The Middle East’s New Map
The Trump Middle East deals are historic. Yet largely ignored by a "media" that is an active participant in the soft coup against the Administration.
Read the rest of the article at the link.The imminent establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and two Gulf states, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, is part of an on-going process of security cooperation going back many years. While that robs the event of some drama, it also increases its significance. It means that the process of ending the era of Arab-Israeli confrontation will continue, culminating perhaps in a political upheaval in Iran. That is the road that the Middle East may now be on.
Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Kuwait are some of the Arab countries reported to be considering peace deals with Israel. One or two of those countries may hold back, and Saudi Arabia, while supporting the process of regional normalization with Israel, may officially withhold formal recognition. It doesn’t matter. Even without official ties, all these countries have in a spiritual sense ended their hostility to the Jewish state.
Now look at the map:
The Israel-UAE alliance enjoys virtually unimpeded naval access around the three sides of the Arabian Peninsula: the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, and the Persian Gulf, with only tiny Qatar and the war-torn and chaotic state of Yemen presenting somewhat of a challenge. Meanwhile, the growing military presence of China in Djibouti and potentially in Port Sudan will remain a neutral element regarding this new Arab-Israeli security condominium, which will go far beyond the naval sphere and embrace high-tech security and warfare in all its aspects.
The Middle East is in the complicated process of transformation. For decades since the 1960s, the Baathist totalitarian regimes in Syria and Iraq had organized the rejection front against Israel. But those states, along with radical Libya, are now utterly shattered, even as Egypt lies impotent beneath debilitating repression and economic mayhem. The Palestinians, Qatar, and Shiite elements in Lebanon are all that’s left of the Arab rejection front, which now has to rely on support from non-Arab Turkey and Iran.