The founding fathers of Gulf States held jaundiced views towards Israel andhad lived through the excruciating series of events that marked thecreation of the State of Israel. However, climate of hostility started tomitigate and began to erode with the generational shift in the leadership.GCC-Israeli ties expanded and took more palpable forms of cooperation inlate 90s. The core of Israeli policy in the Middle East since the 1940s hasbeen a focus on constituting strategic partnerships with neighboring statesto offset the adversaries. Israel depended on security cooperation with itsneighbors for decades to cope with non-state actors; especially Iraniansponsored proxies, including Hamas and Hezbollah .
Ever since the October war of 1973, Israel has established itself as themost powerful conventional military in the middle East. The followingdecades displayed it consistently. Be it the strike on the Iraqi nuclearreactor at Osirak or the strike on the Syrian nuclear reactor in Deir ezZor in 2007. Eventually, Arab states resigned from attempting to annihilatethe Zionist state and began to understand its stature in the world order.The Arab states were consistently humiliated against the Israelis, be theythe Syrians in the Lebanese civil war or Saddam’s Iraq. Then one nationchallenged Israel; Iran. Having defeated Israel in the Lebanese conflict bymeans of proxy networks, Iran now has the strongest network of proxiesacross the middle East.
Israel__ knowing that, while the most robust in the Middle East, it cannotfight a pitched battle of attrition against an unconventional force__hasexpanded its military footprint in the region. The strikes on Syrianmilitary infrastructure, which amounted to 200 attacks in 2020, and thepummeling of Hamas in Gaza, send a direct message to Iran. Some analystseven state that Maj General Qasem Soleimani was assassinated at the behestof Israelis. The recent diplomatic offensives of the pro-Israel lobby andIsrael itself, in the GCC, help us envisage a region where, in case of anAmerican pull out from the region, Israel could step in to fill the USrole. But this will come at a cost, the Israelis know well that Iran,Hezbollah, Hamas and an emboldened Syria, will have it in its crosshairs.The GCC monarchies, apart from Saudi Arabia, will not sustain a prolongedconflict with Iran. Hence the Israeli military is maneuvering itself for aconflict, they hope to conduct as far away from their shores as possible.
Middle East’s transfiguration of the past decade has enervated many ofIsrael`s potential adversaries. Israel’s recent security concern , theconflagration with Iran, has opened the door to new cooperation withimportant Arab countries. Few recent developments manifest that Israel istrying to extend its leverage in the middle East. Israel’s recently signedtreaties with UAE , Bahrain and Sudan, with the foremost role of USA ,change the dynamics of regional politics and intrigues of global stateactors . Unsuspiciously, cordial relations of Gulf states and Israel willbe extremely beneficial to counter Iranian bloc in the middle East and forUSA to counter Russian sway in Syria and the entire region.Extandiblefootprints of Israel would reshape the future discourse of middle Eastthrough transnational trends ;shifts in regional geopolitics; andtransformable world powers’ interaction . Unorthodox military technologiesto counter the adversaries stand out colossally indispensable in thinkingabout the future of the region. Collectively, all of these trends couldlead to a meaningful threat to middle Eastern security and well-being.
As future of middle East rests on uncertain foundations, Arabs’ inclinationtowards Israel and emerging Israel-Gulf ties aiming at countering theIranian-Turkish bloc pose new threats to tranquility of the middle East.Besides this, changes in the outlooks of substantial regional countries,and the trajectory of great power dynamics in the region, especially thoseinvolving United States, Russia and China,too, sabotage the futurediscourse of the middle East .
With the Israeli`s maneuver to establish their authority in the region andIran wanting to establish credible deterrence,the stage is set for aconfrontation,. Will the Iranian establishment be willing to actuallyconfront the “Zionist entity” or is it just a bluff? Is the Israeli defenseestablishment willing to take on Iran? As Iran will not be a walkover. TheIranians are experts at unconventional warfare and their military doctrinehas been designed for this after the experience of the Iran-Iraq war. TheIsraeli military, or any other first rate military for that matter, is notdesigned to fight such a war. The experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan showthat. The war is coming, the question is, will the Iranians succeed ingenerating unrest and instability on the borders of Israel, without riskinga direct confrontation? And how far would the Israelis be willing to allowthis? The Israelis know that they cannot sustain a conflict like the US’scampaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The GCC have a mutual interest with Israel in abating the revolutionaryfervor of Iranian rhetoric and would funnel significant funds to bankrollIsrael’s operations in the region. This could include inciting sectarianfault lines to prevent destabilization of their own authorities. We canexpect an increase in sectarian strife across the Islamic world ,as SaudiArabia drifts more towards Israel and antagonizes Iran. States’understanding and their respective tolerance to such brinkmanship willdetermine the immediate and long term future of the Middle East. Thesituation is akin to the pre -WW1 setting of European politics. A decisiveand short, but intense war, may actually be better than the long, drawn outcold war, that has ravaged the middle East.
By: M. ALI HUSSAIN DOGARM. ALI RAZA
The writers are the alumni of Aitchison College and are currently the lawstudents.