The New Balance of Power in the Middle East: America, Iran, and the Emerging Arabian Axis

4 comments

1. I firmly believe that in 50 years historians are going to look at Israeli actions over the last year as a turning point.

   Israel has traded temporary feelings of security and superiority for long term support from the allies that have enabled their security for so long. Fundamentally the only thing that Israel has ever offered the west was satiation of guilt over the Holocaust and the belief that it was important to defend the lone true democracy in the region.

   The Holocaust was almost a century ago, and the guilt was never going to last forever, but turning Gaza into one giant Warsaw Ghetto certainly makes it easier for Israel’s former allies to move on. And the way Bibi is running the government, democracy seems to be on the way out as well.

   That just leaves cold hard domestic politics to decide how much Western governments support or oppose Israel, and with even the United States now having a net negative view of the country all it will take is a single president deciding that relations with the Arab world is more important than relations with a tiny county with limited resources and trade.

2. Highly disagree. The Sunni Shia split between KSA and Iran is too much of a roadblock for any meaningful alliance to happen.

   Israel has been the MENA hegemon since winning the first Arab-Israeli war. Nothing new here.

3. “Israel looks increasingly like a regional hegemon. ”

   Barely any influence over Egpyt or Iraq, or the Gulf countries, none over Turkey, and basically all the threat of a strike against Iran that likely will not do anything without US help.

   What is up with people writing this ideological fantasy.

4. To summarize: Israel has so effectively humbled Iran that the Sunni states that had previously aligned with Israel in an anti-Iranian posture now feel free to dump Israel and go their own way. Not one of these countries, whose leaders were even more anti-Iranian than the Israelis, bothers to issue a word of thanks or act of recognition for Israel kneecapping their regional rival.

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