A number of events in recent weeks cast light on the current
intersecting lines of conflict in the Middle East. They reflect a region
in flux, in which new bonds are being formed, and old ones torn
asunder.
But amid the confusion, a new topography is emerging.
This was the month in which a long-existent split in the Sunni Arab
world turned into a gaping fissure. On March 5th, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain
and the United Arab Emirates announced that they were withdrawing their
ambassadors from the Emirate of Qatar.
This decision was clearly a response to Qatar's continued support and
sponsorship of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. This movement is
regarded as a subversive threat by the three Gulf states. They are
worried by the Brotherhood's capacity for internal subversion.
Qatar, by contrast, affords generous subsidies to its tiny citizen
body, and has little to fear from potential internal unrest. It
continues to support the Brotherhood and to domicile key leaders of the
Egyptian branch of the movement. The latter is now engaged in an
insurgency against the Egyptian authorities.
Saudi patience was at an end. The removal of the ambassadors reflects this.
On March 7th, Saudi Arabia made the additional move of declaring the
Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. A Saudi researcher and
former general, Dr. Anwar Eshki, was quoted on the Now Lebanon website
as asserting that the decision was made with particular focus on the
Egyptian Brotherhood, which is involved in "terrorist" activity.
In the same week, an Egyptian court banned all activities by the
Hamas organization in Egypt, and referred to the movement as a
"terrorist organization."
The proximity of these announcements reflects the very close emergent
alliance between Saudi Arabia and the de facto Sisi regime in Egypt,
which is likely to become de jure following presidential elections later
this year.
This alliance is the core component of an emergent dispensation in
the Sunni Arab world which also includes UAE, Bahrain and Jordan, as
well as the fragile West Bank Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas.
This alliance is set to emerge as the strongest element among the Sunni Arabs.
It is opposed both to the Iran-led, mainly Shia "resistance" bloc,
and to what is left of the Qatar/Muslim Brotherhood alliance that just a
short year ago was proclaiming itself the wave of the future in the
Middle East.
The Hamas authority in Gaza has no buy into the new Saudi-Sisi bloc.
Formerly aligned with Iran, it put its bets on the Qatar/Muslim
Brotherhood axis.
But this putative bloc was fatally damaged by the Sisi coup in Egypt
of July 3rd, 2013, and by the departure of the Muslim
Brotherhood-related Nahda party in Tunisia.
Hamas appears to be trying to find its way back to the Iranians.
Gaza's "foreign minister" Mahmoud al Zahar and Iran's parliament
spokesman Ali Larijani both made statements this week suggesting that
relations had returned to normal between Teheran and Hamas.
It is not clear what this actually means. But Iranian funding to
Hamas in Gaza was slashed following the latter's failure to offer
support to the Iranian client regime in Damascus. It is unlikely that
Iran has either forgotten or forgiven. Al-Zahar, in any case, is among
those Hamas officials most closely supportive of Iran and his statements
should not be taken as representing the movement as a whole.
This means that Hamas is probably stuck between Qatar and the
Iranians, with the support of the former no longer worth what it once
was, and the support of the latter available only in a truncated and
reduced form.
The week's events in Gaza, meanwhile, showcased the continued vigor of the Iran-led camp.
The most staunch supporter of Iran among the Palestinians, and now
apparently the main beneficiary of Teheran's largesse, is the Islamic
Jihad movement. This is a purely paramilitary and terrorist group, with
no pretensions to mass political leadership. As such, it is a less
complicated prospect from Teheran's point of view than Hamas.
The recent apprehending of the Klos-C arms ship by Israel, as it
brought a consignment of weapons evidently intended for Islamic Jihad in
Gaza, was the latest indication of Teheran's willingness to offer
practical backing to those it favors.
Islamic Jihad's furious response to the Israeli apprehending of the
craft, and to the killing in recent days of a number of its operatives
by Israel, was certainly done with Iran's blessing and probably at its
instruction (along with tacit permission from the Hamas authorities in
Gaza).
The interrupted route of the weapons intended for Gaza (from Syria to
Iran, to Iraq, to Sudan and then to the Strip) and the subsequent
rocket fire should remind us that the Iran-led Shia bloc remains a
potent gathering, capable of coordinated, region-wide action.
So three power blocs currently dominate the Middle East — the
Iran-led Shia group, a rival emergent Cairo-Riyadh axis leading a group
of smaller Sunni states, and a smaller, much weaker Qatar-Muslim
Brotherhood alliance. Their competition is set to dominate regional
affairs in the period opening up.
Israel, of course, will be a charter member of none of these groups. But Jerusalem is a de facto ally of the Saudi-Egypt camp.
Egypt and Saudi Arabia, along with Israel, were in recent decades the
main allies of the U.S. in the area. The former two countries are now
in search of new friends, and have found each other. Saudi Arabia and
the UAE have tried to lobby on Sisi's behalf in Washington in recent
weeks, though as yet with limited success.
The shifting sands of the Mid-Eastern strategic map are all the
result of the perceived withdrawal of the U.S. from its role as a
regional patron. This process is still underway and it's too soon to
draw any final conclusions regarding its results. But the current
drawing together of Saudi Arabia and Sisi's Egypt is surely among the
most significant responses to it. It is likely to form the basis for the
Sunni Arabs' attempts to contain Iranian ambitions in the period ahead.
Source: http://www.meforum.org/3795/shifting-mideast-sands-reveal-new-alliances
Radical Islam Monitor in Southeast Europe
