The Saudi-Israeli Superpower Exclusive: Egypt s counterrevolution and Syria s civil war could herald the arrival of a new superpower coalition, an unlikely alliance between Israel and Saudi Arabia, one with great political clout and the other with vast financial wealth, together flexing their muscles across the Middle East, writes Robert Parry. By Robert Parry The twin crises in Syria and Egypt have marked the emergence of a new superpower coalition in the Middle East, the odd-couple alliance of Israel and Saudi Arabia, with Jordon serving as an intermediary and the Persian Gulf oil sheikdoms playing a supporting role. The potential impact of this new coalition can barely be overstated, with Israel bringing to the table its remarkable propaganda skills and its unparalleled influence over U.S. foreign policy and Saudi Arabia tapping into its vast reservoir of petrodollars and exploiting its global financial networks. Together the two countries are now shaping international responses to the conflicts in Syria and Egypt, but that may only be the start. Though Israel and Saudi Arabia have had historic differences one a Jewish religious state and the other embracing the ultraconservative Wahhabi version of Sunni Islam the two countries have found, more recently, that their interests intersect. Both see Iran, with its Shiite rulers, as their principal regional rival. Both are leery of the populist Islamic movements unleashed by the Arab Spring. Both sided with the Egyptian military in its coup against the elected Muslim Brotherhood government, and both are pleased to see Syrian President Bashar al- Assad facing a possible military assault from the United States. While the two countries could be accused of riding the whirlwind of chaos across the Middle East inviting a possibility that the sectarian divisions and the political violence will redound negatively to their long-term interests there can be little doubt that they are enjoying at least short-term gains. In recent months, Israel has seen its strategic position enhanced by the overthrow of Egypt s populist Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi, a political change that has further isolated the Hamas-led Palestinians in Gaza. Meanwhile, in Lebanon, the Shiite movement of Hezbollah has come under increasing military and political pressure after sending militants into Syria to
support the embattled Assad regime. Assad is an Alawite, a branch of Shiite Islam, and has been a longtime benefactor of Hezbollah, the political-military movement that drove Israeli forces out of southern Lebanon and has remained a thorn in Israel s side. The growing sectarian nature of the Syrian civil war, with Sunnis leading the fight against Assad, also served to drive a wedge between Hamas, a Sunni movement, and two of its key benefactors, the Syrian government and its Iranian allies. In other words, Israel is benefiting from the Sunni-Shiite divisions ripping apart the Islamic world as well as from the Egyptian coup which further weakened Hamas by re-imposing the Gaza blockade. Now, Israel has a freer hand to dictate a political solution to the already-weak Palestinian Authority on the West Bank when peace talks resume. A Method to Neocon Madness Giving Israel this upper hand has long been the goal of American neoconservatives, although they surely could not have predicted the precise course of recent history. The idea of regime change in Iraq in 2003 was part of a neocon strategy of making a clean break with frustrating negotiations in which Israel was urged to trade land for peace with the Palestinians. The plan to dump negotiations in favor of confrontations was outlined in a 1996 policy paper, entitled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm and prepared by prominent neocons, including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, for Benjamin Netanyahu s campaign for prime minister. In the document, the neocons wrote: Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right, as a means of foiling Syria s regional ambitions. [See Consortiumnews.com s The Mysterious Why of the Iraq War. ] The neocons failed to persuade President Bill Clinton to invade Iraq in the late 1990s, but their hopes brightened when George W. Bush became president in 2001 and when the American people were whipped into a state of hysteria by the 9/11 attacks. Still, it appears that the neocons believed their own propaganda about the Iraqis welcoming American troops as liberators and accepting a U.S. puppet as their new leader. That, in turn, supposedly was to lead Iraq to establish friendly ties with Israel and give the U.S. military bases for promoting regime change in Syria and Iran.
In 2002, as President Bush was winding up to deliver his haymaker against Saddam Hussein, neocons passed around a favorite joke about where to go next after conquering Iraq. Should it be Syria or Iran, Damascus or Tehran? The punch line was: Real men go to Tehran! However, the Iraq War didn t work out exactly as planned. Bush did succeed in ousting Hussein from power and enjoyed watching him marched to the gallows, dropped through a trapdoor and hanged by the neck until dead. But the U.S. occupation touched off a sectarian bloodbath with Hussein s Sunni minority repressed by the newly empowered Shiite majority. Sunni extremists flocked to Iraq from around the Middle East to kill both Iraqi Shiites and Americans. The end result of the Iraq War was to transform Iraq from a Sunni-ruled authoritarian state into a Shiite-ruled authoritarian state, albeit still a place where sectarian bombings are nearly a daily occurrence. Yet, one of the principal beneficiaries of the Iraq War was Iran with its Shiite theocratic government unexpectedly finding itself with a new Shiite ally replacing a longtime Sunni enemy, Saddam Hussein, all thanks to the United States. Widening Violence But the Iraq War had another consequence. It exacerbated sectarian tensions across the region. Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf oil states that had supported Hussein in his war with Iran in the 1980s, were shocked to see Iran now have a Shiite crescent of influence extending through Iraq and Syria to the Shiite enclaves in Lebanon. The Saudi monarchy was shaken, too, by the popular uprisings known as the Arab Spring. Egypt s President Hosni Mubarak, a longtime Saudi ally, was ousted and replaced by a democratically elected government led by the populist Muslim Brotherhood. Though the Muslim Brotherhood was Sunni, too, the movement represented a mix of Islam and democratization, which posed a threat to the Saudi princes who live pampered lives of unimaginable wealth and privilege. On a personal level, these playboys confine their wives to humiliating conditions out of the Middle Ages while the men sample the pleasures of lavish European resorts or fly in Scandinavian prostitutes for parties. Yet, while the Arab Spring sent shivers down the spines of the oil sheiks of the Persian Gulf and even brought a Saudi military intervention to put down a Shiite-led democratic uprising in Bahrain the political upheavals also presented an opportunity to Saudi geopolitical strategists, the likes of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former ambassador to the United States and now head of Saudi
intelligence. By supporting rebels and militants in Syria, for instance, the Saudis and the other oil sheiks saw a chance to reverse Iran s geopolitical gains. And, by funneling billions of dollars to the Egyptian generals, the Persian Gulf monarchists countered any pressure for restraint from the United States. Increasingly, too, the interests of Saudi Arabia and Israel began crisscrossing, sparking a relationship that the Jordanian monarchy helped broker and encourage. Jordan has strong security ties to Israel and is dependent on the largesse of the Persian Gulf royals, making it a perfect matchmaker for this unlikely hookup. According to intelligence sources, Jordan has been the principal site for bilateral contacts between Israelis and Saudis, a behind-the-scenes alliance that finally went public with their joint support for the Egyptian coup. While Saudi Arabia arranged the finances for Egypt s new military regime, Israel deployed its potent lobby in Washington to dissuade President Barack Obama from labeling the coup a coup, which would have forced a shutoff of U.S. military aid. New Superpower Now, this new powerhouse combo is teaming up on Syria, where the Saudis and other Persian Gulf states have been financing the rebels seeking to destabilize and possibly overthrow the Assad government, while the Israelis have been deploying their political and propaganda assets to increase international pressure on Assad. Both the Saudis and the Israelis stand to benefit from having Assad s regime bled over time into either a weakened state or its demise. For Saudi Arabia, regime change in Syria would mark a strategic victory against its chief rival Iran. Israel also would like to see Iran undercut and isolated, but there is the additional benefit of hurting Hezbollah and further alienating the Palestinians from important sources of support, i.e. Iran and Syria. That gets Israel closer to the neocon vision of leaving desperate Palestinians with little choice but to accept whatever peace terms that Israel chooses to dictate. There is, of course, a potential downside for Israel and the West. Since Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are arming some of the most radical Islamists fighting in Syria, including groups affiliated with al-qaeda, one outcome of the Syrian civil war could be a new haven for Islamic terrorism in the heart of the Middle East. In the 1980s, Saudi Arabia was the principal funder for Osama bin
Laden and his jihadists who traveled to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets before turning their hatred and suicidal tactics against the United States. The emerging Saudi-Israeli alliance also may have serious ramifications for global geopolitics. The combination of Saudi Arabia s extraordinary financial and economic clout and Israel s equally extraordinary capacity to pull political and propaganda strings, especially inside the United States, could mean that a new superpower has stepped onto the international stage. Its arrival may be heralded by whether Saudi Arabia and Israel can jointly yank the United States into the Syrian civil war. Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here. Dangling Questions on Syrian War Official Washington s neocons are in full-throated war cry over Syria, creating what many of them surely hope is a momentum toward a U.S. intervention that cooler heads won t be able to stop. But many questions regarding this latest rush to war remain unanswered, writes ex-cia analyst Paul R. Pillar. By Paul R. Pillar With a U.S. military attack on Syria now being discussed in the media as a question of when rather than if, let us devote more honest thought to the why. I am not referring to any official rationale but instead to the actual political and emotional dynamics in the United States that have gotten us to this point. Even if, as it appears, this train has left the station and has gotten beyond the point of being able to apply well-reasoned assessment of likely consequences to well-founded objectives, maybe by being above-board now about what is propelling the train we will be better able to make sense of what happened once we survey whatever mess is left by our actions and people have moved on to the stage of recriminations, second-guessing, and lessons learned.
A major part of what is happening is that the heartstrings of non-syrians, including Americans, are being tugged by the suffering of Syrians caught in Syria s civil war. When what appears to be an especially grisly episode occurs in this war, the heartstrings are yanked even harder. And so there is a constituency and domestic political market for doing something about what s going on in Syria. But the satisfaction of that constituency s yearnings is unaccompanied, at least so far, by an explanation and analysis of how something like an attack by U.S.. air power would alleviate the Syrians woes, bearing in mind that any such analysis would have to take full account of responses by both the Syrian regime and the opposition, responses of outsiders, and effects on the overall tempo and trajectory of the civil war. We should admit to ourselves that the objective is more about lessening the tension on those heartstrings and inducing a warm feeling in the tummies in the same torsos, than it is about actually improving the condition of suffering Syrians. That objective is not nearly as noble as its surface manifestation makes it appear. Supposedly the one event that most got us to where we are today regarding policy on Syria was a reported use by the Syrian regime of chemical weapons. But the basic question of why this particular battlefield development and choice of a weapon should drive U.S. policy toward somebody else s civil war, even to the point of forcefully intervening in that war, remains unanswered, just as it was unanswered the first time the regime reportedly used such a weapon and President Barack Obama declared that any such use by Assad s regime would be a game changer. Why should this one reported incident be given so much more status than the nonchemical warfare, by both sides in the civil war, that has killed a hundred times more people? What we are seeing here is partly an effect of a popular fascination with all types of unconventional weapons, because they are more intriguing than plain old bombs and bullets and they provide better material for spell-binding scare stories. It is this fascination that underlies the persistent tendency to refer to chemical agents as weapons of mass destruction on a par with nuclear or biological weapons, even though they aren t that. There is a more serious concern about chemical weapons that is expressed by what is generally known as the arms control community. That community is not usually known for belligerence, but in this case at least parts of it believe forceful action in Syria is appropriate for the purpose of deterring future use of
chemical weapons. That concern leads to many other important unanswered questions. In particular: even if protecting a norm of non-use of CW is a worthwhile goal, since when did that goal become such an overriding priority, among all the other much greater U.S. interests at stake especially in the Middle East, that it would be given determinative weight to the point of impelling intervention in somebody else s civil war? The norm about non-use of CW that the arms control aficionados want to protect has not been as sturdy as some would suggest. There has been repeated use of chemical weapons since the World War I experience that led to international conventions on the subject, by Egypt in Yemen, probably by the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and most notably by Iraq inside Iraq. That last instance was noteworthy partly because the United States turned a blind eye toward this use of CW at a time when it was tilting toward Iraq and against Iran in the Iran-Iraq War. Especially given that well-known precedent, an attack on Syria will be seen less as a deterrence-upholding blow in favor of a non-use norm than as a use of the CW issue as an excuse to bash a regime the United States doesn t happen to like. It is hard to see how Bashar al-assad himself will be deterred against use of any particular weapon in his arsenal when he is fighting for his regime s and probably his own life. It is even harder to see that happening if the reported use of CW that triggered the latest surge of threats was an unauthorized action taken below the top level of the regime, as may have been the case. And what will happen, and how will deterrence supposedly be upheld, if Assad follows up with not just increasingly lethal non-chemical operations but even with additional chemical attacks? How will it be upheld, that is, without the United States getting drawn even more deeply into the Syrian war? Oh, but the sort of air strike being talked about isn t supposed to draw the United States in like that, is it? Much of the propulsion for the train heading for an attack on Syria is coming from elements who have wanted all along for the United States to get involved in the war there, and for whom this business about chemical weapons is just a serendipitous selling point. These elements include those of the neoconservative persuasion who never met a U.S. military intervention they didn t like. Their position leaves unanswered even broader questions: What exactly is the U.S. national interest in this sectarian civil war? What reason could there be for favoring one side or the other when both sides are dominated by those
holding values that are anathema to those of the United States? How could the United States bring about a particular outcome of the war even if one such outcome were clearly in its interests? And where does this all lead, and where does it all end? For this part of the pro-intervention crowd, the chemical weapons issue would be, just as with the Iraq War, a rationale rather than the actual motivation for going to war. And just as with that earlier war, all the attention to did-he-ordidn t-he questions concerning unconventional weapons are irrelevant to the matters that will prove most important after the United States resorts to military force. As has been pointed out often, a big difference between that earlier war and the current situation regarding Syria is that the incumbent U.S. administration is not itching to go to war. Far from selling others on the idea of military action, the Obama administration is worrying about how to deal with pressure from others to take such action. Perhaps the President and his advisers correctly see that a victory by neither side in the Syrian war serves U.S. interests, and the best thing to do is to let the sides bash each other. As Edward Luttwak observes, the Obama administration s policies to date have appeared well designed to do that. The President s reluctance to get dragged into this war has, however, boomeranged on him regarding the CW issue. As of several months ago it may have seemed a convenient way to resist the pro-intervention pressure by saying in effect, Not now, but if they use chemicals then I ll do something. Now we hear lots of talk about how given Mr. Obama s earlier statements on this subject, he has to act to uphold his and the country s credibility. That is another misplaced motive, because the historical record demonstrates that governments simply do not assess the credibility of other governments that way. But even if the notion about upholding credibility were valid, for this to be a reason to launch a military attack on Syria now would not be a case of two wrongs making a right. It would instead be an example of an administration compounding a mistake and digging itself into a deeper hole. Perhaps the CW topic of the moment is now also serving for the administration a purpose similar to what it serves for the neocons: as a convenient peg on which to hang an intervention taken for other reasons. Except that for the administration it is not because it always wanted to intervene in Syria but instead has decided, after a couple of years of unrelenting nagging from others for it do so, that it finally has to act in some forceful way.
Using a CW incident as a peg saves it from looking like it is changing a policy for no other reason than that it is succumbing to political pressure. A glimpse of the underlying political calculations comes through in a comment from an anonymous U.S. official that the level of military attack being contemplated is just enough not to get mocked. Politically, that is an understandable calibration. But it is not a sound motive to enter a foreign war. Some of the same people who have been pestering the administration about intervening in Syria have also been berating it more generally for being too tactical and reactive, especially in the Middle East, and not being sufficiently bold and strategic. But responding with an armed attack to a single reported use of a particular kind of weapon is about as tactical and reactive as one can get. A truly strategic approach to the topic would not only lay out a thorough sense of what is at stake for the U.S. in Syria and what we intend to accomplish there, but also would consider carefully the repercussions of any U.S. military action on other important U.S. equities in the region. There are several of those equities that would need to be considered, but take, for example, just one: the negotiations with Iran about its nuclear program. Analysts views vary regarding current Iranian perspectives toward Syria, but a U.S. military intervention would at a minimum complicate the effort to reach an agreement with Tehran and at worst would kill off what is, following the election of President Hassan Rouhani, an excellent chance to negotiate an accord. It surely would make it politically harder inside the Iranian government to sell the making of concessions to the United States. One Western diplomat stationed in Tehran says a U.S. attack on Syria would be a game changer for negotiations with Iran. So we come full circle from President Obama s comment about Syria use of CW as a game changer. We also come full circle on the objective of controlling proliferation of unconventional weapons. The most reliable way to preclude an Iranian nuclear weapon is through a negotiated agreement placing restrictions on Iran s nuclear program. An attack made supposedly to deter use of one kind of unconventional weapon would thus increase the chance that another nation would develop a different kind of unconventional weapon, one that really is a weapon of mass destruction. Of course, some of those pushing for U.S. intervention in the Syrian war are the same ones who want to kill the prospects for a negotiated agreement with Iran. That is one of the most warped motives of all for a U.S. attack.
Paul R. Pillar, in his 28 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, rose to be one of the agency s top analysts. He is now a visiting professor at Georgetown University for security studies. (This article first appeared as a blog post at The National Interest s Web site. Reprinted with author s permission.)