead, it has developed entirely within an increasingly dysfunctional Republican Party that is being held hostage by about 20 or so radical lawmakers in the House at odds with about 200 of their fellow Republicans.

So, it’s going to be almost impossible for Republicans, no matter how hard they try, to blame President Joe Biden or the Democrats for a dispute that is happening within their own ranks and the legislative body under their narrow control.

Ever since then House speaker Newt Gingrich pioneered the use of a deliberately engineered federal government shutdown as a political and policy weapon, following protracted battles over spending with president Bill Clinton, for a few weeks at the end of 1995 and the beginning of 1996, most shutdowns have been instigated by House Republicans. But they always left themselves some kind of plausible argument for why Democrats were truly responsible by forcing their hand in some manner.

That didn’t work for Mr Gingrich in the 90s, with Republicans taking most of the blame for his novel manoeuvre. As a result, it didn’t take long for him to lose his leadership role and political prominence, and the fiasco may have helped save Mr Clinton’s presidency.

Now, however, though House Republicans on both sides will strenuously try to point the finger at Mr Biden, the current dispute has nothing to do with partisan divisions.

The overwhelming bulk of Senate Republicans are also uninvolved and seem dismayed at the behaviour of the radical minority of their colleagues in the House who are forcing the crisis. While the House extremists claim to be on a principled crusade against what they see as irresponsible overspending by the Biden administration, in fact they are at odds with a 10-to-one majority of their own colleagues.

And this reveals the second key distinction between the current impending emergency and previous deliberately instigated government shutdowns over spending and other policy disputes: the current imbroglio isn’t in pursuit of any real policy goals.

At least Mr Gingrich and his successors who copied his tactic were able to broadly articulate what they wanted, or didn’t want. Not so with the current group of destructive reactionaries. Instead, they seem determined to simply say ”no”, not to congressional Democrats or the Biden administration, but to their own leader, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and the vast bulk of their colleagues.

There is a strong scent of anarchism about the so-called ”wrecking ball crew” that is forcing the government to its knees. This crew of radicals casts virtually all other Republicans as being in cahoots with the Democrats in a de facto single party representing wealthy donors and other ”elites” against the interests of ordinary Americans, and therefore appear almost as gleeful when going after Mr McCarthy as Mr Biden.

Moreover, they embody the anti-government sentiment that has long been a feature of the American far right taken to its logical conclusion.

These extremists no longer recognise any exception for the once sacrosanct military forces, which they denounce as “woke”, corrupted and weak, especially in comparison with the Russian military, which several of them inexplicably seem to revere. And they are even more hostile to what they cast as a “weaponised” federal law enforcement system, especially the FBI, which some have advocated decapitating, defunding and even disbanding altogether (particularly after their investigations and indictments of former president Donald Trump).

These lawmakers are so extreme that they forcefully dismiss the usefulness of almost everything the federal government, and even Congress itself, does as irrelevant, and even harmful, to the American people. Such rhetoric justifies rejecting virtually any proposed spending or other significant legislation and even rationalises disinterest about the potential impact on national security or law enforcement. It’s a nihilistic political perspective.

It’s hard to gauge how sincerely held these views might be, because these representatives all come from very right-wing and secure districts in which incumbency is a virtual guarantee of re-election, and because otherwise obscure Congresspersons can parlay this kind of populist anti-government demagoguery and pandering into valuable time on right-wing TV networks.

This is basically the same small group of marginal Republicans who tormented Mr McCarthy through an unprecedented 15 failed votes for the Speaker position and have been obviously chomping at the bit for another chance to take him on and, if he defies them, bring him down. He recently acceded to demands that he open a baseless – and likely to prove embarrassing for Republicans – impeachment inquiry into Mr Biden.

But the Speaker is aware that he, his party and institution will undoubtedly bear the blame for a shutdown. So, Mr McCarthy has been working on a last-ditch effort to pass a stopgap spending bill, although there is no indication it will succeed. More significantly, senators from both parties are working on a different stopgap spending measure that could keep the government afloat for four to six more weeks by gaining the support of all Democrats and enough Republicans in the House before the Saturday night deadline.

Reportedly, the main issue of contention in the Senate’s potential so-called “continuing resolution” is $25 million in new aid to Ukraine, which could meet with stiff resistance and disruptive outrage from pro-Russia Republican right-wingers in the House, including Mr McCarthy’s close ally, Marjorie Taylor Greene. Republican senators are divided between those determined to support Kyiv versus those who are even more determined not to create additional headaches for Mr McCarthy, who would probably face a protracted campaign by the radicals to oust him if aid to Ukraine is increased.

With Mr Trump urging a shutdown unless Republican extremists “get everything” they are demanding, with Mr McCarthy unable to control the House or even his own caucus, and with Republicans seemingly resolutely determined to prove incapable of the most basic functions of governance, Mr Biden is surely the most serene president ever to face a looming federal government shutdown.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2023/09/20/even-with-an-impeachment-trial-and-an-indicted-son-biden-will-still-come-out-on-top/

The obstacles facing the US President are probably not yet enough to cost him his job in next year’s election.

US President Joe Biden was last week hit with a nasty double whammy: the launch of an impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives and the indictment of his son, Hunter. The impeachment inquiry may ultimately prove less of a headache. This is hardly the first such probe, but it is the only instance in which the House has launched one on the basis of no evidence.

No break-ins and erased tapes. No blue dress. No shaking down of foreign leaders. No assault on Congress. Nothing.

After House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced that he had unilaterally created the inquiry – after months of vowing never to do so without a vote of the full House – Republicans struggled mightily to explain its rationale. Representative Nancy Mace, in particular, gave numerous TV interviews in which she insisted that there was ample evidence of bribery or corruption associated with Mr Biden, but was unable to point to anything in particular. Asked by CNN’s Kaitlin Collins if such an inquiry didn’t need to be based on evidence, Ms Mace gave the game away by replying, “Well, that’s what the inquiry is for. It’s to get more evidence.”

Representative Michael McCaul insisted: “We don’t have the evidence now, but we may find it later.” That’s highly reminiscent of Donald Trump’s attorney Rudolph Giuliani saying to an Arizona official about his own overwrought allegations of fraud in the 2020 election: “We’ve got lots of theories. We just don’t have the evidence.”

The impeachment push against Mr Biden is so weak that Mr McCarthy had to be forced to launch it by Republican right-wing extremists. Both the Speaker and many GOP representatives from centrist districts will surely be hoping that whatever hearings and other measures are undertaken, they drag on indefinitely and without much fanfare. Otherwise, there’s every danger of a significant public backlash if the country gets the sense that this is baseless, frivolous and partisan, and worse – in part because it’s true – that it’s simple automatic payback on behalf of the twice-impeached Mr Trump.

Republicans have been diligently digging around Mr Biden and his son since last year’s midterms and have discovered absolutely nothing directly connecting the president with the financial dealings of his formerly drug-addicted adult child. It’s largely been a campaign of innuendo, elaborating unproven criminal or unethical dealings, apart from the younger Mr Biden’s evident and unsavoury, but sadly typical, willingness to try to profit from his last name.

Right-wingers then suggest that the President must have also been involved in dealings that were not merely unsavoury or even unethical but downright illegal. Based on this chain of groundless implications, they have made a fetish out of the preposterous phrase “the Biden crime family”, as if the whole clan is corrupted and constitutes the equivalent of a Mafia gang. This creates a huge contradiction in Republican messaging: Mr Biden cannot simultaneously be the mastermind controlling a multinational criminal enterprise and a doddering, senile old fool.

Their inquiries thus far have not only failed to uncover evidence of any of this, they frequently left Republican congressional leaders looking desperate and foolish. So, unless Mr Biden actually has something to hide, which seems very improbable, he likely has little to fear politically from this impeachment agenda, which is liable to deliver some significant self-inflicted wounds to his Republican adversaries or fade into the background.

That’s much less true of the indictment and likely upcoming trial of Hunter. The president’s son is accused of purchasing and possessing a gun while using outlawed narcotics and lying on a gun purchase form about his use of these controlled substances. He had reached a plea deal with a Trump-appointed prosecutor that probably would have allowed him to avoid incarceration, but that was thrown out as insufficient by a judge. Because he and his lawyers continued to insist that the plea deal was binding, he has been indicted.

In a rational world, being patiently faithful and forgiving of the foibles of a wayward and drug-addicted child wouldn’t be considered a stain on any parent’s character. Hunter Biden, after all, has never run for or held office, or occupied any government position, and even Republicans don’t suggest Mr Biden was responsible for his son’s drug use or alleged gun violations. Indeed, the strident protection of gun ownership with few restrictions by the ultra-conservative present Supreme Court may provide Hunter’s legal team with their most potent arguments.

But politics is rarely rational. Mr Trump and his followers claim the gun charges were brought precisely because the president is obviously not involved in them while implying more serious charges were avoided because they could have implicated Mr Biden. None of that is based on any evidence either.

Still, many Americans may gather over the next 14 months before the 2024 election that Mr Trump is on trial for something or other, and so is Mr Biden’s son, and therefore there is some kind of equivalency. The fact that the charges brought against Mr Trump and Hunter Biden are essentially on opposite ends of the spectrum of nonviolent criminal offences – with the former president facing some of the most serious imaginable accusations and the incumbent’s son accused of minor technical violations of the law – may be lost on a great many people, even those who don’t depend on Fox News for current events consumption.

Some anxious Democrats are renewing their appeals to Mr Biden not to run for re-election, citing his age and the fact that he is currently running neck and neck with Mr Trump in polls. His supporters retort that Mr Trump is nearly as old, and frequently makes rather less sense when speaking in public, and that virtually every first-term president is in relative polling parity against hypothetical opponents a year out from re-election.

Yet the indictment of his son is a genuine headache as well as heartache for the President. It will deprive Republicans of plausible claims that Hunter is receiving preferential treatment from the Justice Department, but it sets up a potential, albeit entirely invalid, offset to Mr Trump’s own coming trials.

Still, with inflation down and GDP up, plus an impressive string of domestic legislative and foreign policy successes, Mr Biden still seems on course to win a second term, although most Americans, including most Democrats, would prefer someone younger. He certainly wouldn’t want to change political, let alone legal, positions with Mr Trump.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/11/opinion/israel-saudi-arabia-us.html

The Biden administration is working overtime to consolidate what is arguably Washington’s most significant advantage over its great power rivals, especially China. That advantage lies in the Middle East.

More specifically, the United States has been pushing hard to forge a deal in which Washington would give formal security guarantees to Saudi Arabia and, in return, the Saudis would establish diplomatic ties with Israel, with Israeli concessions to the Palestinians. At the Group of 20 gathering in New Delhi, President Joe Biden and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia exchanged a warm handshake. Last week, a high-level U.S. delegation visited Riyadh to pursue the potential agreement, following two separate trips this summer by the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

It’s easy to see what the Saudis and Israelis, facing security threats in the region, particularly from Iran, would gain. Saudi Arabia would win reliable American protection, among other potential benefits. For Israel, establishing formal ties with Saudi Arabia would bolster its position against Iran. It could also be Israel’s greatest diplomatic breakthrough since its 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, and would give other Sunni Muslim-majority states incentive to follow suit.

Yet neither Saudi Arabia nor Israel appears to be showing much urgency in getting the deal done, while the Biden administration has made it a clear priority. So, beyond a diplomatic victory, what’s in it for Washington?

The main advantage the triangular deal offers the United States is a tightened grip over three vitally important waterways around the Arabian Peninsula: the Strait of Hormuz, the Suez Canal and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Those arteries are critical links for China, a focus of American concern.

The Strait of Hormuz, which links the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea and more widely the Indian Ocean, is arguably the most important maritime choke point in the world. About one-third of seaborne petroleum, and a slightly lower percentage of liquid natural gas, passes through it each year. The overwhelming majority of this energy goes to Asia, including over 45 percent of China’s annual oil imports.

The Suez Canal, which links the Red and Mediterranean Seas and connects Asia, Africa and Europe, is just as significant. Approximately 12 percent of global trade passes through it annually, and China is its biggest user. Chinese ships account for 10 percent of those passing through the canal. Those ships carry, for example, over 60 percent of the goods China sends to Europe.

At the other end of the Red Sea, a third key passageway, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, controls the entrance into the Red Sea leading to the Suez Canal and is similarly significant to global trade. It’s no accident that the only overseas Chinese military base is in Djibouti, just 68 miles from Bab el-Mandeb, or that Beijing invested billions of dollars in that country.

As part of a more aggressive effort to expand its presence along its trade and resource routes, China has attempted to woo both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to gain a strategic foothold in the Persian Gulf, and has been constructing a relatively modest port facility near Abu Dhabi that Washington has warned could serve military purposes.

For now, China doesn’t have much room to maneuver. The United States and its partners dominate the three o waterways surrounding the Arabian Peninsula. A deal with Israel and Saudi Arabia could secure that advantage for decades to come. It would bring the two main U.S. military partners in the Middle East together in open cooperation, and effectively create an interlocking regional chain consisting of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Israel, Egypt and Jordan, all longstanding friends of Washington, nearly encircling the Arabian Peninsula.

Moreover, U.S. security guarantees for Riyadh would undoubtedly ensure that Saudi Arabia’s increasing flirtation with China never leads to a significant strategic foothold for Beijing in the kingdom, a line the Saudis have thus far carefully avoided crossing.

If this reinforced network of waterway control were to come to pass, it could allow the United States to finally realize its longstanding goal of reducing some of its huge military bases in the Gulf region, including Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, that are effectively remnants of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Smaller bases, with the probable exception of the one in Bahrain, which is home to Naval Forces Central Command and the Fifth Fleet, could be reconfigured for rapid responses to local threats in coordination with regional partners.

The Biden administration has been energetically pursuing this triangular deal because it would secure an invaluable global competitive advantage. What remains unclear is whether Washington has sufficient leverage over the Israeli government, which appears allergic to the concessions toward the Palestinians that Saudi Arabia reportedly seeks, or whether there is enough time before the president’s re-election bid to hammer out such a complex arrangement.

It seems that Washington and Riyadh might be ready to overcome their bilateral differences. But without Israeli participation and Saudi-Israeli normalization, a simpler bilateral agreement won’t give Washington what it needs: a potent network of friendly states based on a rapprochement between the United States’ two key strategic partners in the Middle East.

The triangular nature of this initiative makes it particularly difficult to achieve. But the vast potential strategic benefits readily explain why the administration is taking on this huge task now, with potentially enough time before the election and the seeming receptiveness by the Saudis. Both Israel and Saudi Arabia would benefit in important and obvious ways, but the United States would be the biggest winner.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2023/09/04/if-trump-returns-he-might-replace-thousands-of-federal-staff-with-his-supporters/

Purging thousands, much less tens of thousands, of qualified civil servants though on ideological grounds isn’t all that simple.

Public opinions regarding former US president Donald Trump by now are virtually set in stone. Yet he has consistently proven still capable of shocking, if not surprising. The January 6 insurrection and his broader failed efforts to overturn the 2020 election are an obvious example. Another is his apparent purloining and retaining of classified government documents.

This element of surprise is also reflected in radical advance planning by the Trump campaign and allied groups for a second term, including an unprecedented ideological purge of the federal workforce. Few Americans have heard about this extraordinary agenda, which bears all the hallmarks of what political extremists typically attempt when seizing power. Supporters and critics agree that Mr Trump and camp were simply unprepared after his surprise 2016 victory and are determined to attempt a sweeping reconstruction of the American state from day one of any second chance.

A recent Associated Press-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research poll found that the two words Americans most associate with Mr Biden are “old” and “confused”, and with Mr Trump “corrupt” and “dishonest”. It would appear the former president’s criminal indictments have been taking their toll.

Mr Biden is indeed showing his age more than Mr Trump, who’s only three years his junior, and has at times appeared confused or said inexplicable things – although I know two people who are in no way connected to the administration, the Democratic Party or the political process, and have had lengthy meetings with him, in both cases in excess of one hour, discussing highly complex policy questions, and both highly credible sources insist he is well-informed, alert and sharp.

The negative views of Mr Trump among most Americans would hardly be enhanced by a detailed understanding of what his camp is planning. Not that he’s making a secret of his intentions. On the contrary, Mr Trump has been regaling audiences with the vows that “I am your retribution”, and “your justice”. There’s little doubt whom he intends to target with such vengeance.

While Trump’s base, yearning for ‘retribution,’ might applaud a political purge, the rest of the country would react with shock and horror

The Republican fixation on condemning Mr Biden’s supposed “weaponisation” of the federal government and justice system to attack his presumed enemies is not only a fact-free defence of Mr Trump from federal indictments, but also a rather obvious and crude, although effective, characteristic piece of political projection. In the Trump era, Republicans have perfected the art of accusing their opponents of precisely what they are doing or intend to do.

Mr Trump has promised to investigate and prosecute the “Biden crime family”, alleging that Mr Biden and his son made millions overseas by leveraging government roles (which his son has never had). There is no evidence Mr Biden did this despite intensive investigations by House Republicans, though his son evidently and disgracefully did try to profit from the family name. And, of course, Mr Trump and his immediate family – all of whom had official government positions despite nominal and ineffective rules against such nepotism – made that a virtual art form.

Moreover, hardline House Republicans appear to be making significant progress in coercing Speaker Kevin McCarthy to open impeachment hearings against Mr Biden, although potential charges have never been specified and are hard to imagine.

While all of that could be dismissed as simply politics, although not by any means as usual, plans by Trump-aligned groups such as the Heritage Foundation envision a huge purge of the federal workforce, dishonestly billed as “dismantling the deep state” (which does not exist in the US). It’s also likely to be sold as a libertarian effort to “shrink the size of government”, although the up to 50,000 civil servants facing ouster aren’t going to be rendered redundant but instead replaced by sympathetic, and possibly often unqualified, ideologues from around the country.

The almost 1,000-page “Project 2025” campaign blueprint calls for an “army” of Trump-supporting hardliners from around the country to, as one of its architects, Paul Dans, puts it, “flood the zone [of the federal workforce] with conservatives”. Following the example of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has mobilised the power of his state’s government to attack secondary and higher education and major corporations such as Disney, this agenda is about taking over and, indeed, weaponising, the federal government and its vast administrative authority rather than shrinking it.

Nothing like this has ever been attempted or contemplated. Franklin Roosevelt, the 32nd US president, hugely expanded the size of the federal government to combat the depression and fight the Second World War, and he recruited mainly liberals to the new positions. And every president routinely replaces about 4,000 senior officials. But none has planned or attempted to purge tens of thousands of civil servants on ideological grounds.

This would be accomplished by attempting to revive Mr Trump’s last-ditch 2020 executive order that created a new “Schedule F” category for federal workers, which Mr Biden immediately rescinded. It would allow any civil servant with even the most tenuous connection to policy formation and implementation to effectively be subject to instantaneous dismissal without cause.

The plans also range from the legally dubious such as deploying the military to suppress crime and dissent, to forcing politically correct and ideologically purified “patriotic education” on public schools and universities, and even an absurd proposal to create 10 new major “freedom cities” by government fiat. Mr Trump has even made it clear that he wants to use federal authority to insist on certain architectural styles in existing cities and ensure that schools and streets are named “not after communists but patriots”. So much for smaller government.

Even a vast government is, of course, incapable of magically creating 10 large new American cities, and there are significant obstacles facing many of these alarming ideas. Even if “Schedule F” is implemented and legally upheld, a re-elected Mr Trump might find getting rid of thousands, much less tens of thousands, of qualified civil servants on ideological grounds isn’t all that simple.

While his base, yearning for “retribution”, might applaud a political purge, the rest of the country would surely react with shock and horror. Mr Trump isn’t giving the swing voters who decide national elections any reason to come back to him after a decisive break in 2020 and, more dramatically, the 2022 midterms. The less most Americans hear about “Project 2025”, the better it will be for its authors, not to mention Mr Trump.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2023/08/28/republican-politics-has-seen-in-trump-a-triumph-of-the-personality-cult/

Trump was the big winner at the Milwaukee debate even though he wasn’t there.

When Donald Trump burst on the American political scene, surprisingly seizing the Republican nomination and the White House in 2016, until his unsurprising defeat by Joe Biden in 2020, US politics was reduced to a single, inescapable and usually nightmarish tragicomedy: The Trump Showaka Presidential Apprentice. Since that defeat, he has lost exclusivity but not a disproportionate share of the limelight. In the Biden era, what Americans have been routinely viewing is a split screen effect, with Mr Trump’s latest antics and travails on one side and whatever else may be happening on the other.

Last week provided an excellent example of how that works (badly) in practice. The Republican presidential primary campaigns began in earnest with the first national debate, featuring eight hopefuls but not the former president. Instead, Mr Trump sought to upstage the debate with a simultaneous interview with the bigoted former star at Fox News Tucker Carlson. Mr Trump’s plan didn’t exactly work since the debate got a lot more coverage and attention than his attempted counter programming. But the split screen moment prevailed in a manner much less advantageous to the former president.

Although he wasn’t there, Mr Trump was clearly the big winner at the Milwaukee debate. None of the other candidates had a breakout moment, and he was subject to very little criticism, so his position as the head of the party and clear front-runner went effectively uncontested.

Things went particularly badly for his highest-polling rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and his bitterest critic in the group, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie. Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley solidified her popularity with those who timidly yearn for the pre-Trump era, while political novice Vivek Ramaswamy continued to build his popularity with the hard-core Trump base by taking the most extreme positions on many of their preferred bugbears. The other four were essentially also-rans, at least on that night.

The tone, tenor and much of the substance of the conversation again underscored just how extreme the Republican Party has become compared to almost all other mainstream conservative parties in Western countries. But the low point, without a doubt, was when the moderators asked which of the candidates would support Mr Trump if he were both the Republican nominee and simultaneously a convicted criminal.

Only former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson and Mr Christie declined, and neither of them is likely to qualify for the next Republican debate because of their low poll numbers. The rest of the Republican field, apparently, would have no problem backing Mr Trump for another four years in the White House even as a convicted felon. It’s the ultimate triumph of Republican politics as a pitiable personality cult, largely devoid of substance, integrity and even self-respect.

But if the debacle in Milwaukee was one side of the interminable contemporary American split screen, the other side didn’t feature Mr Biden, or Mr Trump’s interview, but instead his arraignment in Atlanta, complete, for the first time, with a mugshot. As his Republican rivals impotently debased themselves under a large banner reading “democracy” – while demonstrating little respect for its guiding principles – Mr Trump’s visage scowled forth from the notorious Fulton County Jail.

The image-obsessed Mr Trump may well have been preparing in front of countless mirrors for the pose for months, although he may not have hit upon the optimal affect. As his rally performances and even official portraits demonstrate, he has long confused glowering and grimacing with looking “tough”. He has reportedly told aides he believes he has succeeded in looking “like Churchill”. It’s another example of how easily he deceives himself.

Mr Biden, on the other hand, is apparently in on the unintended joke. When asked about the degraded spectacle, he chuckled “handsome guy”. Mr Trump does not possess a detectable sense of humour and especially has no appreciation for sarcasm, above all when aimed at himself. Otherwise, he certainly would have lashed back.

Reinforcing his alienation from irony, Mr Trump claimed, with a straight face, that he never knew what a “mugshot” was until his own was taken. Yet there is little doubt that the accumulation of serious criminal charges against him, coupled with his brief visit to the infamous jail on Rice Street, are starting to fray his nerves. Even though he was whisked there by a huge police motorcade and quickly processed and released in about 20 minutes, the great complainer whined about his “terrible experience”. It’s clearly all starting to get to him.

The fact that the Fox News hosts at the Milwaukee debate asked the other eight declared Republican candidates if they would support him as the nominee despite a major criminal conviction is arguably even more significant than the fact that six of them, including all of the other serious contenders, said they certainly would. The question itself suggests that the Republican Party, its media allies and the US conservative constituency more broadly, all now must contend with the very real possibility that Mr Trump might be tried and convicted of serious criminal offences before the 2024 presidential election.

For the Party, it would mean that the candidate who, at this stage at least, is unstoppably popular with its base is also almost certainly unelectable with the general public in almost any plausible scenario in the next 15 months. For Mr Trump personally, it means that there’s a very real prospect that he could end up serving time in prison.

That prospect is also a headache for state and federal prison authorities, since, as a former president, Mr Trump is entitled to round-the-clock Secret Service protection for the rest of his life. Arguably it’s easier to protect someone in a fortified cell rather than travelling around the country or in the world, but the logistics would be tricky for both the Secret Service and whichever prison is involved.

Mr Trump is the king of courtroom appeals and delays, and actual incarceration often waits upon lengthy appeals processes and other potential manoeuvres that play into his preferred legal strategy. He may well even hope he can drag such proceedings out beyond his lifetime, though both his parents were impressively long-lived.

Nonetheless, the enduring image from last week’s US political split screen, his scowling mugshot, leaves little doubt he’s getting extremely nervous.