The most recent thing that happened in Middle east !
- The
war in Yemen and the breakthrough nuclear agreement between Iran and the
United States have sent the already frenzied Middle East analysis machine
into meltdown mode.
- These
developments come fast on the heels of almost too many changes to keep
track of: the Iraqi government’s capture of the city of Tikrit, rebel
gains in northern and southern Syria, and mass-casualty terrorist attacks
in Tunis and Sanaa.
Regional Dominance --
Shia <=> Sunni squabble ?
This drumbeat of headlines,
however, should not distract us from the larger meaning of events in the Middle
East.
We are witnessing a
struggle for regional dominance between two loose and shifting coalitions
—
- one
roughly grouped around Saudi Arabia and
- one
around Iran.
Despite the sectarian hue of the coalitions, Sunni-Shiite enmity
is not the best explanation for today’s regional war.
This is a naked struggle for power:
Neither of these coalitions
has fixed membership or a monolithic ideology, and neither has any commitment
whatsoever to the bedrock issues that would promote good governance in the region.
Then, what is it ?
- This is, in some ways, an updated
version of the vast and bloody struggle for hegemony that shook the Arab
world in the 1950s and 1960s.
- In that era, a coalition of
reactionary monarchs, led by Saudi Arabia, did battle with a coalition of
Arab nationalist military dictators, led by Egypt’s Gamal Abdel
Nasser.
- Just like in that past era, every
single major player today is opposed to genuine reform and popular
sovereignty.
- Today’s ascendant regimes are all
reactionary survivors — and sworn enemies — of the Arab Spring.
Iran ka scene kya hai ?
- The Iranians mercilessly crushed the Green Revolution in 2009, and have invested heavily in authoritarian
partners in Iraq and Syria, paramilitary group such as Hezbollah, and
non-democratic movements in Bahrain and Yemen.
- Iran’s leaders are theocrats, but they are savvy and pragmatic geopolitical worker
bees: They have
backed Sunni Islamists and Christians, while even some of their close
Shiite partners — like Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad, an Alawite, and the Zaidi Houthis in Yemen — belong to heterodox sects and don’t share their
views on religious rule.
Aur yeah Arabzaade ?
- On
the other side of the struggle are the Arab monarchs from the Gulf, run by
the same families that brought us the Yemeni war of the 1960s.
- They
have extended their writ through generous payoffs and occasional violence,
like the Saudi-led invasion of Bahrain in 2011, which saved the minority
Sunni royal family from being overrun by the island kingdom’s
disenfranchised Shiite majority.
This Saudi-led alliance is
Sunni-flavored, but it would be incorrect to see it as monolithically
sectarian.
- Not long ago, in fact, Saudi Arabia underwrote the same
Zaydis it is now bombing in Yemen.
- The current coalition relies for populist credibility on
Egypt, whose governing class is dominated by secular, anti-Islamist
military officers.
- It enjoys dalliances in various conflict theaters like Syria
and the Palestinian territories with Muslim Brothers and jihadis.
- It has drawn extensively on help from the United States — and
on occasion from its supposedly sworn enemy, Israel.
************************************************************************
Perhaps the best glimpse of the
Saudi-led alliance’s goals came when Kuwaiti emir Sabah al-Sabah addressed the
Arab League at the end of March, in the meeting that inaugurated the war in
Yemen.
“A four-year phase of chaos and
instability, which some called the Arab Spring, shook our region’s security and
eroded our stability,” the emir thundered. The uprisings, he said, encouraged “delusional thinking” about reshaping the region — perhaps a
reference to Iran’s ambitions of regional influence, perhaps a reference to the
ambitions of Arab reformers to limit the influence of the repressive states
propped up by the Gulf monarchies. To the emir, the only outcome of uprisings
was “a sharp setback in growth and noticeable delay in our progress and
development.”
************************************************************************
So what's the crux of the story
?
- This
is the crux of the regional fight underway: the old order, or a new one
that would transform the balance of power — while changing little else
about the way the Middle East is governed.
- The
Saudi bloc wants to turn back the clock to the status quo ante that
existed before the uprisings.
- The
Iranian bloc wants to permanently alter the region’s balance of
power.
- Both
factions are run by opaque, secretive, repressive, and violent
leaders.
- Neither
side is interested in popular accountability, better governance, or the
rights of citizens.
So Saudi k team me kon hai ?
- For all the doubts about Saudi Arabia’s capacity to craft and
execute complex policy, the kingdom has cobbled together a formidable coalition.
- It quickly signed up most of its clients and partners for the
air campaign, including Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Sudan,
Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates.
- The United States supported the war, despite its
reservations.
- Of the kingdom’s close allies, only Pakistan has so far resisted pressure to join the
fight.
Saudi ne Egypt me kya game
khela ?
- In just the last year, we’ve seen at least two major volte-face.
- Riyadh helped engineer a regime change in Egypt, ushering
President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to power.
- After experimenting with quasi-democracy and a Muslim Brotherhood
presidency that defied the powerful Gulf monarchies, Cairo is now governed by a military dictator who walks firmly
in lockstep with Riyadh — even promising to dispatch ground troops
to a war in Yemen of which he would have probably preferred to steer
clear.
Qatar bhi Saudi k team me !!
- Qatar,
the unbelievably rich emirate that has long cultivated an independent
foreign policy, also found itself strong-armed by Saudi Arabia and finally
caved. Its emir abdicated in favor of his son, a 34-year-old political
novice, and today Doha is reading from Saudi Arabia’s song sheet.
So is their that SUNNI
element ..or is it just about POWER ?
- Both examples show that this is not a monolithic bloc bound
by uniform ideas of authoritarian rule or Sunni supremacy.
- Instead, it is a messy realpolitik coalition hammered
together by shared interests — and at times by bribes and blackmail.
- Its members don’t agree on everything:
Yeh Rishta kya kehlata hai ?
- Saudi Arabia hates Russia, in part because Moscow backs Iran
and Syria.
- Egypt loves Saudi Arabia because Riyadh keeps its economy
afloat — but it also loves Russia, because it can play off military aid
from Vladimir Putin against that from the United States.
- In public, Sisi praises the Gulf leaders — but in leaked private
recordings, he dismisses them
as oil bumpkins who can be bilked of their money by more dynamic Arab
nations.
- Qatar no longer openly defies Saudi Arabia, but it still
supports Muslim Brothers and jihadis in Syria to the extent it can, and in
opposition to Saudi preferences.
Aam Sunni kya sochta hai ?
- Since Saudi Arabia’s gloves came off in Yemen, Sunnis
across the region have expressed a kind of fatalistic relief: At last
someone is doing something to confront Iranian influence.
IRAN ki kya CHAL hai ?
- But
Tehran has extended its influence carefully, hedging its bets by
supporting multiple groups in every conflict zone and always maintaining a
degree of remove — if their investments fail, it will have not lost a war
in which it was a declared combatant.
- This blueprint has served Iran well during 30-plus years of
intervention in Lebanon and Iraq, and four years of orchestrating major
combat in Syria.
- Saudi
Arabia, on the other hand, has entered the Yemen war directly, and
therefore has no cover. It will own the civilian casualties, and
inevitably — when the war has no clear and easy outcome — it will own a
failure.
Itihaas kya sanket de raha hai
?
History is not on Riyadh’s side
in this campaign.
- Regional
wars tend not to go well for invaders; just think of Iraq’s invasion of
Kuwait or the last Yemen war in the 1960s.
- The
U.S. invasion of Iraq should also offer a cautionary lesson: Many people
at the time, including some Iraqis, felt that some major action was better
than the status quo, that toppling Saddam Hussein would at the least get a
hairy situation unstuck. They were soon disabused of that notion, as Iraq
spiraled into chaos.
Vishwa ko kya umeed hai US se ?
- America
should take particular care in this conflict.
- It
has built deep alliances with Saudi Arabia, and it has been far too
hesitant to reinvent its dysfunctional relationship with Egypt in the
post-Mubarak era.
- It
should act as a brake on Saudi Arabia’s outsized expectations in Yemen,
and it should exact a price for any support it gives the war there.
- Any campaign in Yemen should strengthen, rather than undermine, counterterrorism efforts there, and the United States should share its military know-how in exchange for Saudi cooperation on the Iran deal.
US ka double game dekho
-->> Divide and Rule !!
- Sure,
it’s bizarre to see the U.S. military working with Iran to battle the
Islamic State in Iraq, while working against Tehran in Yemen.
- It’s
also refreshing. This isn’t a homily; it’s foreign policy.
- It’s
encouraging to see the United States operating around the edges of a
complex, multiparty conflict and finding ways to advance American
interests.
- Its
next challenge will be finding new ways to simultaneously pressure rivals
like Iran and recalcitrant allies like Saudi Arabia.
IRAN ke acche din aayenge
Middle East me ?
But to a large extent, the
United States is a sideshow:
- The
main event is the regional struggle for influence between the Iran and
Saudi blocs.
- One
need only look at the two major events this spring — the Iran nuclear deal
and the capture of Tikrit with the help of Tehran’s military advisors — to
get a sense of who’s winning.
- America’s
preferred side has bumbled impulsively from crisis to crisis, buying or
strong-arming support and launching military adventures that are likely to
produce inconclusive results.
- Iran’s
side, meanwhile, has crafted tight state-to-state relations with Syria and
its onetime enemy Iraq, and has deepened its influence in Afghanistan,
Lebanon, Bahrain, and Yemen.
- Despite the theocratic dogma of Iran’s Shiite ayatollahs, the regime in Tehran has managed to position itself as the regional champion of pluralism and minorities, against a Saudi grouping whose philosophy has drifted dangerously close to the nihilism of al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
Kahaani ka tatparya ?
- Unless
Saudi Arabia and its allies can learn a new, more durable style of power
projection, their costly feints will only buy short-term gains.
- The
kingdom might manage to bomb the Houthis back to their corner of Yemen,
and its Syrian clients may seize some more towns and cities from Assad,
but the long-term trend points in Iran’s favor.
**********************************************************************
Give it a THOUGHT !!!!