Iran challenges US-Saudi-Israel ‘tango of 3’ & perils of confusing Hamas with Palestine cause

 

 

 

Iran challenges US-Saudi-Israel ‘tango of 3’ & perils of confusing Hamas with Palestine cause

 it for someone else mutual fund Investments are subject to market risks read all scheme related documents carefully  staying with the Middle East situation or the situation around Israel we are today expanding the area of our gaze we are gazing beyond the immediate area where fighting is taking place or Israel  or next-door neighbors of Israel we're looking at slightly wider Middle East because there is there is always just as people say a lot of the people say apologies for Hamas also

 

unfortunately, who would say that look there are root causes to this right there are root causes Palestinian cause but at the same time there is a root cause also for the larger motivations of the bigger powers that are involved here because this is one more of these proxy wars that continue to be fought in the Middle East and in this case it isn't so much two superpowers fighting it's not as if the Americans and the Chinese are fighting or the Americans and the Russians are fighting a proxy war

 

this is a case of middling powers that is Saudi Arabia and Iran fighting a proxy war in this case what's happening in Israel right now Iranians are fighting it more than Saudi Arabia although the Saudi Arabians have made some moves which have got the which have thrown the Iranians off balance so we look at some of those situations today with some scholarly writing that I'll be referring to  also start with a very important conclusion not with the conclusion start with very important conclusion that in personal

 

relations in professional relations and even in strategic policy making it is the negative emotions that have a much greater push than positive emotions might have the pull or let me just say that who your enemy determines tends to determine your policy much more than who's your friend so Nations like human beings n like beings to in their responses Nations also tailor their policy policies to fit who their enemies are so they target their enemies much more than working with their friends and that's how Nations also work more

 

towards fixing their enemies or teaching their enemies lessons then building friendships or alliances so that is the lesson or that is the conclusion that we start today's episode of Kak Letter with now as we go along there are a few references I'll give you and I'll be sharing these links with you with the description of this episode and you can read those I will I'm only listing four of these I could have listed 40 of these but you know I'm not trying to impress you nor am I research scholar who thinks

 

that I if I really pad up my paper with 400 references maybe my guide or supervisor will get impressed and think oh this guy has really done a lot of hard work not that I'm just giving you four references there can be 500 things to read these days every day because this is the most written about topic not just in global media but also in the think tank community and there are lots of Scholars Middle East scholarship is so wide I suppose that's why nobody's nobody's been able to find a solution to the

 

problem but four pieces of writing from which I have drawn several of the insights that I'm going to share with you today so four articles the first article is from a foreign affairs magazine headlined The End of America's Exit Strategy in the Middle East Hamas's assault and Iran's role in it lays bear Washington's Illusions this is written by suzan Mone who is vice president at Brookings institution and also director of Brookings institutions foreign policy division that's the first

 

article the second is from a foreign policy magazine that is the Hamas Attack Has Changed Everything by Steven Cook, a Middle East fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations third is a story from the New York Times it's a detailed story with multiple by-lines from June 17, 2023, and we are leaning back on it because that story gives us an insight into where this trouble today's trouble might have started and this story is written by Mark maiti who is the New York times' correspondent has written a fine book

 

The Way of the Knife on how CIA became a killing machine instead of just being an intelligence organization Ron and Bergman Edward V and Vivian Nim so this is a detailed story from the New York Times from June and finally there's a Twitter thread this is a Twitter thread from Ali Amjad rizi Ali Amjad rzv is a Pakistani Canadian author self-proclaimed atheist he's author of a book called The Atheist Muslim his tw Twitter thread actually gives us very brave and very sharp insights and I I'll be leaning on those also I'm sharing all

 

of these with you so please go ahead and read the original as well now what exactly is the New York Times story of June telling us the New York Times story of June 17 2023 it is talking it's giving us a lot of inside dope on how America at the topmost level was reaching out to Muhammad bin Salman in Saudi Arabia and trying to bring about a Rima between Israel and Saudi Arabia or say between Saudi Arabia and Israel because stories reported from things that happened in Saudi Arabia first so we know that 2020

 

3 years ago in Trump's last days, Trump Administration was able to secure what was called the Abraham Accords which is what brought Bahin UAE and Israel together they established normal diplomatic relations they've had tourists going to each other's countries and opened embassies in each other's countries the effort at that time also was to bring in Saudi Arabia because in the Muslim World particularly in the Sun Muslim world in the Arab world also in that part of the Middle East in that

 

part of the Middle East Saudi Arabia is the most important country also because also because the holiest places of the Muslim faith are located in Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia at that point has bed they had not joined this Alliance the Abraham Accord but at the same time Saudi Arabia was flirting with Israel but a lot was happening also behind the scenes like that famous meeting in the new neon City that the Saudi royal family is building in fact we had discussed that in an entire episode of kak clut of which I

 

will share a link with you now this story tells us that Saudi demands seem to be quite steep so Saudi demands essentially were three number one strengthen Saudi Arabia's security alongside American guarantees in case it gets attacked we know that Saudis have very modern weapons a very modern Army that but they are not pretty good they not particularly good at defending themselves and their army is not particularly good at fighting that we have seen also in what's happening in Yemen also we've seen also we've seen

 

what happens when hours you know a very primitive group has been firing missiles at them so Saudis need foreign help Saudis need the American umbrella so the first thing American Security guarantees should be strengthened with a clear American guarantee to say that in case you are attacked we'll come to your defense that's that that's a bit like NATO number two access to more American weapons so anytime Americans are selling weapons to Saudi Arabia there are issues at Congress Etc so they want access to

 

more American weapons and third and most importantly consent to enrich uranium for civil nuclear purposes now you might say Saudi Arabia has so much oil right why do they need nuclear energy why do they need to enrich uranium for civil nuclear purp purposes but Saudis would turn around and say in which case Iran has so much oil why are the Iranians doing it so Iranians are doing it to build weapons-grade uranium whether they build weapons or not but once you have a stockpile of weapons-grade uranium you

 

can do what you want it just takes if remembering that famous or inFAMOUS line used in the case of Pakistan one turn of the screwdriver right Saudis also want their own European uranium enrichment capability for which they want American clearances and who knows Americans cooperation ultimately they may say 100 times that this is only for peaceful civilian purposes but nobody will buy that everybody will see that as a counter to Iranians enriching their uranium and you know what Israelis also

 

see it like that so they also feel insecure about it because they don't want a nuclear race now beginning in the Middle East another fourth demand that they had was some massive concessions to Palestinians because Palestinians are a big emotional issue in Saudi Arabia so give them something even if you don't give them full statehood that looks like as negotiations went on the Saudis upped the ask on that one and said look we can only nor normalize formally with Israel if a full-fledged Palestinian state is

 

established an independent full-fledged Palestinian state is established now in each one is the in each one of these demands somebody somebody would have liked to exercise a veto Israel for example would have liked to exercise a veto with the uranium enrichment issue but also with the Palestinian statehood because Netanyahu's government now is very conservative very right-wing very populist in a very conservative religious sense so they har back to old scriptures and they say they say two two-state solution is absolutely not

 

possible now most of the rest of the world is committed to a two-state solution including India including the Modi government but Netanyahu has been pushing it in another Direction so how does he then accept the Saudi demand for Palestinian statehood similarly Saudi Arabia would not accept peace with Israel without a Palestinian State because what do they do with their own public opinion you might think that they are dictatorship but they also have a public op but they also have a public opinion and I will just come to that in

 

a minute and even Biden has an issue because he's been very critical of Muhammad bin Salman of this Saudi Administration or this Saudi regime particularly because of Kashi's column Miss Kashi's assassination in Turkey so he's also had to do a lot of internal correction and internal sort of repairing of his own image at home because he had raised this to such levels and now for him to be reaching out to Muhammad bin Salman looks like a cop-out which it actually is so it was in this process that these talks

 

we're going on this was a complicated thing I see a line in the story that says in the Middle East it takes three to Tango right the usual thing is it takes two to tango but in the Middle East the story says it takes three to tango three in this case would be Saudi Arabia Israel and the us but you know what there is a fourth power that's Iran they come in Iran comes in then sort of indirectly in their informal Alliance now or at least informal convergence of strategic interests Russia and China also come in so what happens if it takes

 

three to tango if the fourth comes in fifth comes in sixth comes in then what does it become it's not a Tango anymore it's like a wild bang at some wedding party or maybe or maybe a holy or a holy party that is completely unruly and then from that situation nothing can progress in spite of that progress was being made all sides had an interest in this working out the Saudis wanted American guarantees nuclear enrichment and they also wanted to be able to tell their people see we got the Palestinians

 

freedom and they also wanted a formal partnership with Israel because remember what I said to you earlier that your strategic responses are often determined not by who's your friend but by who's your enemy so the enemy, in this case, is Iran's enemy for Israel also is Iran so enemy's enemy I might have 100 problems with that guy but I will go and make friends with him or have at least a transactional alliance with him that is what the Saudi saw in it for Netanyahu all the ratings all the opinion polls

 

are now showing at least before the Samas attack all the opinion PO polls have been showing that if there is a fresh election he will lose and Israel has fresh elections all the time he has to show up his image and one way of doing and one way of doing that was to normalize relationship with Saudi Arabia that look I have now made Israel legitimate in the entire Arab world that would have given him Tailwinds for his own politics and finally Biden next year is the election next year is the election year in America he was slow to

 

move in the Middle East but now that he has moved if an Israel-Saudi Arabia PCT another edition of the Abraham Accords came in between Saudi Arabia and Israel that would be a big thing to talk about for Biden in his election campaign so everybody had reasons to move in this direction it was moving in that direction I told you about public opinion in Saudi Arabia so Washington Institute conducted a poll in April 2023 in South in Saudi Arabia which showed that 78% Saudis 78% Saudis thought that

 

Abraham mards had a very negative impact on the region in the Middle East so the Saudi clergy also has to deal with that public opinion they can't go and normalize with Israel until Israelis do something really big for the Palestinians is in this situation that Hamas walks in and what is Hamas but a front for the Iranians, because Iranians didn't like it Iranians, thought if this happens then a large chunk of the Sunni Muslim world the entire Arab world in fact almost the entire Arab world comes together with Israel in in

 

rivalry with us so what can we do to Scuttle it now there is no clear evidence that this is how it happened but in diplomacy in geopolitics you have to draw your own conclusions and this looks quite logical now what does Suzanne Mone mean when she says this is the end of America's exit strategy so she says that for more than 20 years America has been fighting quote unquote terrorists in the Middle East this started after 9/11 which happened in 2001 now you kept and fighting that depleted America's strength also they

 

were failed experiments at creating at nation buildings in Iraq and Afghanistan Afghanistan was much worse than Iraq in Iraq some kind of democracy did come into being not maybe did not put in power exactly the people the Americans would have wanted but that's how democracies are Iraq still got something Afghanistan was a complete disaster Iraq also was almost a disaster and consumed a lot of American resources lives and also turned public opinion against any activism overseas now she says what's happened is America would

 

would have thought that there were bigger problems and bigger challenges in the world there are Russians in Ukraine there's a Russia-China access there's also a kind of Russia-China Iran access at this point the last thing America needed to be needed was a Middle Eastern distraction but now that this distraction has come Americans have no option but to stay put in the Middle East and get even more involved at a time when it might have suited them to go away from this and turn their attention more towards China and Ukraine

 

in fact, China Taiwan Ukraine are America's larger strategic interests and what this turn in the Middle East has done and that's why she said Hamas's assault and Iranian role in it lays bear Washington's Illusions so the illusion was now that the Middle East looked to be stabilizing there was going to be another settlement between South Saudi Arabia and Israel this will become a more stable place so I can then go and turn my attention fully to Indo Pacific fully to China Taiwan Ukraine Etc she

 

said now that has changed America is drawn even more deeply into the Middle East which is something that suits Russia in Ukraine Iran in the Middle East and China in Taiwan and this in spite of the fact that neither Russians nor Iranians nor the Chinese have any boots on the ground, in fact, they've invested nothing give low Tech weapons and some money to Hamas which actually is not such a big investment that is what the Iranians have done but that has now trapped America deeper in the Middle East

 

instead of being able to go away and then she goes on to say that the big American illusion came from the idea that you could give little favors to Iran for example Americans got their hostages released in return for which they unfroze they unfroze $6 billion of Iranian oil revenues which had been trapped because of the sanctions these six billion were given back to the Iranians and she says the American illusion was that these little favors will please the Iranians and get better

 

conduct from them that is not happening and she quotes from K the Iranian supreme leader said days before the Hamas attacks and I quote The Firm view of the Islamic Republic is that the governments that are gambling or normalizing relations with the Zionist regime will suffer losses defeat awaits them they are making a mistake now did he have a premonition he's a holy man he might have had a premonition but more likely he had knowledge beforehand although nobody is saying that with any evidence evidence right now but the only

 

gainer in what has happened within the region is Iran because they have scuttled this three-way Tango that was taking place between Saudi Arabia Israel and the US and she also concludes that with the Iranians the basic thing hasn't changed and then she goes on to say look whatever calculations you might make the foundational principle of the Iranian regime has not changed and what is that foundational principle it is a determination to append the regional order by any means necessary the

 

regional order which is which is which is which is drawn from American power through the Saudis through UAE and in a way also through alliances like i2u2 i2u2 as we know is India Israel us and us because Americans have been building new alliances in the Middle East and that is something that really really upsets the Iranians and throws them off balance and they've decided to do something about it and what they're telling the Americans is that if you can use other people other nationalities other communities to fight

 

your battles away from your Shores we can also do that and that is what's happening with Hamas that is what keeps happening with Hisbah because Iranians have strength there and some of that has been playing out in Syria as well and that said I come to my fourth reference that is Ali Amjad RI the Pakistani Canadian author of the book called The Atheist Muslim he says, first of all, you can't be you can either be prop Palestinian or Pro Hamas you can't be both now a lot of people in India also

 

confused when they're talking about Hamas attacks Hamas Palestinians Palestinians also have a grievance so he says you can't be Pro Palestinian and pro-Hamas at the same time why does he say so because Hamas he says is more loyal to Iranian clergy than interested in betterment of the Palestinians fate and he says Hamas is a Despicable Group which throws Rockets which fires Rockets from its own hospitals and schools so the Israelis would bomb them and they will then use bodies of babies and women

 

killed in those in those bombings to get sympathy from the world they are not bothered about the Palestinians so please don't confuse Hamas's cause with the Palestinian cause now your immediate reaction could be oh this guy is obviously pro-Israel it's not that simple because he says that just as Hamas is no friend of Palestinians all these tweets will run on your screen as I talk he says just as Hamas is no friend of Palestinians Netanyahu is no friend of Israel so that should settle the doubt in your mind on whether he's

 

an apologist for Israel he's not an apologist for Israel at least definitely not for Netanyahu's policies in Israel he says Netanyahu has weakened Israel in three ways number one he has gone after a single-state solution so not a two-state solution in the process in the process he's caused a real problem and what is the problem and that's a dilemma that I first read about in 1983 when John lar wrote his The Little Drummer girl now little drummer girl the plot is that Mossad Mossad goes and recruits a

 

26-year-old British radical left radical artist with the intention that she'll be smuggled into the Palestinian scamps she'll become a human bomber and through her, they will reach the Palestinian underground's leadership her case officer is a mad officer called Joseph now Joseph in that book has a dilemma while Joseph is doing his job he's the case officer for Charlie their key asset at the same time he thinks that look what happens if he keep these territories occupied and Annex them into Israel if he Annex them into Israel

 

Israel will become an Arab majority country if it's an Arab majority country and everybody has a vote if it's an Arab majority democracy and everybody has a vote right then it can't remain a Zionist country because then Arabs will be more than Jews and who knows you might get a government where Arabs will have more seats in the CET so what is the solution then to Annex these territories and deny the right of vote to the Arabs in which case Israel can stay a Zionist country but it

 

cannot be a democracy so if you want to Annex all these territories West Bank Etc and say all these Arabs who are living here are part of Israel then you can either be a Zionist country or you can be a democracy you can't you can't be both that's the point Ali Amjad RZ is also making that by pursuing this one state idea which is a very conservative right-wing religiously driven idea Netanyahu has created a real problem in Israel and second thing he has done is to damage Israel's interests is that he

 

has split he split the American Republicans and Democrats usually in America there was total bipartisan support for the Israeli cause but he split the Republicans and Democrats which has now caused a problem in America because most Jews the large majority of American Jews in all polls tell us vote for Democratic party so that has also brought about a break between American Jewish community and the Israeli Jews then he says that his dictatorial power grab in trying to destroy his Judiciary Etc has weakened

 

his system and the intelligence failure are not unconnected with that because when you get so many institutions broken when you get so many people disillusioned so many in your security Elites have been protesting that has an effect that has an impact on your capability and finally, he says that look Netanyahu is coming As Much from the scriptures and he says refer to Exodus 233132 or Deuteronomy 1.

8 these are old Jewish texts if you read these among others these explain to you why what he's finding is a completely irrational justification for a one-state formula that is giving the Palestinians nothing similarly if you want to say where Hamas is coming from then check out Surah 551 5960 or Hamas's charter of 1988 and 2017 where Hamas basically says that Israel has to be destroyed all Jews have to be killed that's a belief because that was prophecied in the scriptures now these references make for fascinating reading

 

even when I read them cursorily so one of these days, not today because we don't have the time one of these days we'll read this up more carefully religious references scriptural references, and also some commentaries to bring back to you the case of what happens been to deeply conservative irrational religious mindsets Clash so this is between two groups who believe in the scriptures and who are religiously driven and to that extent are not fully rational and then he goes on to conclude don't listen to nothing

 

to do with the religion crowd religion poisons everything religion kills and that couldn't be clear in this case so as we enter day six of this conflict this I thought was a good way of understanding where this conflict is coming from from the larger geopolitics and Clash of strategic interests involved in the region we haven't gone beyond the region as yet in the region and also Clash of two extreme religiosities so once again I also buy this argument that Hamas does not represent the Palestinian interest

 

because the Palestinian Authority PLO has recognized Israel as a state they have accepted long back they have accepted Israel's right to exist Hamas does not accept Israel's right to exist at the same time or maybe you want to say on the other hand it is the Netanyahu Administration and his politics who don't accept the idea of a Palestinian state in which case commitments made in the past to the Palestinian Authority in return for their recognition of Israel now do not stand so it is this mix of clashing

 

religious irrationality and political dishonesty that have created this deadly cocktail as I say this remember cocktails don't always have to be alcoholic cocktails can also be explosive which is what you have right now in Israel

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