In 168 BCE, Gaius Popillius Leanas, the Roman Ambassador to a holdout Ptolemaen garrison in Alexandria, met Antiochus IV Eliphanes, King of the Seleucid Syrian Kingdom, who had just conquered Cyprus and most of Lower Egypt. When Laenas, after telling the Seleucid King to abandon his conquests, was met with an evasive answer, he drew a circle in the earth around Antiochus and demanded an unequivocal answer before he left the circle. That Antiochus caved was no surprise given the fact that his Macedonian allies had just been roundly defeated by the Romans at Pydna. But his humiliation was still personal, and by resuscitating his perennial Ptolemaic enemies, the Romans had reestablished his worst strategic nightmare.
I was reminded of this ancient event when I read how President Biden had recently demanded that Prime Minister Netanyahu choose between "peace", by agreeing to a raft of incredibly dangerous concessions to the PA, or stick with his "extremist" coalition. Now the cognitively challenged Biden is clearly no latter-day Gaius Popillius Laenas, who was one of the Roman Republic's most skilled diplomats. And Bibi Netanyahu, for all of his pretentious royal behavior, is no modern incarnation of King Antiochus IV, who also went by the moniker "Epimanes" or the "Mad". But the historical anecdote does have one troubling aspect that is quite relevant to the alleged incident between Biden and Netanyahu: namely, both were exchanges between the representative of a powerful state and someone he thought was his inferior.
That Bibi did not immediately reject Biden's diktat speaks volumes about how our current leadership has accepted its position of abject weakness vis-a-vis its erstwhile "ally", the United States. Under ordinary circumstances, Bibi would have been correct to push back against Biden's insult by pointing out the President's unethical refusal to abide by the Taylor Force Act, or his unconscionable funding of the PA despite their incitement to violence or their illegal land grab in Area C. But Bibi apparently remained silent.
On the one hand, part of the reason for the excruciating situation we find ourselves in with regard to our confused efforts to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia has to do with our Prime Minister's desperate efforts to safeguard his legacy seemingly at any cost. On the other hand, the Biden Administration's duplicitous effort to blackmail Israel into accepting a Palestinian state along the so-called "Auschwitz" borders of 1967, clearly establishes the United States as something far less than a reliable ally that "has our back". Indeed, by publicly coercing Israel to concede to virtually every outrageous demand made by the homicidal PA regime, Washington has also effectively boxed in Saudi Arabia, which now can't afford to look less pro-Palestinian than the Americans. Certainly, our own failure to state our rejection of Biden's delusion about Abbas' role as a legitimate partner in this diplomatic high-wire act leaves our position dangerously ambiguous, at best, and subject to coercion, at worst. And the latter outcome is exactly what's occurring right now.
Granted, our pressing need to correct Washington's insane insistence that we must formally agree to the "two-state solution" before normalization with Saudi Arabia can occur seems impossible given the Democratic party's counterproductive belief that the key to Middle East peace somehow runs through Ramallah.
But is there a way to get the Saudis to accept the concept of dropping their insistence on involving the Palestinians in their negotiations with us? Yes, there is, but it may require both Israel and the US to drop our justified reservations about giving Riyadh the ability to reprocess their uranium into weapons-grade ore at some future date, if they felt the need to do so. This would be a horrendous deal that would be just as bad, if not worse, than allowing a second Gaza to appear next to our coastal plain. But we do have to acknowledge Riyadh's understandable reluctance to rely upon an American guarantee of support against a nuclear-armed Iran given Washington's perceived unreliability and strategic focus on the Indo-Pacific region.
As I see it, the only way out of this American-created mess would be for the Saudis to drop their desire for a Congressionally approved defense pact with the US in return for a jointly run American tactical nuclear weapons depot in Saudi Arabia. Assuming this arrangement could be agreed upon, the US could go ahead with an executive agreement allowing the Saudis to purchase state-of-the-art American nuclear power plants, whose uranium fuel would be reprocessed by a European-based international consortium. If the US further agreed to a long-term uranium purchasing agreement for Saudi mined ore, this idea might just work.
In theory, this proposed plan would guarantee Saudi Arabia's minimum nuclear defense requirements while providing it with not only a reliable uranium export market but also all the critical nuclear-generating technology it needs to maximize its fossil fuel exports.
As for the Palestinians, Israel must make it crystal clear to Riyadh that there is no way we will ever allow the creation of a Palestinian state and that they should therefore concentrate on securing their own national security interests, rather than catering to the thugs masquerading as a normal government in Ramallah.
Hopefully, such a deal would also have the effect of forcing the Americans to quit acting as if we were the scared Seleucid Kingdom of Antiochus IV and they were the all-powerful Roman Republic. This change of behavior would go far towards resetting Washington's relationship with us in a way that just might bring some much-needed reality to American Middle East policy. However, I won't be holding my breath about this occurring given the Biden Administration's blind refusal to rethink its assumptions about how the two-state solution is the prerequisite for Middle East peace. That, and Washington's unwillingness to do anything serious about preventing the Iranians from obtaining the bomb are two of America's main strategic failures that are threatening to lead to nuclear proliferation and war in the Middle East. However, our own lack of clarity on the dangerous idea of yet another Palestinian terror state being created is not not helping matters at all."
