The edifice of US democracy is burning down and political fire trucks are nowhere in sight.
During the Donald Trump presidency, many people thought they could hear alarm bells. But given the evolution of the Republican Party during a mere four months of the Joe Biden administration, the house of American democracy is unmistakably ablaze.
The manner in which a group conceptualises its past strongly indicates how it is likely to behave in the future. So, Republican narratives about the 2020 election are profoundly disturbing.
Last week, Republicans blocked the creation of a bipartisan commission into the January 6 mob attack that sought to stop Congress from ratifying Mr Biden’s victory.
House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy rejected his own negotiator’s reasonable deal with Democrats. Then Senate Republicans used the inevitable filibuster to scupper it.
Their excuses were risible.
The commission would not also be investigating violence at unrelated protests after the police killing of George Floyd. It somehow was not bipartisan enough. And it would either drag on too long – though it would end nine months before the 2022 midterm election – or it is too soon to investigate the disaster at all.
There are three actual reasons Republicans quashed the commission.
They do not want to anger Mr Trump and his supporters.They fear what may be discovered about the culpability of some Republicans. And, especially, it might hurt their chances in next year’s midterm elections, in which they believe, and history suggests, they could make significant gains in congress.
Blocking a bipartisan commission will not stop investigations. Mr Biden and/or Democrats in Congress could set up their own investigations, augmented by committee hearings.
But Republicans can now dismiss any findings as tainted products of a partisan witch-hunt. That, clearly, is the key.
A bipartisan commission would have essentially crafted an official narrative of the insurrection that Republicans could not effectively disavow. Absent that, Republicans are free to dismiss any discoveries, and instead promote their own narratives, no matter how preposterous.
Numerous House Republicans are championing slain insurrectionists as “executed” martyrs, praising the mob, and claiming they were orderly, and even affectionate towards the police (that they, in fact, attacked).
Democrats have their own partisan motivations. Nonetheless, a bipartisan commission is essential to developing a shared national narrative about January 6. The categorical opposition to that by Republicans is a barometer of burgeoning disaster.
Though Republicans refuse to scrutinise January 6, they remain keen on official investigations, especially when the main focus is the November election itself.
Mr Trump and his supporters have convinced most Republicans that the election was blatantly stolen from him through widespread fraud. There is no evidence of any significant irregularities, and instead there is every reason to believe it was one of the cleanest, most effective and widely participated-in elections in US history.
A bipartisan commission is essential to developing a shared national narrative about January 6
Such hegemonic counterfactual narratives about January 6 and the election results suggest that the Republican Party mainstream is increasingly committed to fantasy over reality. The investment in delusion seems almost wilful.
Attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, key purveyors of the stolen election myth, have responded to defamation lawsuits by claiming in court pleadings that no reasonable person could have believed their preposterous claims. Yet most Republicans apparently do, or at least claim to.
Worse yet, new polls suggest 30 million Americans, predominantly Republicans, believe nightmarish QAnon-inspired delusions that a Satan-worshiping, child-killing, pedophile cabal, predominantly Democrats, runs the US government.
In Arizona, Georgia and elsewhere, Republican legislatures are insisting on recounting ballots that have already been counted multiple times in an appropriate manner by the correct authorities. They are outsourcing that task to private companies committed to the stolen election narrative but with no election auditing experience.
Many Republican state legislatures are responding to non-existent election fraud by restricting voting and terrifyingly, transferring power over elections from established officials to themselves.
Mr Trump could not convince Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” him the extra votes he demanded in his notorious January 2 phone call. So now the position held by this lifelong Republican has been completely disempowered.
Such structural changes are obviously intended to prevent officials who insisted on upholding the law and the facts from being able to do that again.
The Republican Party seems to have become unwilling to accept defeat, and determined to limit voting, and ensure that, if defeated again, it can simply overturn those results.
States run elections but Congress ratifies presidential election results. On January 6, most House Republicans, 139 out of 208, voted to overturn the 2020 election results because Mr Trump lost.
Supporters of Donald Trump, including Jacob Chansley, right with fur hat, are confronted by US Capitol Police officers outside the Senate Chamber inside the Capitol in Washington, Jan 6. AP
Republicans could win a House majority in next year’s midterms. Given their passionate and paranoid election narratives, state-level structural changes and deepening extremism, it is difficult to imagine a Republican House majority confirming the election of a Democrat in 2024.
Tellingly, this dramatic deterioration has largely happened without much direction from Mr Trump. He is an unchallenged leader and symbol, but he has been strikingly disengaged.
Any hopes his absence would allow a reality-based Republican faction to regain control have been dashed. The battle within the party is over, and his extremist faction is solidly in command with or without him.
Perhaps traditional intellectual conservatism always served as a tissue-thin veneer veiling a seething morass of racial, cultural and religious indignation that is now particularly incensed by what it perceives to be a dramatic collapse in power and prestige in a changing America. Mr Trump may have simply pulled away the mask.
Democracy requires major parties that are prepared to lose. The current Republican Party does not seem willing to accept defeat and is therefore assembling an arsenal of political and other means – including the January 6 insurrection and routine dark hints of violence – to overturn an unacceptable result.
As a result, the American political edifice is on fire.
Decisive Republican defeats in the next few elections could force the party to change course or become irrelevant. But Republicans remain competitive nationally and regionally and are evidently willing to game, and even rig, the system as never before. At a minimum, they want to be able to choose when to agree to lose.
None of this is speculative. It is happening right now. The flames are rising fast, but no political fire engines are in sight. They may not even exist.
Amid a renewed focus on the plight of Palestinians, friendship with Israel is an awkward prospect.
As Israel takes stock of the fourth Gaza war, its new allies among the Gulf Arab states are counting the costs of their friendship — and the others are making fresh calculations about signing up to the Abraham Accords. The renewed focus on the plight of Palestinians in the occupied territories and of Arabs within Israel is putting the rulers of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in an awkward position and giving pause to their counterparts in places like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman.
The UAE and Bahrain had rational reasons to normalize relations with Israel last fall. For Manama, it was all about Iran. Ever since the late 1960s, when the Shah tried to annex Bahrain, its rulers have looked across the Persian Gulf with dread. The Islamic Republic’s support for organized, and sometimes violent, Shiite opposition to the Sunni ruling family greatly intensified their fears. With the U.S., their traditional protectors, growing ever keener to reduce its exposure in the Middle East, it made sense for Bahrain to ally with Israel, which shares its concerns about Iranian intentions.
The UAE was also mindful of Iranian threats, but it also shared Israel’s suspicion of Turkish ambitions; the Emiratis were especially nervous about Ankara’s patronage of the Muslim Brotherhood. They also reckoned that signing the Abraham Accords would strengthen ties to the U.S., in addition to giving them access to Israel’s vaunted hi-tech sector.
Both the UAE and Bahrain must have known that their alliance with Israel would from time to time be strained over the treatment of Palestinians and over its claims on Jerusalem. But it is unlikely they could have anticipated such an early — and tricky — test.
It came at the start of May, with a harsh crackdown against Palestinian protesters in Jerusalem. The storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque by Israeli police generated outrage across the Middle East, even among the politically quiescent populations of the Gulf monarchies. There was trenchant criticism, from Palestinians and other Arabs, of the states that had broken bread with the Israelis.
These sentiments, and their own misgivings, compelled the Emirati and Bahrainigovernments to issue strongly worded statements condemning Israeli actions in Jerusalem and the mosque.
The pressure on the UAE and Bahrain eased somewhat when Hamas unleashed rocket attacks on Israel, drawing attention away from Jerusalem and to another Gaza war. Because of its extremist ideology and propensity for violence, Hamas is widely unpopular in the Gulf. And while there is considerable sympathy for the Palestinian cause, Gaza doesn’t have the religious, political and cultural significance of Jerusalem.
Yet as casualties in Gaza mounted, especially among Palestinian civilians, so too did the anti-Israeli anger. Emirati and Bahraini blushes deepened as Qatar, with which they have often been at odds, used its media might — particularly the Al Jazeera network — to draw attention to the death and devastation wrought by Israeli missile strikes.
The cease-fire has halted the carnage, but Arab attentions have returned to Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa, where tensions are again mounting. For the UAE and Bahrain, more awkwardness surely lies ahead.
Arab signatories of the Abraham Accords can now be in no doubt that normalization with Israel has put them at the mercy of actors and events over which they have virtually no influence. This will not be lost on the other Gulf states that were, until recently, thinking of signing on. They may all have sound reasons to ally with Israel, but at the very least their monarchs will wait until the events of this month have faded in public memory.
As ever, most will look for signals from Saudi Arabia, the most powerful of the Gulf Arab states. The early, subtle indications are not encouraging: On Tuesday, an Israeli airline was denied permission to fly through Saudi airspace. Riyadh began to allow overflights shortly after the UAE joined the Abraham Accords.
A Saudi signature on the accords would be the ultimate prize for Israel and for U.S. President Joe Biden, who is pressing on with his predecessor’s policy of encouraging Israeli-Arab normalization. Riyadh’s imprimatur would make it far easier for others to follow suit. In addition to its regional heft, Saudi Arabia also has a leadership role in the wider Muslim world. But this makes it cautious, having more to lose from a miscalculation.
The Saudi leadership is obviously open to improving relations with Israel: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman broke a longstanding taboo last November when he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But as the kingdom’s day-to-day ruler looked upon the events of the past few weeks, he will have been aware of the discomfiture of his Emirati and Bahraini counterparts—and known how much worse it would have been had he put his signature next to theirs.
In addition to the outbreak of Jewish versus Arab communal violence inside Israel for the first time since the 1940s, one of the few novel features of an otherwise grimly familiar scenario during the Israel-Hamas fighting are the apparent new patterns in American attitudes. The changes are striking and complex. Many were long in the making. And not all of them are positive.
US President Joe Biden stuck to the well-established, pre-Donald Trump, playbook by insisting in public on Israel’s right to defend itself, while applying increasing pressure behind the scenes for a ceasefire. In this case, it proved effective politically and diplomatically. It is unlikely any other politically plausible approach could have produced an earlier halt to the violence.
Mr Biden may well have even saved lives by denying Israel a completely free hand, through quiet pressure but by also not giving the Israelis any reason to try to demonstrate their independence – even to themselves –by continuing the fighting despite public pressure from Washington.
But beyond the White House, developments in Congress, especially among Democrats, were wildly off script.
First, there is a new and vocal faction on the progressive left, led by Bernie Sanders in the Senate and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the House. It is critical of Israeli policies in the occupied territories to a degree seldom seen before in Congress, and does not hesitate to champion Palestinian human rights.
This faction includes Rashida Tlaib, the first female and Muslim Palestinian-American in Congress. She has been passionately outspoken and very effective in putting a human and American face on the Palestinian experience.
When Mr Biden visited her home state, Michigan, last week to view an automobile factory, she was seen in animated conversation with him and he praised her determination.
He was also greeted by a large demonstration of Arab Americans protesting against Israel’s attacks in Gaza.
Crucially, the change is not limited to a left-wing faction.
Centrists and even stalwartly pro-Israel Democrats, like Senators Chuck Schumer and Robert Menendez and Congressman Jerry Nadler, maintained strong support for Israel in its battle with Hamas, but also signed on to statements deeply critical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians that would have been completely unthinkable until now.
But the breakdown of the old pro-Israel and, at least in theory, pro-two-state solution consensus in Washington is hardly unqualified good news for the Palestinians.
Attitudes have shifted dramatically on the right as well, as Mr Trump’s pro-annexation and highly anti-Palestinian policies demonstrated.
With the ascendancy of a huge evangelical Christian, and a small Jewish, religious right, many Republicans now openly support the creation of a “greater” Israel and, in effect, oppose any genuinely independent Palestinian state.
Numerous factors have contributed to this new polarisation on Israel.
More than a decade of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s relentless siding with Republicans has been crucial in turning Israel, and therefore Palestine, into a partisan issue. So has the growing influence of narratives on the left, of casting Palestinians as oppressed victims of Israeli racism and colonialism.
Among younger Democrats, Palestinians are now routinely compared to African-Americans under Jim Crow segregation in the US south or blacks in the former apartheid South Africa. That is not anything younger liberal Americans are willing to tolerate. Palestinian lives matter, they insist.
The mythology of both Israel and the US being settler pioneer states that were battling the wilderness in the name of civilisation used to inspire identification with Israel among many Americans. Now it serves as an indictment, especially among the young.
And everyone knows that Israel has decisively turned away from the Oslo formula and a two-state solution, with Mr Netanyahu insisting that all Palestinians can aspire to is a “state minus”.
Right-wing Republicans welcome this, but it profoundly alienates liberal Democrats.
Still, it is easy to overstate the policy impact to date of these cultural and attitudinal shifts.
Mr Biden was still strongly supportive of Israel’s campaign in Gaza, especially in the early stages. Congress is not considering reducing US military aid to Israel, or even reversing legislation that makes it practically impossible for the Palestinians to reopen the Palestine Liberation Organisation mission in Washington.
Despite the newfound sympathy in some Washington quarters for Palestinians, the deck is still heavily stacked towards Israel and the “special relationship” remains robust for now.
Moreover, Palestinians and their allies should be alarmed at a number of violent anti-Semitic street attacks evidently triggered by the Gaza conflict. One obvious parallel to these ugly anti-Jewish incidents in New York and Los Angeles is the post-9/11 anger and hatred against those perceived to be Arabs and Muslims. These appalling incidents could not be more toxic to the Palestinian cause and the prospects for improving its standing in the US.
The shift in American discourse on Palestinian rights is also partly the product of decades of dedicated, tireless effort of countless pro-Palestinian and human rights activists who successfully challenged deeply entrenched anti-Palestinian narratives in US culture.
Even within the Biden administration a subtle but key change is evident.
White House Press Secretary Jen Paski, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Mr Biden all spoke of Palestinians and Israelis deserving “equal measures” of freedom and other rights. The phrase is so consistent it has evidently been carefully crafted and used with a full appreciation of its significance.
As a principle, the new language points US policy towards a purposive rights-based Palestinian agenda that focuses less on the form of an outcome than on its content.
It suggests the US would agree that a long-term Palestinian-Israeli arrangement must provide first-class citizenship and human and civil rights to all individuals and allow both peoples to effectively exercise self-determination.
That would align Washington squarely with Palestinian aspirations for freedom and equality, rather than Israeli territorial ambitions, ethnic domination and the exclusivity of Jewish national rights most explicitly defined in the 2018 “nation-state” law.
“Equal” is a word and a value that powerfully serves Palestinian interests. Its repeated use by the Biden administration subtly but clearly shows that the tectonic cultural plates underlying US attitudes are shifting in a positive direction.
First, recognize the real motivations behind the cycle of crisis and carnage.
Familiarity breeds fecklessness. For much of the international community, the fourth Gaza war between Israel and Hamas has been an occasion for the shaking of heads and the wringing of hands. The cease-fire, when it comes, will be an opportunity to disengage — until the next time rockets and missiles fly.
And of course, everyone knows there will be a next time.
This world-weariness stems from a lack of understanding of the motivations of the belligerents. There is a tendency to take their explanations at face value. Israel claims to be protecting itself from a dangerous terrorist group. Hamas claims to be defending the rights and dignity of Palestinians. Each side says the other gives it no choice but to resort to arms.
These are excuses, not explanations. Any serious international effort to break the cycle of crisis and carnage—and to prevent a fifth Gaza war — must start with a clear-eyed understanding of the real aims that drive the conflict on both sides.
Sworn enemies they might be, but Israel and Hamas actively collaborate in perpetuating the cycle; they have never made serious efforts to end it. This is because each has important interests that are served by the status quo.
For Israel, the spasms of violence are tolerable because they facilitate settlement and gradual de-facto annexation in the West Bank. Hamas rule in Gaza bolsters Israel’s claim that it has no partner in peace because the Palestinians are divided, and that a significant part of their political leadership is a hostile terrorist organization. The Israeli settlement project is framed as a form of forward defense against an implacable enemy.
For Hamas, occasional war with Israel is a means to a narrow political end: to unseat Fatah and take control over all Palestinian self-ruled areas. By lobbing rockets into Israel, it can claim to be doing more for the Palestinian cause than the supine Fatah-led government in the West Bank.
The strategy has worked. Although Palestinians in general are fed up with both factions, polls show Hamas has gained support in the West Bank. It is concomitantly losing support among Gazans, who bear the brunt of the wars with Israel; this matters little to the leaders of Hamas because their monopoly of violence in Gaza prevents any challenge from Fatah.
Hamas has other incentives to keep attacking Israel, such as the patronage of Iran, but these are secondary to its political aims.
If it weren’t for these interests, Israel and Hamas might be able to arrive at a long-term truce, with serious commitments not to attack each other and arrangements for peacekeeping and reconstruction. But because both sides find the status quo useful, they are unlikely to turn the next cease fire into an opportunity for a major restructuring.
Can this be avoided? Yes, if the countries pressing for a cease-fire recognize the real motivations of the two sides, and address them directly.
This requires parties the U.S., which has the most leverage with Israel, to reinforce its opposition to settlement activity in the West Bank — not only because it undermines a two-state solution, but because it is a key driver the of Gaza wars. Israelis jealously protect their “special relationship” with the U.S., so some plain-speaking by Washington would get their attention. There is already some anxiety in Israel that voices sympathetic to the Palestinian cause are on the ascendancy in American politics.
Beyond that, given the depth of the partnership, Biden has other means of making his displeasure felt — such as scaling back cooperation in non-security issues — short of the nuclear option of reducing the $3.8 billion in annual military aid.
Last week in the US, Representative Liz Cheney plainly intended to make history by going all-in, hazarding her entire career by wagering against former US president Donald Trump. For several days, she was shadowed by acclaimed photographer David Hume Kennerly who memorialised each intended momentous development for posterity.
Mr Kennerly, who has photographed every US president since Lyndon Johnson and is chief official White House photographer, may not have been at the closed-door May 12 meeting, at which House Republicans ousted her as their third ranking leader, but his general presence was an unmistakable, dramatic statement.
In contrast to her steely bravado, her pusillanimous colleagues met for just 15 minutes, and dumped her through an indiscriminate voice vote, although some disparaged and even childishly mocked her.
Her sin is her harsh criticism of Mr Trump. Worse, she indignantly denies his now-defining lie that he was robbed of victory last November through massive fraud, which clearly did not happen. Most gallingly, she refuses to keep quiet.
This last point is the most critical.
Few Republicans in the House doubt the 2020 election was fair, clean and remarkably successful, despite a pandemic and deep political divisions, with the largest turnout in over a century. Even fewer, however, are willing to frankly acknowledge that simple and crucial fact. Many claim fraud or express grave doubts. Others note that most Republican voters believe there was fraud and that is all that matters.
But Republican voters have only swallowed this fairy tale because so many Republican leaders have either deliberately misled them or at least failed to bluntly correct the record, thereby creating a self-reinforcing feedback loop of toxic disinformation. That is precisely what Ms Cheney has been systematically countering.
She correctly insists these falsehoods pose a grave and imminent threat to US democracy. If the entire process is indeed a sham, the US government in that case would deserve no respect whatsoever. The most bitter US enemies around the world could not put it better. It is a supremely unpatriotic position, particularly because it is absolutely untrue, and its proponents know that but are motivated by entirely cynical reasons.
Ms Cheney angered other Republicans by defending the system, declaring Mr Trump unfit for office, and insisting: “I will do everything I can to ensure that the former president never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office.”
Many of her colleagues would privately sympathise. But, because their party is now almost exclusively defined by Mr Trump, with rare exceptions they fervently defend him at all costs. Hardline Trump loyalists go even further, aggressively propagating a whitewashed fictional narrative about the deadly January 6 attack against Congress by a violent pro-Trump mob.
Like Mr Trump, they paint the insurrection as a “normal tourist visit” by orderly, law-abiding patriots who showed respect and affection for the police (who, in fact, they attacked and, in one case, killed).
Several insist that any violence was actually committed by leftist infiltrators or that the chaos was somehow the fault of House Democratic leaders. Others blame police for “executing” a violent protester who was shot while rampaging through Congress or for “harassing peaceful patriots” by investigating lawbreaking committed at the riot.
This is all intimately connected to the campaign to discredit the election and press the risible falsehood that Mr Trump was the real winner.
Ms Cheney’s unceremonious ejection is the ultimate confirmation that her party has degenerated into a highly organised personality cult despite Mr Trump’s decisive election defeat. She is among the most stalwart and stridently conservative Republicans in Congress. To reverse a cliche from the classic film The Godfather: “It’s not business, this is strictly personal.” But her long-term challenge to Mr Trump is potentially threatening precisely because she is far more conservative than he is, or ever was.
She is certainly more conservative than her successor, Elise Stefanik, a political moderate but ardent devotee of Mr Trump.
Ms Cheney’s message boils down to: “It’s him or me”. Obviously right now it is him, but her speculation is that eventually, his mystique will evaporate. It could be due to legal charges or scandalous revelations, a strong midterm for Democrats next year, or a health crisis, among other possibilities.
So, she has dramatically positioned herself not as Mr Trump’s successor, nor as a potential unifying figure between his base and traditional conservatives, but as his stark antithesis.
If Republicans soon seek an anti-Trump corrective to decisively turn away from his brand of politics and legacy, she has laid the only really credible claim to that mantle thus far.
In the event of a “this party isn’t big enough for both of us” confrontation, it would be impossible for Mr Trump or his surrogates to successfully attack her as insufficiently conservative. She is very far to the right, but in the Reaganite, not the nativist or white nationalist, tradition.
She could be attacked from her left as too conservative, but instead the Trump camp will surely paint her as an internationalist warmonger, anti-populist elitist from a family of party bigshots, and servant of globalist capitalism against the American working class.
That is all, of course, just code for not being personally loyal to Mr Trump. Ms Cheney has positioned herself as the champion of a purifying return to traditional, but very right wing, conservatism in case – as she hopes and may well expect – Republicans decide to turn away from Mr Trump in the foreseeable future. At the moment, though, it is definitely no contest. His grip on the party is rock-solid.
Even if she is right about long-term trends, timing might be the biggest weakness in her wager. If Mr Trump’s star does fade before the next presidential election, Ms Cheney faces the immediate and extreme danger of losing her House seat in Wyoming next year to a pro-Trump candidate.
All of Mr Kennerly’s masterful photos may not resurrect her career when and if a post-Trump Republican alternative is needed, should she spectacularly crash and burn before his spell has broken. For all its boldness, her gambit is a massive longshot.
If the country doesn’t address their alienation and anger, they could form a powerful part of a unified Palestinian movement.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict often seems like a nightmarish Groundhog Day of endless repetition. And indeed Hamas and Israel are yet again battering each other. In the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority is impotent and paralyzed while Israel advances the aggressive building of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Yet one usually overlooked group may be taking on a bigger role this time: the Palestinian citizens of Israel. Also known as “Arab Israelis,” at almost 2 million they comprise about 20% of Israel’s citizenry but face significant discrimination. Almost 6 million Palestinians in the occupied territories, also ruled by Israel, have no citizenship.
Arab Israelis have historically played a marginal role in both Israeli society and the Palestinian national movement. But with strong forces pulling in each direction, that may soon change. It may not have much impact on the current fighting, but it could transform the shape of the struggle going forward.
In some ways, Arab Israelis are being slowly integrated into Israeli life as individuals. Many Jewish Israelis lauded their heroic service as medical staff during the pandemic. But collectively they’re increasingly alienated and feel more “Palestinian.”
In 2018 Israel adopted a “nation-state law” that says only Jews have a right to national self-determination in Israel. As the recent communal violence in “mixed cities” between Jewish and Arab mobs demonstrates, the impulse to assert themselves as Palestinians against a shared Israeli domination is growing — as is their risk of being attacked by Jewish extremists.
A key factor that’s driving them is the disappearance of the “Green Line,” the border supposedly separating Israel proper from the occupied territories, which formed the basis of hope for a Palestinian state.
Israel has long ignored that distinction, allowing all Jews to live under the same laws in a fully integrated state while creating a plethora of diverse rules and realities for Palestinians depending on where they live. Still, the Green Line mirage offered hope of the oppression only being temporary. This has effectively vanished in recent years with the Israeli government formally ruling out a two-state solution and human rights groups increasingly criticizing Israel for “apartheid” rather than “occupation.”
What is left is a deepening sense of shared oppression among Arab Israelis, with their second-class citizenship, and their fellow Palestinians living under de facto apartheid in the West Bank. That prompts a far more integrated Palestinian struggle, even if it takes different forms in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and inside Israel.
But there is another new dynamic at work too: The fractious and hitherto impotent Arab political parties in Israel have begun to inch toward a new degree of parliamentary effectiveness.
After the 2020 election the United Arab List was the third largest bloc in the Knesset, Israel’s legislature — a historic breakthrough — though that changed when the Yesh Atid party broke with the larger Blue and White coalition.
More strikingly, Mansour Abbas, leader of the Islamist party Ra’am, entered into a prolonged courtship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in recent months to potentially join a new Israeli coalition government. Though Abbas is an Arab, and an Islamist no less, his homophobic and culturally reactionary views resonate with some right-wing Jewish groups surrounding Netanyahu.
There was considerable resistance to such an alliance. Netanyahu ultimately failed to form a majority, and the opportunity was passed to centrist politician Yair Lapid and right-winger Naftali Bennett. But Abbas again positioned himself well and is still viewed as a potential coalition partner.
Jewish outrage over communal violence could kill his chances. So could deep anger among his own constituents. But the strife could also open an avenue for Abbas to make the leap into Israeli governance.
He seems determined to continue these negotiations, denouncing rioting and lawlessness and positioning himself as an agent of responsible engagement and calm. He’s still playing the political game to acquire official power and state patronage.
Some Israeli commentators see Abbas entering government as an opportunity to address a growing internal security threat by bringing Arab Israelis closer to the social and political mainstream. A potential analogue is when Shas, a party representing once-marginalized ultra-Orthodox Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews, was brought into the Israeli government in 1984.
If Abbas’ efforts to get the Arab-Israeli toe into the government are rejected, as Bennett’s most recent comments suggest they may be, that could dissuade other Arab-Israeli politicians and amplify the community’s sense of alienation and exclusion.
Israel faces a clear choice: Either it finds ways of integrating its Arab citizens into national life and reversing a growing trend of communal alienation and anger. Or its own Arab citizens could become a powerful part of a more unified Palestinian national movement confronting Israeli rule.
The answer should be obvious, but anger often trumps self-interest — especially between Israelis and Palestinians.
An Israeli-Hamas conflict is far more manageable than Al-Aqsa confrontations.
The recent explosion of violence between Israel and the Palestinians has posed serious quandaries for the Gulf Arab countries that have either begun normalizing diplomatic relations with Israel or may be considering doing so in the future. The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain are well into the process, while Qatar and Oman have a long history of diplomatic interactions with Israel and could easily take that step. Saudi Arabia, too, has been careful to keep the option open, both politically and diplomatically. Only Kuwait, which is concerned about importing any avoidable regional controversy into its delicate political balance at home, seems distinctly reluctant to consider such a move.
Yet the Gulf Arab conundrum has eased somewhat in recent days as the epicenter of the confrontation shifted from Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem to an exchange of aerial bombardments between Israel and Gaza. Tensions in Jerusalem built over several recent weeks toward a scheduled final Israeli Supreme Court decision expected to support an effort by Jewish settlers to evict several Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah area of East Jerusalem. Anything in East Jerusalem has religious and symbolic significance, among other reasons, because it is the location of the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque. And, Arabs, especially Palestinians, stress that the capital of a Palestinian state must be in East Jerusalem. Because the families facing eviction are already refugees and the Israeli settlers are invoking a law allowing Jews to regain privately owned land allegedly lost in 1948, a right that Israel does not extend to Palestinians, emotive themes of occupation, displacement, and discrimination are also invoked.
Gulf leaders were well aware that Egyptian and Jordanian officials, among others, had been warning the United Statesthat tensions over this latest displacement were brewing noticeably in Jerusalem in recent weeks. On May 6, ongoing Sheikh Jarrah protests picked up steam with the impending court decision. And after Friday prayers on Laylat al-Qadr, arguably the holiest night during Ramadan, a major confrontation between Palestinians and Israeli forces ensued when congregants joined with Sheikh Jarrah protests. That’s when the situation became particularly awkward for Gulf countries, inducing them to issue strongly worded statementsthey would otherwise have preferred to avoid.
Videos circulated widely, going from ubiquitous Palestinian TikTok accounts to the Instagram and Twitter streams that are more normative in the Gulf, showing Israeli forces rampagingthrough the Al-Aqsa Mosque, firing teargas and stun grenades as Palestinian youths pelted them with stones. Hundreds of Palestinian protesters were injured, along with a number of Israeli troops. Gulf countries, including the UAE, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, issued strong statements condemning the violation of the holy places, calling for Israel to respect their sanctity, and reiterating strong support for the right of Palestinians to an independent state with its capital in East Jerusalem.
Confrontations continued over the weekend but were noticeably dying down in frequency and intensity (possibly influenced by the Israeli Supreme Court’s action postponing a decision on the case). At this stage, the confrontation was still largely defined by Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa. This dynamic threatened to make conditions very difficult, at least in the short term, for Gulf Arab countries to publicly and significantly move forward with improved ties with Israel. However, since those moves were prompted by reasons of state and national interests, there’s little question of any significant reversal. But an unwelcome slowing down and lowering the profile seemed possible.
On May 10, however, Hamas in Gaza launched a barrage of rockets toward Israel and even Jerusalem itself. As it has in previous Palestinian-Israeli confrontations, the Islamist group wanted to seize the agenda and mantle of national and religious leadership and score vital political points before clashes petered out. Hostilities quickly shifted into an all too familiar exchange of deadly aerial bombardments between Israel and Gaza.
Hamas’ intervention shifted the focus from the protesters and holy sites in Jerusalem to the radical group’s ability to strike Israel and cause injury and death. That shift removed the galvanizing pressure that Jerusalem creates. And even putting aside Hamas’ origins decades ago as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, the group is widely perceived as a radical and even terrorist organization in much of the Arab world, especially in the Gulf states. Unlike the largely nonviolent protesters at Sheikh Jarrah and Al-Aqsa, Hamas’ rocket and missile attacks against Israel are broadly perceived as cynical, dangerous, unnecessarily provocative, and endangering Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza alike. There won’t be much sympathy for what is widely viewed in the Gulf as Israel’s heavy-handed and disproportionate retaliation, but it will be much easier for Gulf leaders and many citizens to regard the exchange as a tragic conflagration at the expense of ordinary people brought about by two leaderships over which they have neither control nor responsibility. This sentiment has been notably expressed in the trending hashtag “Palestine is not our cause.”
Much the same applies to communal rioting and deadly violence between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel in “mixed cities.” This can be and largely has been regarded as the internal and civil affairs of another country, and while Gulf Arab sympathy has been entirely with the Palestinian citizens of Israel, such communal violence will not be regarded as an appropriate issue to raise at the bilateral level. As such, it’s not likely to have much impact on the diplomatic process, including concerning ongoing and potential normalization agreements.
There remains, however, a potential political risk for Gulf Arab governments and their options regarding Israel. Just as the confrontation began in Jerusalem and then shifted to Gaza, the pendulum could swing back in the other direction. Such a shift could occur if Israel launches major military operations in Gaza that cause significant bloodshed and civilian casualties over an extended period. During such a period, sympathy for the Palestinian people of Gaza would almost certainly grow despite dismay with Hamas, both in the Arab world and even among many Palestinians. All of this could lead to the pendulum swinging back to protests across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including the holy places. If Muslim holy sites, especially the Al-Aqsa Mosque, once again become focal points for Israeli-Palestinian confrontations, the political and diplomatic calculation for Gulf Arab countries become much more difficult.
A key diplomatic guide for responses from the states that have signed on to the Abraham Accords, especially the UAE, may be the official response from Egypt and Jordan, the two countries that pioneered peace treaties with Israel and border Gaza and the West Bank, respectively. Neither country, despite condemnations, has made any overt diplomatic move, such as recalling its ambassador, to confront Israel yet. However, if they do, it may become extremely difficult for Gulf countries to continue to limit their own responses to expressions of dismay in solidarity with those countries and the Palestinians. The Egypt and Jordan element, even if it does not come into play in the current crisis to an extent that would shape the response of Abraham Accord states, is likely to play a key role in future iterations of Israeli-Palestinian confrontation.
Perhaps counterintuitively, the Abraham Accord countries aren’t in a position to meaningfully help mediate the Hamas-Israel crisis. All of them shun Hamas as an extremist organization and have no working relationship with it. They would be loath to grant the group the diplomatic recognition and political advantage that might accrue from direct engagement. Moreover, as things stand, they have little leverage with Israel because their relationships remain at a very early stage and were undertaken for reasons almost entirely unconnected to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with the exception of forestalling further Israeli annexation in the West Bank. Unless the conflict pivots back to Jerusalem, and especially the Al-Aqsa Mosque, to a significant degree the UAE and Bahrain are likely to try to ride out the storm – keep a low profile and allow this confrontation to play itself out with minimal engagement from them.
The Egyptians have played the key bridging role between Israel and Hamas in securing previous cease-fires, and that’s likely to be repeated in this instance. Given its history, geography, and working relations with both parties, Cairo is uniquely positioned for this role. However, Qatar, with a long history of mediating between warring parties, and a key role in Gaza, could also help end the fighting. Doha, at Israel’s behest, is the main financier of Gaza’s economy, providing quarterly cash payments to Hamas for public employee salaries in the Gaza Strip. In addition, Qatar has a long history of engagement and, from 1996-2000, maintained low-level diplomatic relations with an Israeli trade office in Doha. So, while it cannot take the place of Egypt as the primary interlocutor, Qatar could be a crucial support in securing an end to the hostilities and possibly even prospects for reconstruction.
This confrontation, even if contained and lacking a pendulum swing back in Jerusalem’s direction this time, provides a foretaste of possible future political discomfort and awkward diplomacy key Gulf countries could face whenever confrontations in Jerusalem again erupt on a large scale. Engagement with Israel, over the long run, will have positive and negative strategic, diplomatic, and political effects on the UAE and Bahrain, as well as Sudan and Morocco. Thus far, nothing that has developed or seems imminent will prompt them to reconsider their decision to normalize relations with Israel. Yet, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict retains its ability to destabilize and inflame the region, particularly when it involves Jerusalem and other holy or emotive places. The full costs and benefits of normalization will only be evident over time.
The latest Israeli-Palestinian clashes are a reminder that the tinder is dry, and there are arsonists aplenty.
Power and impunity on one side, hopelessness and desperation on the other, the failure of leadership everywhere: The latest flare-up between Israelis and Palestinians is a distillation of everything that makes their decades-old conflict so combustible. Although the fires in East Jerusalem are unlikely to spark the conflagration everyone fears most, a third Palestinian “intifada,” or uprising, that engulfs all of the West Bank and Gaza, the events of recent days are a reminder that the tinder is dangerously dry.
And there are altogether too many arsonists standing ready to set it alight.
In this round of the conflict, the familiar narratives — of Israeli power over Palestinians, and of Palestinian resistance to that power — center on the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, where Jewish settlers have for decades been trying to evict six Palestinian refugee families from homes they have occupied since shortly after the 1948 war.
The settlers claim the properties were previously owned by Jews and can therefore be seized under an Israeli law that allows Jews to reclaim privately-owned land lost during wartime, a right denied to Palestinians.
Palestinians say this is part of an effort to remove their presence from key areas of the city and “Judaize” Jerusalem by force. Israeli authorities don’t deny they hope to restrict the Arab population in the city to less than 30%, from its current 40%.
On Monday, the Israeli supreme court was set to issue a final ruling on the eviction of the refugee families, leading to a sense of tension and growing protests throughout the previous week. Matters came to a head on Friday, after prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the hotly contested Haram Al-Sharif/Temple Mount complex. Clashes erupted between Palestinians and police, leading to unprecedented scenes of congregants being attacked inside the mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites. Hundreds of Palestinians and a number of police officers were wounded.
A perfect storm seemed to be developing. The supreme court ruling was to coincide with a planned march by Israeli extremists through Arab sections of East Jerusalem on the day Israel celebrates its conquest of the city in 1967. The Palestinian leadership and the Israeli government had either failed to anticipate the risks of combustion or had not cared to mitigate them.
But the storm did not break. There was less violence on Saturday and Sunday. The court postponed its hearing. The Israeli extremists, finally ordered by the authorities to reroute their march and thus forego much of the intended provocation, simply called it off.
That’s when Hamas decided to fire off a rocket barrage from Gaza in the direction of Jerusalem. This caused little damage, but provoked harsh Israeli retaliation that killed at least 20 Palestinians in Gaza, including nine children.
The aerial bombardments might yet set off more violence, but since a sustained Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule is in nobody’s interests, cooler heads will likely prevail, at least for now.
In the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority under President Mahmoud Abbas is rebuilding its relationship with Washington after the breakdown during the Trump years and coping with the new regional dynamics created by the Abraham Accords between Israel and several Arab states. These efforts would be greatly complicated by an intifada, and the PA will try to prevent one from breaking out.
Hamas is clearly trying to inflame the situation in the West Bank, but the last thing it needs now is another full-blown war between Gaza and Israel. It is struggling to provide the most basic necessities for the two million Palestinians crammed into the narrow strip. With few options and allies, it relies on regular infusions of cash from Qatar, with Israel’s approval, to keep most residents fed. An uprising would make matters worse, and deepen Gazans’ dissatisfaction over Hamas rule.
On the Israeli side, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, struggling to extend his hold on power, may regard the heightened tensions as useful for rallying political support. But he would be blamed if the conflict spirals out of control and he can ill afford further political losses.
But even if a massive eruption of sustained violence is avoided this time, nobody should be sanguine about the future. None of the protagonists will be able to stop a popular brushfire from igniting a full-blown intifada when conditions are ready. The Palestinian youths who will drive it answer to no one these days. Israeli extremists, as well as Hamas and other Islamist groups, are always ready to fan the flames.
The root of the problem lies in the imbalance in the lives of Israelis and Palestinians that human-rights groups are now openly calling apartheid. While that remains the case, everyone should fear the fire next time.
So much for the administration’s claim of wanting a return to the “rules-based international order.”
Half measures typically don’t please anyone, much less secure the benefits that come with a clear choice. That certainly applies to the Biden administration’s refusal to take a straightforward position on Moroccan sovereignty in Western Sahara.
Last December, President Donald Trump announced — on Twitter, naturally — the end of half a century of American opposition to recognizing Rabat’s claim to the vast, mineral-rich region along the Atlantic coast. Since Trump was nearly out the door at the time, the Moroccans welcomed the announcement with a degree of caution: They were not sure what the next occupant of the White House would do.
According to both news reports and senior diplomats from the region, the Biden administration is declining to take a decision either way — neither endorsing Trump’s decision nor doing anything to rescind it. In effect, it is kicking the can down the road.
The Moroccans are relieved that their big gain under Trump hasn’t been revoked. But they have not forgotten U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s January 27 comment that the administration was “trying to make sure that we have a full understanding of any commitments that may have been made in securing those [Arab normalization] agreements” with Israel. Trump’s Western Sahara announcement was a quid pro quo in exchange for Rabat’s diplomatic opening with Israel.
Blinken has sent mixed signals. The State Department’s annual human-rights report, released in March, did not include the traditional Western Sahara section. The department’s maps depict the region as part of an expanded Morocco.
But last month, Blinken urged the United Nations to appoint a special envoy for Western Sahara and called for negotiations between the Moroccan government and independence-seeking Sahrawis. This suggests the matter is not settled.
Morocco annexed Western Sahara after Spain withdrew in 1975. Since then, Sahrawi resistance has been led mainly by the Polisario Front, an armed group supported by neighboring Algeria. American and international opposition to Morocco’s claim to Western Sahara stems from the United Nations charter prohibiting the acquisition of territory by war. Trump’s priority, however, was an Israeli-Moroccan diplomatic breakthrough.
Ironically, there are plenty of parallels between Moroccan rule of Western Sahara and Israel’s control of the Palestinian territories seized in 1967. Like Israel, Morocco has systematically transformed the demographics of the area, but even more thoroughly than in the West Bank. By some estimates, Moroccan settlers make up more than half of the 500,000 people living in Western Sahara. The UN and much of the international community consider both to be foreign military occupations.
But Trump never cared for such niceties. He was keen to promote normalization of relations between Arab states and Israel, recognizing this as one of his very few foreign policy successes. After diplomatic successes with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan, his attention turned to Morocco.
But Rabat was clear that the price would be U.S. recognition of its sovereignty in Western Sahara. Trump saw no problem with this. After all, he had already endorsed Israel’s claims on the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem, and a proposal to annex about 30% of the West Bank. In exchange, the Moroccans agreed to reopen a liaison officeswith Israel that were closed amid the violence of the second Palestinian intifada in 2000.
But Rabat is unlikely to accept full relations until is certain the Trump position won’t be rescinded by the new Democratic administration. The current ambivalence in Washington won’t help move the needle.
Biden in a bind. His administration and most Democrats strongly support the Arab-Israeli diplomatic breakthroughs, and would like to expand them further. But at the same time, the president claims to be championing a return to the “international, rules-based order” that Trump all but abandoned by backing the Israeli and Moroccan annexations.
A fundamental tenet of that order is that countries can’t simply grab land as they see fit. To cast that rule aside is to embrace the law of the jungle in relations between the states. Among other things, it leaves Washington with no argument against Russia’s efforts to take over parts of Ukraine.
It’s hard to see any benefit in Biden’s timid ambiguity. Had he endorsed Trump’s position, it might have persuaded Morocco to move quickly towards full relations with Israel — and the White House might have been able to argue that closer ties between two American partners is a good thing.
The wiser choice would be to rescind Trump’s decision on Western Sahara and restore U.S. support for the most basic of international laws. He might not do the same for East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, for fear of a powerful array of pro-Israel constituencies — but the fewer exceptions to the “rules-based order,” the better.
Instead, Biden has opted for a cop-out that serves nobody’s interests.
New talks reflect a broad range of regional and international developments in recent years.
Saudi Arabia and Iran reportedly held a significant diplomatic meeting in Iraq in early April, which was itself the product of a series of earlier, more low-key and low-level meetings. The two sides are said to be planning a follow-up soon. And Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, one of the Arab leaders most vociferously critical of Iran, said in a major televised interview that his government seeks “good relations” with Iran and is “working with our partners in the region to overcome our differences with Iran.” The talks in Iraq reportedly focused on the situation in Yemen, but the details are probably less significant than the development of such a dialogue.
Iran’s other major Gulf antagonist, the United Arab Emirates, has, for complex reasons of its own, moved even more swiftly and dramatically to develop a new opening to Tehran, including a foreign ministerial summit, which was reportedly about the coronavirus pandemic. Saudi Arabia, which is much larger and more powerful, was always likely to move more cautiously than the UAE, but this opening is hardly a surprise or abrupt reversal. Many factors have shaped the evolution of Riyadh’s calculations regarding dialogue with Tehran.
A Dialogue Long in the Making
For more than two years, Saudi Arabia and Iran have been laying the groundwork for, and slowly inching toward, a fledgling negotiation. Well over a year ago, Saudi Arabia began significant, if low-key, diplomatic overtures to Iran. This was in the midst of the “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran by the administration of former President Donald J. Trump. But it began precisely because Iran’s low-intensity, often deniable, military campaign against U.S. sanctions, under the rubric of “maximum resistance,” was leading to unmanageable tensions.
Saudi Arabia did not seek a U.S. war with Iran, let alone a conflict involving the Saudis themselves. Like the UAE, Israel, and others, Saudi Arabia had grave doubts about the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action between Iran and global powers. And Riyadh welcomed Trump’s pressure campaign against Iran and his insistence on a new agreement that would deal with Tehran’s missile development program and support for proxy forces in the Arab world. Yet, most senior Saudi leaders believed that a vast conflict in their immediate environment, which would almost certainly directly threaten Saudi Arabia itself, was not in their interests.
Such concerns intensified following the September 14, 2019 missile and drone attacks on Saudi Aramco facilities widely believed to have been conducted by Iran. Not only did the attacks show Saudi Arabia’s vulnerability, the use of precision guidance was technically very impressive. Few of the projectiles failed to hit their marks, and planners had chosen cannily what to strike and when in order to do maximum damage. So, Saudi Arabia’s decision to diplomatically engage with Iran, in part, arose from a genuine desire to avoid conflict and real anxiety about how dangerous tensions had already become.
Another key factor was the growing sense that because of U.S. sanctions and other pressure, Iran’s relative regional power had suffered significant setbacks. Put in the context of the nuclear agreement, Tehran is simply not the force in 2021 that it was in 2015. Its economy is badly damaged. It lost several crucial operatives, especially Quds Force commander Qassim Suleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in Iraq on January 3, 2020. Iran has been subjected to a large series of often powerful blows by Israel, which appears to have deep intelligence penetration in Iran, especially against its nuclear program and militia proxies in Syria and Iraq. While it remains powerful in those two neighboring Arab states, Iran’s strategic and political position in Syria and Iraq has declined somewhat in recent years with increasing pressure from internal and external forces seeking to weaken Tehran’s influence. Iran has seen its relations with Turkey deteriorate somewhat, while key antagonists Israel and the UAE move closer together in part in order to coordinate opposition to Iran.
These and many other developments have convinced Saudi leaders to view Iran as less threatening, albeit formidable, than it was a few years ago. Iran has long publicly pressed for negotiations with Arab neighbors and even the development of a broad regional security framework. But until recently, Iran’s Gulf Arab rivals, particularly Saudi Arabia and the UAE, feared that meant the acceptance of an outsized, irrational, and dangerous Iranian regional role. Since the end of 2019, an open dialogue with Iran has become less risky.
As a result, in addition to considerable quiet diplomacy behind the scenes, Iran and Saudi Arabia signaled their interest in a renewed conversation through a variety of more public symbolic messages. Particularly, a pair of jointly authored articles, by Iran’s former nuclear spokesman, Hossein Mousavian, who is close to the political faction that includes Iran’s president and foreign minister, and Abdulaziz Sager, a Saudi scholar and analyst with strong connections to the royal court and King Salman bin Abdulaziz, called for precisely such a dialogue. These articles, the first in The New York Times in May 2019 and the second in The Guardian in January, strongly signaled a willingness on both sides to communicate more openly.
There are several obvious starting places for a Saudi-Iranian dialogue. Maritime security in the waters of the Gulf itself is probably the least onerous lift. Both countries and most of their local allies are energy exporters that rely on freedom of navigation and safe passage through these waters. Iran’s concentration on attacking maritime targets as part of its “maximum resistance” was driven by the desire to assert Tehran’s de facto right to be part of a maritime security framework in the Gulf. Iran had felt excluded from this and wanted to send the message that, if it could not sell its oil because of sanctions, its neighbors would eventually not be able to sell their oil either because of Iran’s disruption of maritime security. But, ultimately, all parties in the region have real interest in freedom of navigation and commerce.
The war in Yemen is also a potential subject of agreement, which is why the initial talks in Iraq focused on this. The level of Iran’s engagement and influence with the Houthis is disputed. But it is clear that while ending the Yemen war has become a major priority for both Saudi Arabia and the administration of President Joseph R. Biden Jr., such an outcome would not necessarily be contrary to Iranian interests. Because Tehran’s relationship with the Houthis is relatively distant compared to the fairly vertical integration of groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon or the pro-Iranian Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, the Yemen conflict and Iran’s role can be addressed without directly confronting the most intractable obstacle to a wide-scale rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia: Iran’s network of substate sectarian militia groups in the Arab world.
There is a profound contradiction between Iran’s professed aim of developing a regional security framework with neighboring states and its primary means of projecting power in that neighborhood – the cultivation, expansion, and empowerment of these substate militia groups. Ultimately, Iran will have to choose between the development and success of the state-based regional security framework it professes to seek and a militia network that promotes instability in states such as Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. This contradiction lurks at the center of the Iranian-Saudi rivalry and is a key part of competition over spheres of influence and regional power. But crucial issues such as maritime security and even resolving the Yemen war can be addressed before these core, irreducible differences are finally confronted.
Yemen
For years Saudi Arabia has recognized it is stuck in a quagmire in Yemen. Saudi forces and local Yemeni fighters loyal to the government of President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi in the conflict in the north of the country have steadily lost ground in recent years. The Houthi rebels are engaged in a prolonged effort to seize control of the last major government stronghold in the north, Marib. If they lose Marib, Riyadh and the Hadi government will have been effectively defeated in northern Yemen, and the Saudi-led coalition will essentially have to prevent a generalized Houthi takeover.
Saudi Arabia has wanted to find a formula to end its intervention in the country. However, the Houthis have shown little interest in coming to any political solution that could facilitate a Saudi withdrawal – the war has gone very well for them, and they believe they can gain further ground through more fighting. In addition to a political solution among Yemeni factions, for its withdrawal, Saudi Arabia would require significant assurances that the security of the kingdom itself would not continue to be threatened by the Houthis or others from Yemeni territory.
The thaw with Iran is significant for Yemen policy because Iran and its network of nonstate actors, primarily Hezbollah, are the main external supporters of the Houthis. It’s unclear how much influence Tehran can exercise over their most significant decision making, but Iran and some of its client groups could try to extend the conflict by encouraging Houthi intransigence or offering increased support and other inducements.
Iran has benefited significantly from Saudi Arabia being bogged down in a conflict the outcome of which is not crucial to Tehran’s vital national interests. The Saudis hope that an easing of tensions with Iran could see Tehran facilitating an end to the Yemen war or, at least, not acting as a spoiler.
The Biden Factor
Because of its closeness to the Trump administration and anger among Democrats over the Yemen war, human rights abuses, and the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October 2018, Saudi Arabia needed to take significant steps to shore up damaged relations with many leading Democrats in Washington. By ending the boycott of Qatar, releasing a number of high-profile prisoners including women’s rights campaigner Loujain al-Hathloul, and proposing a cease-fire in Yemen, Riyadh has made progress. However, there is more work to be done, and since resurrecting nuclear diplomacy with Iran is a top administration priority, the slowly emerging thaw makes more sense than ever for Saudi Arabia given the Biden presidency.
By continuing to explore new contacts with Iran, Saudi Arabia demonstrates to the administration that it, too, is interested in reviving diplomacy as the centerpiece of policy toward Iran. It is signaling that it is not interested in serving as an obstacle to the revitalization of the JCPOA or increasing tensions in the region. In addition, however, given that Washington and Tehran are likely to continue diplomatic efforts on their own terms, Riyadh cannot rely on Washington to protect its interests at all times. If the United States and Iran are going to be engaging in horse-trading on their own concerns, Saudi Arabia is going to need to do some haggling on its own if it hopes to influence the shape of diplomacy and strategic developments in the region and secure its own interests.
Therefore, independent Saudi outreach to Iran serves both to support Washington and as a hedge against the United States potentially ignoring Saudi concerns in talks with Tehran. And, as with so much else for traditional U.S. partners in the Middle East, the prospect of a shrinking U.S. footprint in the region, and less reliable and robust U.S. support for resolving major national security crises, has intensified the push for avenues of independent action and strategic diversification. This can take the form of strengthening ties with other states with complementary security concerns (such as growing relations between the UAE and Israel) or that of diplomatic outreach to traditional antagonists, such as in this case.
An Era of Consolidation, Retrenchment, and Maneuver
The Iranian-Saudi dialogue is also emerging in an extended period of diplomatic maneuvering throughout the region and a declining emphasis on hard power and armed conflict, either directly or through proxy. Most of the Middle Eastern countries that seek to project their power are somewhat overextended, many of them badly so. That includes Iran and Saudi Arabia but also rather dramatically Turkey and even the UAE. In addition to having bitten off more than they can chew, the countries that became involved in conflicts throughout the region in recent years have been forced to recognize that most have been effectively won by one of the warring parties, are stalemated, or have otherwise passed the point of diminishing returns. In most cases, for outside powers there is little to be gained by continuing to pursue battlefield advantages in conflicts including those in Libya, Syria, Iraq, and even Yemen. This does not necessarily apply to local forces, notably the Houthis. But the appeal of foreign adventures or even proxy campaigns hit a nadir in 2020.
As a consequence, the Middle East is experiencing a remarkable spate of diplomatic activity and soft power initiatives in which regional players try to secure their interests beyond the battlefield. These states are seeking to consolidate whatever gains they have made, review and revise their engagements abroad (frequently to reduce them), and explore what can be accomplished through maneuver rather than confrontation. Examples include the Arab diplomatic openings to Israel, the end of the Qatar boycott, efforts to rehabilitate Syria in the Arab world, increased political competition in Iraq, jockeying for position in the Horn of Africa, the reinvigoration of a political process in Libya, and a considerable reduction in tensions between Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
The dialogue between Riyadh and Tehran that appears to be emerging is another excellent example of this pattern of consolidation, retrenchment, and maneuver. Both countries are interested in testing the waters and discovering what can be achieved through dialogue. However, since none of the key drivers of Saudi-Iranian tensions have been resolved, the current atmosphere of consolidation and maneuver may be temporary – any number of dramatic developments could spark new direct or proxy confrontations in a range of theaters around the region.
With Washington now championing a return to diplomacy in the Middle East and around the world, perennial regional rivals such as Iran and Saudi Arabia have a remarkable opportunity to try to prepare the grounds for an ongoing dialogue and put as many structural guardrails in place as possible. Ideally such talks could eventually produce a regional security framework. But even if that is unattainable under current circumstances, at least enough progress could be made to help ensure that a return to tensions causes much less harm than it otherwise might. And there is at least the prospect for the development of a virtuous circle in which small successes build on each other, leading to a stronger sense on both sides of the viability of coexistence, even in the context of continued competition.