http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/does-trump-really-want-to-bring-everything-down

Donald Trump’s first week as president was so chaotic, bizarre and unnerving that it left many Americans, liberal and conservative alike, sincerely terrified that the United States is in the early stages of an unprecedented national nightmare. It is unclear whether the political system can adequately contain or withstand the unfolding assault on elementary and essential American norms and values.

So many of those core mores have been contemptuously flouted by the new president that it’s unclear how, and whether, they can be fully or even partially restored.

It’s unnecessary and impossible to list here the unprecedented, and often breathtaking, breaches of basic American political standards and principles by the Trump administration during its first week.

Mr Trump hasn’t done anything to meaningfully distance himself from his business, so a strong suspicion of corruption inevitably hangs over many of his decisions.

His war against both facts and press freedom has intensified. He and his press secretary, Sean Spicer, tirelessly propagated obvious and ego-driven lies about the size of the crowd at his inauguration and have made preposterous claims of massive voter fraud during the election.

Mr Trump’s speech at the Central Intelligence Agency, an important opportunity for reconciliation with the intelligence services he has repeatedly compared to Nazis, quickly degenerated into a rambling, narcissistic diatribe falsely boasting about his inauguration audience and bashing the press.

He inexplicably initiated a diplomatic crisis and threatened a trade war with Mexico.

He issued a shockingly immoral, mean-spirited order essentially barring the door to refugees and banning almost all entry from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Another immigration order stretches the definition of “criminal” to include almost any undocumented migrant, and allows officials to deport anyone they believe, for whatever reason, could pose a threat. He authorised the recruitment of 10,000 new immigration enforcement officers to go on this massive anti-immigrant witch-hunt.

He continues to advocate torturing terrorism suspects, thereby contradicting even his own cabinet appointees.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists terrifyingly reset their Doomsday Clock, which attempts to track our proximity to a nuclear holocaust, to 2.5 minutes before midnight. This is the closest it has been to Doomsday since 1953, even including the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The change was attributed entirely to Mr Trump’s irresponsible comments and conduct.

All that, and much more, was the work of less than a week.

The framers of the US constitution were acutely aware of the conundrum of executive power in a free society with an accountable government.

They gathered to revise the disastrously decentralised Articles of Confederation, and so understood that a strong federal government was essential. They realised that a powerful chief executive is required for fast action and the implementation of laws and to make those decisions that can only be made by a single person rather than by a committee. However, their republican ethos, grasp of classical history and deep scepticism of human nature rendered them acutely aware that a hyper-empowered president might pose a wide range of dangers.

To offset them, they devised a system of interlocking institutional checks and balances within the government. And they integrated into the decision-making process a wide variety of external inputs from an empowered civil society with competing factional interests. They also counted on society to uphold minimal expectations of political propriety and civic duty.

They established institutional restraints on popular enthusiasm, which they considered the greatest potential source of political mischief. Among these was the electoral college, by which Mr Trump was elected president even though Hillary Clinton won almost 3 million more popular votes in November.

The American system was designed long ago and society has altered greatly. Its institutions now often function differently – and in the electoral college’s case, oppositely – to their original conception.

A minority has indeed overruled the majority, but the uneducated, enraged and bamboozled prevailed, not an enlightened elite. Thus, the electoral college, which was designed to help forestall the rise of a populist demagogue, has abetted precisely that.

Moreover, the presidency has increasingly accumulated power, most recently through the proliferation of executive orders by a succession of presidents. Congress and the courts have sometimes even willingly surrendered their own authorities.

The American constitutional system has been tested by civil war, economic depressions, and constitutional crises. But it has never been confronted with an incoming president so manifestly unfit and unprepared, or so wantonly reckless and destructive in word and deed.

Mr Trump’s White House chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, calls himself a “Leninist” who seeks to “destroy the state … bring everything crashing down and destroy all of today’s establishment”.

If that is also Mr Trump’s goal, this is an excellent start. After only a week, it’s alarmingly easy to envisage that four more years of such paroxysms could indeed bring everything crashing down. And how, or by whom, he can be restrained is becoming far more difficult to imagine.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/01/trump-israel-tel-aviv-jerusalem-embassy-netanyahu-palestine-occupation/514367/

The longer he delays, the lower the chances it will happen.

Late last week, an unconfirmed report by Israel’s Channel 2 news suggested that President Donald Trump would soon announce the relocation of the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, delivering on a promise he made repeatedly on the campaign trail. All of Jerusalem is claimed by Israel as its “eternal and undivided capital.” But the eastern part is considered by the international community to be occupied territory, and claimed by Palestinians as the capital of their own future state. Jerusalem is also sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims around the world. It has therefore been one of the most symbolically laden—and contested—places on earth for centuries.

The White House spokesman, Sean Spicer, has since repeatedly emphasized that discussion about a possible move is in its very early stages, suggesting no announcement is imminent for now. But since the U.S. presidential election last November, those close to Trump have reaffirmed his determination to follow through, leading many to conclude that the decision—considered by past presidents, but never implemented—had already been made, absent any major political coordination or laying of diplomatic groundwork. Should it happen in the near future, the timing would be strange: Moving the embassy is not a priority for even the Israeli far right, for whom issues such as expanding settlements are much more important. Even Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s hardline defense minister, dismissed the idea in December, perhaps recognizing that moving the embassy would almost certainly invite an outpouring of violence.

Spicer signaled that a complex conversation on the matter has only just begun. “[Trump’s] team’s going to continue to consult with stakeholders as we get there,” he said on Monday. According to Israeli officials the issue barely came up in Trump’s recent phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

There is a distinct possibility the embassy move may never happen, with the prospect diminishing further, however slightly, with each passing day. (Perhaps the report that the decision had been made was nothing more than a trial balloon floated to gauge reactions to such a decision.) Even this president, with a self-consciously “transformational” approach designed to upend much of the traditional order in government, including foreign policy, will increasingly have to reckon with the consequences of his decisions.

Since the late 1940s when Israel was established, U.S. policy and the international consensus have agreed that the status of Jerusalem must be determined through negotiations between Israel and the Arabs, especially the Palestinians. The 1947 UN partition plan placed Jerusalem under international control, and not as part of either the anticipated Jewish or Arab states. The 1947-1948 war left Israel in control of the western part of the city, with Jordan taking the east. But Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan in 1967, effectively annexing it in 1980. The UN Security Council has repeatedly rejected that de facto annexation, and emphasized the “urgent need” for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories, “including Jerusalem.” While a few, small countries did maintain embassies in or near West Jerusalem, following the annexation of the East, all were relocated to Tel Aviv, where the United States and all other major countries’ embassies have always been. Moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem now would break this consensus. And it would be widely interpreted, especially by Israelis and Palestinians, as privileging Israeli and Jewish claims on the city and implicitly recognizing or condoning the annexation of East Jerusalem.

Americans, including Trump, might not care too much about the Palestinian reaction to moving the embassy. But Israelis responsible for national security do not have this luxury. Even if the Palestinian leadership knows that unrest, let alone violence, would be self-defeating and counterproductive, it may be unable to contain a spontaneous or organized explosion of rage in the occupied Palestinian territories, especially East Jerusalem. The Palestinian security services would try to contain the outrage, but their numbers and capabilities are limited (not least because of Israel’s restrictions), and they aren’t allowed to operate in most of the West Bank and not at all in East Jerusalem. Moreover, it will be politically difficult for Palestinian leaders to argue for calm while expressing the indignation necessary to maintain credibility.

At best, Palestinian leaders will end up speaking out of both sides of their mouths. There is, after all, no way they can argue that Palestinians shouldn’t be profoundly upset by a U.S. policy shift that will be widely interpreted as an abdication of one of the last vestiges of evenhandedness that has survived from the late 1940s. Hamas and other extremist groups will no doubt seek to exploit the situation. While mainstream Palestinian leaders will seek to prevent this, they will also have to ensure that they are not outbid by extremists.

Palestinian leaders won’t be the only ones feeling compelled to register their vehement objections to the embassy move. Egypt and Jordan, both of which have long-standing peace treaties and security partnerships with Israel, would likely regard the relocation as a major violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of their peace treaties with Israel—both of which were brokered and guaranteed by the United States. They would not abrogate or rescind the treaties, but significant, public gestures of noncooperation with Israel, including recalling or expelling ambassadors, or suspending some cooperation, are conceivable.

This is even more applicable to the Gulf Arab states, with whom Israel has made striking progress in recent years, thanks largely to their mutual opposition to Iran. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar—all of which have offered a subtle but substantial degree of regional legitimacy and de facto recognition of Israel as a key ally against Iran—would feel bound to react negatively to moving the embassy. This, in turn, would slow or even undo recent diplomatic gains, which are among the most important in Israel’s history. Gulf countries and other members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation would feel compelled to take public action to reassert the Palestinian, Muslim, and Christian claims on Jerusalem, and reject the implications of such a radical U.S. policy shift.

One additional irony is that Israel and the United States have been lecturing the Palestinians ad nauseam in recent years about the foolishness of purely symbolic gestures that come with a heavy cost—in their case, usually involving initiatives to gain more recognition in the UN or other multilateral institutions. A decision by Trump and Israel to relocate the embassy would send a clear message that they believe purely symbolic benefits can indeed be worth paying a heavy practical price, and the logical response of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) will be to redouble their own efforts with much less concern about American or Israeli complaints.

There are many half-measures the Trump administration could announce that fall far short of moving the embassy while allowing him to claim that he has fulfilled its promise. David Friedman, Trump’s nominee to serve as ambassador to Israel and a strong supporter of the settler movement, may reportedly operate out of Jerusalem—possibly in the U.S. consulate, the de facto embassy for the Palestinians—while the rest of the embassy stays behind in Tel Aviv. Friedman, who holds extreme views about Palestine and opposes a two-state peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians (the bedrock of U.S. policy in recent decades), owns an apartment in Jerusalem in which he reportedly intends to reside no matter what happens with the embassy.

Looking ahead, there are several important dates to keep in mind. Donald Blome, U.S. consul general to Jerusalem, was appointed to his post in 2015, and a typical two-year term would expire sometime this year. That will present an opportunity for the administration either to re-designate the consulate as the U.S. “Embassy to Israel” or as a satellite office for the ambassador. In addition, June marks the expiration of a key presidential waiver. In 1995, the U.S. Congress passed a law providing for the relocation of the embassy, but allowing for a presidential waiver for six-month periods “to protect the national security interests of the United States.” That waiver has been invoked by every president until now, with almost no criticism. One of the simplest, albeit dangerous, steps that Trump could take is to allow the waiver to lapse in June, couple that with a big announcement of the fact, and then do virtually nothing to follow through on actually moving the embassy.

If Trump elects not to move the embassy in the early days of his administration, it’s harder to imagine him doing it later. As he settles into office, one hopes that he will become more acquainted with the enormous risks and empty symbolism of a gesture that wouldn’t change anything on a practical level for Israel or the United States, or for their relationship. Above all, he and his team will, presumably, hear more clearly from Israeli national security establishment officials and others who might be enthusiastic about the idea in theory, while recognizing the major costs it would entail for them. “Why now?” is the question that will be raised time and again by thoughtful Israelis and Americans, not to mention Arabs. There isn’t any rational or practical answer.

The wisest course is to allow U.S. policy on Jerusalem to remain unmolested—a path endorsed quietly but firmly by influential security voices in Israel, and suggested by all of the other warnings from U.S. partners like Jordan, European allies such as France, and outgoing officials like former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State John Kerry. Anything else would shatter one of the longest-standing diplomatic consensuses, flout international norms and expectations, and inexplicably toss buckets of fuel on smoldering embers that, for now at least, are not blazing out of control.

Should Trump actually move the embassy, that tense and tenuous calm is unlikely to survive. And then Israel, the Trump administration, the region, and the world would have to deal with the consequences.

http://www.agsiw.org/gulf-countries-may-find-encouragement-iran-confirmation-hearings/

http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/trumps-rhetoric-bears-little-relation-to-american-reality

I was determined to write something positive about Donald Trump’s inauguration. After a year of relentless negativity about him, I sincerely yearned to express some hope in the new administration.

But Mr Trump never fails. The only positive thing about his speech is that it was mercifully brief. Claims he wrote most of it himself are distressingly credible. It sounded much more like one of his bilious rallies or livid tweets than a presidential inaugural address.

It was all “us versus them” – divisive domestically, hostile internationally, and never reaching beyond his minority base of support. Listeners might never suspect that the United States is deeply divided politically, or that Hillary Clinton received almost 3 million more votes than he. Instead, he spoke as if, as he keeps delusionally claiming, he won in a landslide.

Mr Trump’s calculated divisiveness centred on the idea that his inauguration, in contrast to all previous ones, wasn’t merely the orderly and peaceful transfer of power between parties. “Today,” he declared, “we are transferring power from Washington, DC and giving it back to you, the American people.”

He did not explain when or how power was usurped from “the American people”, but he clearly blamed an otherwise unidentified “small group in our nation’s capital”. Listeners were invited to fill in the blanks as they please. The whole speech was constructed around this conspiracy theory and his paranoid campaign themes.

By declaring that “the people became the rulers of this nation again”, Mr Trump conflated himself with an anonymous mass (“the people”), and cast both in united opposition to a malevolent elite into whose ranks all other identifiable individuals can be instantly dispatched. Indeed, all noteworthy political figures except Mr Trump are implicitly framed as part of this conspiracy to betray the American people, unless, and always provisionally, he exonerates them.

Mr Trump painted a dystopian, virtually post-apocalyptic, landscape of “American carnage” and free fall decay wrought by this sinister cabal. He suggested that a huge percentage of, if not most, Americans are “trapped in poverty” amid “rusted-out factories”, menaced by “crime and gangs and drugs”, with their schoolchildren “deprived of all knowledge”, borders undefended, and military depleted.

Despite some significant and undisputed American economic and social problems, that’s an unrecognisable, indeed bizarre, caricature of the present-day United States. Apparently, though, it’s the view from the bulletproof glass windows of the Trump Towers penthouse in Manhattan.

But don’t worry, he assured his (by now presumably either panicked or incredulous) listeners, this catastrophe decisively ended with his inauguration, which, apparently magically, initiated a virtually instantaneous transformation from wretched to thriving. His government, he suggested, will now ensure Americans have all the essentials, including “good jobs”. Conservatism this is not.

Even apparent gestures towards unity and reconciliation barely concealed grandiose claims. When he said that it doesn’t “matter which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people”, he wasn’t actually embracing Democrats as well as Republicans. He was really contrasting himself with both parties, in the spirit of his jaw-dropping campaign declaration that “I, alone, can fix” any given national problem.

“I”, he was saying, “am you”. Such crude demagoguery was virtually unknown in modern American politics. Until now.

For the rest of the world, he had barely a positive word, primarily condemning “other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs”. America has simply “made other countries rich”. That’s it.

He identified the slogan “America first” as his policy lodestar, despite its incontestable pro-fascist and anti-Semitic provenance. And, he insisted, “Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength”, even though the last experiment in global protectionism produced the Great Depression of the 1930s (which in turn set the stage for the Second World War).

The ironies, and the gaps between Mr Trump’s rhetoric and reality, are overwhelming.

He devoted his life to participating in, and celebrating, the very elites he now castigates, and climbing ever-higher up that greasy pole. He’s never shown the slightest concern for the middle class.

He’s assembling the wealthiest cabinet in US history – drawing mainly on political insiders, retired generals and, especially, billionaires – and appointing top jobs to no fewer than six of the very Goldman Sachs bankers he lambasted during the campaign.

His business dealings – still largely secret, and from which he still hasn’t meaningfully distanced himself despite becoming president – participate fully in the very globalisation he demonises.

Trump-branded products are almost never also labelled “made in America”. But the increasingly likely, although still only potential, forthcoming fiascos starkly forecast by Mr Trump’s inaugural address unfortunately were.

http://www.agsiw.org/egypt-saudi-arabia-no-divorce-pending-dysfunctional-marriage/

Relations between Egypt and Saudi Arabia – a key feature of the Middle Eastern political landscape and a pillar of Arab security – took another body blow on January 16 when Egypt’s Supreme Administrative Court rejected Cairo’s plan to transfer control over two uninhabited, but strategically located, Red Sea islands to Riyadh. The Egyptian-Saudi partnership brings together the Arab world’s most populous and wealthiest (as measured by national gross domestic product) countries, respectively. Since this long-standing alliance was restored following the rise of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in 2014, it has been widely viewed among Sunni Arabs as an essential bulwark against a range of serious and mounting threats, including al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant; the spreading influence of Iran; and political upheavals such as those during the “Arab Spring” that typically gave way to prolonged bouts of instability. However, a series of disagreements have strained relations between Cairo and Riyadh in a public and, especially for some of the Gulf Arab countries that are close to both, troubling manner. How much damage has been done? What’s the status of mediation efforts by the United Arab Emirates and others? And how are Egyptian-Saudi relations likely to evolve in the medium and long terms?

Each of the specific disputes, such as the islands issue, alone might not have been sufficient to create the present level of unease. But, taken together, and with an underlying core disagreement that informs most of the tension between Cairo and Riyadh, they amount to a significant problem for both countries, the Arab world at large, and the United States, which is a key ally of both. (For a detailed backgrounder on relations between Egypt and the Gulf Arab countries, including the ongoing issue over the Red Sea islands, see the December 12, 2016, AGSIW issue paper, “Egypt-GCC Partnership: Bedrock of Regional Security Despite Fissures.”)

At the heart of the differences between Cairo and Riyadh on a range of regional concerns lies the issue of religion and politics. The Egyptian government, like that of the UAE, categorically rejects all forms of politicized Islam, or the Islamization of politics, in the Arab world. Egypt and the UAE agree that there is a range within the Islamist movements and differences among groups. But they see them all as stemming from common origins, sharing key a priori assumptions that, strategic and tactical differences notwithstanding, lead to similar logical conclusions. They therefore view Islamists in general as operating along a continuum and ultimately reinforcing rather than countering each other in the broadest sense. They thus reject the idea that some “moderate” Islamists, such as the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated parties, might be useful bulwarks against more extremist ones, such as Salafist-jihadist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIL. They are all viewed as aspects of a single, overriding threat. The most overt manifestation of this shared view has been Egyptian-Emirati cooperation in Libya, including joint military action against extremist groups there.

Saudi Arabia, by contrast, views some Islamist groups, particularly some Salafists, as allies in certain contexts. It has recently softened its stance against the Muslim Brotherhood somewhat, worked with Brotherhood-affiliated political figures in Yemen, and supported Islamist rebels in Syria and some other parts of the Arab world. The UAE’s relationship with Saudi Arabia is the cornerstone of its national security policy, and it is careful not to allow disagreements over its stance on Islamist groups to harm relations with Riyadh. The UAE takes care, generally, to tread lightly when it differs with Saudi Arabia. In Yemen, it operates somewhat differently than Saudi Arabia, but in different parts of the country, with UAE forces in the south primarily now combating ISIL and al-Qaeda while Saudi Arabia continues the battle against the Houthi rebels and their Yemeni allies in the north. In Syria, the UAE has sided with the U.S. and Jordanian approach, prioritizing the battle against ISIL, and has been active in the south of the country, coordinating with, and following the lead of, Washington and Amman. This divergence of emphasis has not led to any major problems with Saudi Arabia.

In comparison, Egypt’s position has increasingly run directly contrary to Saudi Arabia’s view of Syria. Cairo never showed much enthusiasm for the campaign to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which has been a central pillar of Saudi and Qatari foreign policy in recent years, and over the course of 2016 became more overt in its opposition to regime change in Damascus. Indeed, by November, Sisi bluntly expressed support for the victory of Assad’s army in the conflict. Egypt’s relations with Russia have warmed, and fundamental agreement over Syria has been a core component. In the U.N. Security Council, of which Egypt is currently a nonpermanent member, Cairo voted for both Russian and French-sponsored resolutions that reflected two very different perspectives on the current situation and, more importantly, the future of Syria. Cairo’s support for the Russian version caused significant anger in the Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia, and was apparently the proximate cause for Riyadh cutting off the delivery of oil supplies to Egypt despite the existence of a multiyear agreement for such discounted sales. There have even been reports that Egypt sent military personnel and other material support to help prop up the Assad regime in Damascus, although there is no evidence for this and most observers regard it as extremely improbable.

However, differences over Syria are the most dramatic manifestation of this broader divergence over religion and politics. And while the UAE has been careful not to allow its views on the subject, which are similar to the Egyptian government’s, to interfere with relations with Riyadh, Egypt has been less cautious, which has also been apparent regarding the conflict in Yemen. Both the UAE and Saudi Arabia had hoped that Egypt would contribute more militarily to the campaign in Yemen than it did. Egyptian naval and ground forces have been involved, but not in particularly large numbers. Riyadh was reportedly additionally annoyed by the visit of a delegation of Houthi representatives to Cairo in 2015.

The most contentious issue, and the one that has occupied most of the public bandwidth on strained relations between the Egypt and Saudi Arabia, is the dispute over the Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir. While advocates for each country’s territorial claim have a case, the historical record tends to favor the mutual Saudi and Egyptian government narrative that the islands were temporarily transferred to Egyptian control to prevent Israel from seizing them in the early years of the Arab-Israeli conflict. But the Egyptian government mishandled the issue and did not prepare the political ground for the transfer plan, which was suddenly presented as a fait accompli and was perceived as a blow to Egyptian national pride. The ensuing public outcry has allowed those inside Egypt hostile to the present administration, and regional powers and media outlets sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood, to frame the agreement as a kind of Egyptian capitulation to Saudi financial clout and pressure, especially since the transfer was announced during King Salman bin Abdulaziz’s April 2016 visit to Cairo. Saudi Arabia also misread the political landscape in Egypt. Riyadh appeared to many Egyptians to be demanding and heavy-handed, and participated in a process that produced friction with a key ally and weakened the Sisi administration it had long worked to support. The organizations and lawyers pressing legal cases against the plan in Egypt are all ardent critics of the present government, although the Egyptian public across the political spectrum is largely against transferring control of the islands. The timing of the announcement allowed critics of the plan to cast it as a quid pro quo despite the complex history and strong arguments for the transfer of control. The Egyptian government has been even mischaracterized as having “sold” a part of Egypt’s patrimony to Saudi Arabia for financial gain.

Both governments see the transfer of control over the islands as fulfilling a decades-long pledge for Egypt to return control to Saudi Arabia once the Israeli threat had diminished, which both countries now believe to be the case, as well as facilitating a massive construction project that will be paid for almost entirely by the Saudis. All of this should have been explained to the Egyptian public in advance. Instead, the islands dispute has been allowed to emerge as a symbol of Egypt’s generalized decline, particularly its loss of regional clout and its perceived dependence on, and second rank to, Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Gulf Arab states. The controversy therefore serves as a proxy and an outlet for a broader sense of tarnished Egyptian national morale, and a convenient cudgel with which to castigate the Sisi administration as insufficiently patriotic.

The recent court ruling is by no means final. The government plans to appeal to another judicial body, and has also referred the matter to Parliament, which claims that it, alone, can make a final determination on the matter. Well-informed Egyptian sources agree that the controversy is likely to drag on for months, possibly not being resolved until at least the middle of the year, if not later. Egyptians are not alone in feeling peeved over the issue, though. While the Saudi government has maintained a careful and relatively quiet stance over the controversy in recent months, some Saudi commentators have expressed their own frustration, and several have suggested potentially taking the matter to international arbitration.

A further irritant between Cairo and Riyadh emerged on December 16, 2016 when a high-level Saudi delegation visited the Renaissance Dam project in Ethiopia, which Egypt believes threatens its all-important Nile River water supplies. The visit was seen in Cairo as possibly implying tacit Saudi support for the project, eliciting protests from well-placed Egyptians. The noted Saudi commentator Abdulrahman Al-Rashed replied that while Egypt is certainly more important to Saudi Arabia than Ethiopia, “If Egypt does not walk on the path of reform quickly it will lose historic opportunities in the Gulf and will not become a giant economic partner. Furthermore, it will continue to look for aid, and this is impossible to sustain.”

As noted, the UAE is particularly concerned about this rift between two of its most crucial allies. Saudi Arabia is essential to its national security strategy, while it aligns with Egypt on the key issue of Islamism. In November 2016, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Mohammed bin Zayed visited Egypt and then Saudi Arabia in rapid succession, in what was widely understood to be a high-level effort at mediation between the two key Arab powers. Interestingly, and perhaps ironically, these efforts were welcomed by the Syrian government, among others. But they did not appear to break any impasse, and tensions over Syria, the islands, and other issues persist. Emirati sources say the UAE has not given up on trying to bring the parties closer together, but is continuing with “conversations” rather than mediation and is trying to do things more quietly, given the unlikelihood of an immediate, short-term breakthrough.

In the long run, though, the UAE is likely to see its two major partners patch things up. Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab allies fundamentally remain committed to Egypt’s stability and, despite the tensions with Riyadh, view it as too important and, literally, too big to fail. Saudi Arabia alone has, in one form or another, contributed an estimated $25 billion into the Egyptian economy since 2013, with many billions more coming from other Gulf countries, most notably the UAE. Even as the disputes were gaining steam over the past summer, Saudi Arabia pledged $2 billion in direct aid to the Egyptian treasury, in part to help Egypt secure an all-important loan from the International Monetary Fund. And when Saudi Arabia cut off oil supplies following Cairo’s backing of the Russian-sponsored U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria (another Saudi move viewed by some Egyptians as coercive and overbearing), Riyadh’s Gulf Cooperation Council ally Kuwait stepped in with a discount deal to make up most of the shortfall. A separate agreement with Iraq has secured most of Egypt’s energy needs for the foreseeable future, although a resumption of energy supplies on favorable terms from Saudi Arabia would be a key indicator of a broader rapprochement between the two countries.

Observers on all sides expect such a rapprochement to eventually happen, because neither Egypt nor the Gulf Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, can afford to do without each other’s basic cooperation and support, particularly given the unprecedented series of domestic and regional security challenges facing the Arab world. Tensions over issues such as the war in Syria or conceptual divergences such as how to view differences between Islamist factions are highly unlikely to override the strategic imperatives that over the long run will prompt Cairo and Riyadh to seek to work together on many vital areas of mutual concern. The islands controversy is likely to play out very slowly in Egypt’s labyrinthine legal, administrative, and political system, insofar as it suits all sides in Cairo to drag the issue out indefinitely to avoid a complete confrontation with either domestic public opinion or Saudi Arabia. And, while the outcome of the islands issue is not predictable, even if the plan falls through and Egypt reneges on transferring control of them to Saudi Arabia, relations between the two countries will not collapse despite the frustration and annoyance that would inevitably ensue in Riyadh. Well-informed observers in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE characterize the relationship as a “dysfunctional marriage” but one that will endure despite differences with no plausible prospect of any divorce