The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey

Israel’s defence doctrine, adopted in the wake of Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on the Jewish state, embodies everything that would make overt collaboration with Saudi Arabia against Yemen’s Iranian-backed Ansarullah Houthi rebels all but impossible.

This includes the doctrine’s rejection of Saudi Arabia’s demand that Israel agree to an irreversible pathway for the creation of an independent Palestinian state as a pre-condition for the establishment of diplomatic relations.

Moreover, Saudi and Israeli strategies are diametric opposites.

Saudi Arabia emphasises economic cooperation and regional stability as cornerstones of its policies, not permanent war, pre-emptive military strikes, and occupation as envisioned in Israel’s defence doctrine.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu last week offered to assist Saudi Arabia in Yemen in the hope that it would open the door to closer security ties to the kingdom and pave the way for Saudi recognition of Israel.

James discusses on Radio Islam this week’s Middle East developments, including religious ultra-nationalism’s growing influence in the Israeli military, what Israel can learn from NATO’s new strategy, how efforts to destabilise states or change regimes fuel the region’s multiple conflicts, and the Yemen war’s derailing of Saudi sports ambitions.

Increasingly, destabilisation, if not regime change, has emerged as the subtext of the Middle East's multiple conflicts.

The notion that civil wars, ethnic insurgencies, sectarianism, and social unrest can, at least, weaken hostile adversaries, if not produce more friendly regimes, complicates prospects for negotiated solutions and, in some cases, thwarts diplomacy, heightens the risk of prolonged wars, and turns disputes into existential conflicts.

Middle Eastern governments and external powers, like the United States, did not only recently discover destabilisation and regime change as a possible strategy. It's that notions of destabilisation and regime change have moved centre stage.

There is much Israel could learn from NATO’s newly enunciated defence strategy.

It’s a lesson that could set Israel on a path that doesn’t consider war a permanent fixture of the Jewish state’s existence, doesn’t see ruptures with Israel’s Western allies as inevitable, and could open the door to repairing its shattered international standing and resolving multiple conflicts with the Palestinians, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.

For now, that’s a prospect that neither Israel’s governing far-right nor its more centre-right opposition parties or a majority of its citizenry envision. On the contrary.

Iran is restoring one of its nuclear facilities, while at the same timing stepping up attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz – actions that should provoke a US response. They haven’t. The question is why.

James discusses the Iranian moves and the lack of a US response on Radio Islam. The discussion with Yusuf, the show’s host, also touches on attempts by Qatar, one of the Gulf states hardest hit by the economic fallout of the Iran war, to restart exports of liquified natural gas.

Finally, James looks at Turkey’s more assertive posture in the Horn of Africa because of the wars in Iran, Yemen, Sudan, and Ethiopia.

Former US State Department official Alan Eyre suggests the US and Iran may be looking to the Vietnam War for lessons.

A fluent Farsi speaker who headed the Iran office of the US consulate in Dubai, Mr. Eyre quotes an American colonel telling his Vietnamese counterpart after the Vietnam War ended, “You never defeated us on the battlefield,” to which the Vietnamese responded, “That may be so, but it’s also irrelevant.”

Mr. Eyre’s anecdote is particularly apt with the United States for more than a month failing to respond to stepped-up Iranian attacks on ships attempting to traverse the Strait of Hormuz under US protection.

Eight months into the war between Iran, Israel and the US, the Middle East's old order is being redrawn, while opportunities and pitfalls abound.

Geraldine Doogue and Nick Bryant ask Middle East scholar James M. Dorsey how Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and the UAE are navigating a world where the US is no longer a guaranteed protector, why the Houthis remain a potent force in Yemen, and why Dorsey believes a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians may now be genuinely unworkable.

Plus: new sectarian unrest in Bahrain, the shrinking autonomy of Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq, and what the UK's decision to send air refuelling support to Saudi Arabia signals about where the region is headed next.

Guest: James M. Dorsey, scholar and author of the newsletter The Turbulent World

To listen to the podcast or read the transcript, go to https://jamesmdorsey.substack.com/p/how-the-middle-east-geopolitical

The Iran and Yemen wars are fuelling competition in the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa with Turkey as a key player. Turkey has long recognised the importance of the region as central to its growing influence in Africa.

Even so, the wars and competition have persuaded Turkey that relying on humanitarian diplomacy, development assistance and middle-power strength is no longer enough.

As a result, Turkey has rejiggered its approach to take into account a multitude of conflicts across a swath of geography ranging from the Red Sea to the Gulf, the Eastern Mediterranean to Sudan, Libya, Ethiopia, Somali, Somaliland dispute and footprints of Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

Creating a mutual defence arrangement with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan was a first step with Turkey expected to send troops to the kingdom in support of its offensive against Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

Increased support for the Sudanese Armed Forces in the country’s civil war is another.

This week’s Middle East news offers little reason for optimism. The US withdrawal from Iraq has emboldened Iran and darkened prospects for the Iraqi government and autonomous Kurds in the north. The Israeli Palestinian conflict is becoming ever more intractable as the region hurtles towards an inevitable nuclear arms race. Fuelling the fires, Iran and the United States and Iran are locked into a dialogue of the deaf that threatens to provoke another round of all-out war. James tries to make sense of it all on Radio Islam.

The Middle East is off to a nuclear arms race.

It’s an inevitable race resulting from recent US policy, a long-standing Western refusal to call a spade a spade, and indefensible double standards.

The Middle Eastern quest for nuclear capabilities isn’t happening in a vacuum.

Middle Eastern states, like Saudi Arabia and potentially Turkey, and Iranian hardliners took note of US and European responses to President Vladimir Putin’s threat to use tactical nuclear weapons on the first day of Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.