The decision by three Arab states to make peace with Israel can be credited both to efforts by the White House under US President Donald Trump administration and the recognition by these Sunni states that doing so would bolster their security against ongoing threats from Turkey and Iran.
Iran and its proxies interfere in Arab states while promoting their Shiite revolutionary ideology, while Turkey pushes the Muslim Brotherhood's Sunni revolutionary ideology throughout the region. For both these countries, the normalization deals struck between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Sudan have been a shock to the system.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
"Iran is a tactical enemy for the [Persian] Gulf states because the regime is controlled by Shiite fanatics who want to destroy the Sunni regimes in the Gulf," Harold Rhode, a former adviser on Islamic affairs in the US Defense Department who was in Iran during the early months of the Islamic Revolution, said.
Israel's burgeoning alliance with the Gulf Arab states reverses the situation the Jewish state had found itself in during the first few decades of its existence. In its early years, during the successive Arab-Israeli conflicts, it relied on an alliance of non-Arab states, such as Turkey and Iran, as its only regional allies. However, this all began to change when the pro-Western Shah of Iran was overthrown in the Islamic Revolution in 1979, and has increased under the Islamist anti-Israeli policies of Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
According to Rhode, were the Iranian people to topple the current regime, the country would most likely focus its efforts on rebuilding and re-establishing its connections with the world.
The Turkish threat
According to Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak, an expert on Turkey at Tel Aviv University's Moshe Dayan Center as well as the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, Turkey and the Gulf Arab states are engaged in an undeclared proxy war in Libya and the Eastern Mediterranean.
"Almost in every theater, Turkey, Qatar, and Hamas are challenging the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt," said Yanarocak. "From Turkey's perspective, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi lacks legitimacy due to the military takeover from the Muslim Brotherhood."
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is seen by the Islamist powers as illegitimate for his government's assassination of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, added Yanarocak.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
"And now, the UAE lacks legitimacy in their eyes because of [the] normalization with Israel," he asserted.
In other words, "in Turkey's eyes, the Gulf states are not considered 'kosher' for leading the Sunnis," he concluded.
Rhode says that "from the Gulf states' perspective, Turkey is their long-term strategic enemy because Sunni fundamentalism—today headed by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan—has been a perennial nemesis throughout Islamic history by assassinating or overthrowing Sunni Arab leaders.
"This is because Erdogan is the de facto leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose goal is to re-establish the Sunni Caliphate and destroy all Sunni leaders who don't agree with its goals," said Rhode. "Iran, but even more so Turkey, was certainly a major impetus for the Gulf state deals with Israel."
Israel, along with the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and others, all must contend with the same enemy in the long-term, the Muslim Brotherhood, which according to Rhode, "is nothing more than the latest version of Sunni Islamic fanaticism that has periodically wreaked havoc with Sunni regimes throughout Islam's 1,400-year history."
More Sunni Arab states are reportedly set to follow in their predecessors' footsteps and normalize relations with Israel. For these states, who have no territorial dispute with Israel, the Israel-Palestinian conflict is not a priority. Not only that, these Gulf states are furious with the Palestinian leadership for shaming them for signing accords with Israel. As Rhode put it, "Culturally, shaming [them] in the Middle East is worse than killing them."
Rhode noted that no protests took place in either the UAE or Bahrain over the signing of the accords.
"In fact," assessed Rhode, "the people welcomed it. They are sick and tired of the Palestinian mafia thugs threatening them, and they called the Palestinian bluff. Gulf Arabs are now just expressing what they have felt privately for a long time, but had rarely expressed publicly."
Reprinted with permission from JNS.org
