DISARRAY AND REALIGNMENT–PART II

thalith (third) rugh and ttttumble drraft

Having eliminated the Baath government in Iraq, the harmful idiots now bear the burden of balancing Iranian power in the region. The protectorates cannot do it. The Arab ones are preoccupied, counting their money. Iraq is in shambles and has failed as a potential protectorate. And the Israeli is useless, even harmful, as its every move sets the harmful idiots back, again and again.

And the idiots can’t do it either. They’re English-speaking, Judeo-Evangelical invaders against whom the Arab Street (and its many sympathizers within the government establishments) can easily be mobilized. The Street in essence is convinced that the Judeo-Evangelical invaders had come to subjugate Sunni and Arabs on behalf of Israel. Not much the harmful idiots can do about that.

I will in the third part of this series juxtapose the harmful idiots’ hopeless dilemma against the strategies and tactics of the Iranians. But, for now, let’s take a look at Saudi Arabia.

REALIGNMENT: SAUDI ARABIA

TWO EVENTS

Two events have compelled the Saudis to reassess their strategic world view. These were:

1.The aggression against Arab Iraq.

The realization that the harmful idiots are exactly that–harmful and idiotic–who invaded Iraq only to eliminate forever a working balance of power in the region; and who dismantled an Arab and Sunni-led country. King Abdallah, then Crown Prince, and Bandar bin Sultan, an extension of the harmful idiots, had all but hoorayed the invasion and had colluded with the Judeo-Evangelicals. They really had believed in the omnipotence of the harmful idiots. They still do. They have to. But now the Saudis should be aware that the options available to the harmful idiots are all lousy, as would the repercussions of these options on the Saudis.

2. The aggression against Lebanon's civilians.

The realization that the Israelis are a second-class power. This became eminently clear when Hizballah stood its ground and more last summer. In that war the Saudis witnessed the Israelis unleashing tremendous conventional firepower against defenseless civilians. The Saudis (and most observers) viewed the Israeli mass murder from the air ("collective punishment") as a sign of weakness. More importantly for assessing strategy, Hizballah had shown the Saudis that it has bridged the technology gap with the harmful idiots and the Israelis. Better yet, it has shown them that, in addition to being technologically competent, and terrifically secretive and near-impossible to penetrate, its men had terrific stamina and courage and had fought valiantly. Even if we discount the de facto defeat of the harmful idiots in Iraq, the Hizballah feat, standing alone, has changed the balance of power in the region.

These two events have imposed a new strategic view. The Saudis, of course, cannot quit their alliance to the harmful idiots. But they can diversify. They can seek out new alliances.


REALIGNMENT: BEFRIENDING IRAN

I can go on for quite a long time about the exchanges of visits of Saudi and Iranian officials to each other’s country. No need to. Crowning these visits was the one made by the Iranian President to the Kingdom in early March.

I’m certain that both countries know the limitations of their new-found cooperation. Both claim that two issues have brought them together:

1. The Sunni-Shia tension; and

2. Lebanon.

In reality, however, both have motives other than the stated ones.

Iran wants to keep the bridges open to Saudi Arabia as a way of offsetting the harmful idiots’ foothold in the Gulf. The Iranians hope that their responsiveness to the concerns of the Saudis would result in hesitation on the part of these in adopting in full the anti-Iranian policies of the harmful idiots.

Iran is not naive as to think that the Saudis would disassociate themselves from the idiots. But the Saudis can be used to modulate the policies of these. And that would be no small feat. In addition, until such time when they meet face-to-face, the Iranians can use Bandar bin Sultan to send messages to Washington and receive messages back.

Saudi Arabia benefits in that it avoids Iranian interference in its affairs in the Shia-populated Eastern Province. Not to mention that Iran’s Shia arm extends farther than that–to Saadah in northwest Yemen, and to Bahrain. Governments such as the Saudi pride themselves on the relative peace and security they provide to their populace. Such is one of the more important pillars of their legitimacy. Disturbing that peace would erode one raison d’etre of their governance. Iran’s cooperation is therefore needed to avoid sectarian tension within the Kingdom and the concomitant world human rights attention such would bring onto the Saudi Shia.

REALIGNMENT: CO-OPTING ALL THE PALESTINIANS.

Diversifying alliances means going against the wishes of the Saudis’ foremost protectors–the harmful idiots.

In this case, the Saudis have lobbied to bridge the rift between Hamas and Fatah. They brought the leaders of the two movements to Mecca and had them sign what has become known as the Mecca Accord. Being so much in the black, it’s rumored that the Saudis had paid one billion dollars to the parties as incentive to sign on.

The idea for the Saudis was to heal the rifts within the Arab nation so as to rob foreign interventionists (American or Iranian) of their ability to destabilize one Arab society after another–including the Kingdom’s. In addition, feats such as the Mecca Accord help rehabilitate a Saudi ruling team which in no small way had stabbed in the back the Arabs of Iraq, the Sunni in particular.

The failure of the harmful idiots in Iraq has resulted in a new awareness. The Saudis now are tired of the machinations of the harmful idiots: Entrap Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait, all to provide the idiots an excuse to establish a foothold in the oil fields After all, fifty U.S. troops in Kuwait would’ve provided the trip wire necessary to warn Hussein not to invade. But that’s not what the entrapping idiots had in mind. The first entrapment worked relatively well. The second backfired really bad.

The Mecca Accord ran smack against the wishes of the harmful idiots. These had been angling for a full-scale intra-Palestinian civil war. In that the idiots had (and should still have) the assistance of Jordan’s King Abdallah II. Haaretz, the Israeli daily, reported on or about February 19/20 that the Mecca Accord had pre-empted a secret plan by the Jordanian King to weaken Hamas and mediate a peace accord between Israel and the "moderate" Arab countries. The plan would have entailed a secret agreement between the Israelis and Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, followed by early elections, and so on.

Problem: a full-fledged intra-Palestinian civil war would’ve ensued, for certain. Not that the Jordanian King would've cared. Lucky for the Palestinians, the Saudis for once had it right. Thank the Saudi public for that.


REALIGNMENT: BEFRIENDING RUSSIA

I have covered this in an earlier post. "Telltales..."


REALIGNMENT: HUGGING THE ISRAELIS AND HOPING FOR THE BEST

I have covered this subject in a couple of earlier posts. Essentially, the Saudis have been dispatching their princes, competing to become kings, to flirt with the Israelis and the American Jewish community. In addition, Saudi intelligence recently dispatched al-Hayat to interview Martin Indik (sp.), a flirtatious move towards an Israel-obsessed man and his newly-Israel-obsessed Brookings Institution.

What do the Saudis hope to achieve?

Maybe some of them believe that the defusion of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis would rob Iran of such a potent issue around which the Islamic Republic is able to mobilize the Arab Street. (They have stated as much.) That the Israelis would do the right thing and help in the establishment of a Palestinian state. This, however, is outrageously naive. Why would the Israelis want to accommodate the Saudis? The Iranian "threat" has been taken care of . The Israelis (and the Gulf Arabs) have recruited a huge mercenary army, the American, to be at their service to contain Iran, if not defeat it. Why then would the Israelis be accommodative? Do the Saudis really believe that then Crown Prince Abdallah’s 2002 peace initiative is enough of a carrot to motivate the Israelis to do the right thing? The initiative has no teeth–no armed forces to back it up, no intifadha, no missiles flying above the apartheid wall--no immediacy whatsoever.

Add to this foolishness the fact that any hope of having the United States place appropriate pressure on the Israelis should be defused by the American Israel lobby (the Martin Indiks) and the very blindness of a American polity that, when it comes to the Arab World, is iron-clad Judeo-Evangelical in its bias.

Any deal where Israel doesn’t return all Arab lands in full, to June 4, 1967, and pay (through the idiots and the Europeans) substantial reparations to the refugees and to Lebanon, would be a raw one and should result in a popular backlash within Saudi Arabia, among the Palestinians, and in the entire Arab World. Not to mention that the Saudis will be blamed for having negotiated for the Palestinians and begot such a raw deal. After all, the Palestinians are holding on to the right of return. And no non-Palestinian Arab should negotiate that away. (As an attorney who’s been involved in civil cases, with the assistance of competent colleagues, I can tell you that the insistence on the right of return, even if only a superficial stand, should get the
Palestinians and Lebanon way more Euros than otherwise.)

Besides, this flirtation with the Israelis and the American Jewish community, without Syria’s consent, is bound to backfire. It runs counter to the very policy the Saudis are trying to promulgate: to evolve a united Arab stand on the security of the Arab World. How could such a policy succeed when it ignores one Arab party whose very land is occupied by the Israelis?

Here, the Saudis royals run the risk of looking like traitors to their Street. Iran knows that. Too, it knows that holding on to Syria fails the very policies by the Saudis to exclude it as Shia in a Sunni world and as Persian in an Arab one. Knowledge, unhindered by wishful thinking, is power.

REALIGNMENT: EVOLVING A FRONT OF SUNNI NATION STATES TO CONTAIN IRAN

Another attempt (lame) by Saudi Arabia to diversify its alliances became apparent in the latter part of February. Meeting in Pakistan were representatives of the following countries: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, and Egypt. Unhappy that it was left out (that was the idea), and aware that this new axis is meant to contain it, Iran unleashed against it accusing the Sunni summit of planning to establish diplomatic relations with Israel.