Words
often mean the opposite of what they appear to
mean in the Middle East. When Jordan's King
Abdullah demanded a speedy solution to the
Israel-Palestine issue to quell the outbreak of
multiple civil wars in the region, he meant the
precise opposite: the Arab world has something
more pressing on its mind than the plight of the
Palestinians. The emergence of an Iranian threat
to Saudi Arabia makes Palestine the odd man out.
The Palestine problem has dropped to the bottom of
the Arab priority list, and
the fate of the
Palestinians is to become cannon fodder for proxy
wars.
By
the same token, King Abdullah's warning of
multiple civil wars meant the opposite of what it
appeared to. What formerly were civil wars (or
prospective civil wars) in Iraq, Lebanon and
Palestine have become three fronts in a
Sunni-Shi'ite war, in which the local contestants
are mere proxies. This is obvious in Lebanon, and
becoming so in Palestine, particularly after Prime
Minister Ismail
Haniyeh's meeting with Iranian
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad in Qatar on Saturday.
As historian Niall Ferguson observed in
his November 27 Los Angeles Times column, "some
civil wars never end", although he neglected to
add why this is the case: it is because someone on
the outside keeps adding fuel to the fire. The
classic example is the great German civil war,
namely the 30 Years' War of 1618-48. The Catholic
and Protestant Germans, with roughly equal
strength, battered each other through two
generations because France sneakily shifted
resources to whichever side seemed likely to fold.
I have contended for years that the United States
ultimately will adopt the perpetual-warfare
doctrine that so well served Cardinal Richelieu
and made France the master of Europe for a century
(see How I learned to stop worrying and
love chaos, March 14).
"There are two sorts of rat/The hungry
and the fat," wrote Heinrich Heine. The fault
line between hungry Iranians and the fat Saudis
may take precedence over the civilization divide
between Muslims and the West, at least for the
time being. That is why the Israelis have
rediscovered the 2003 Saudi peace plan. The Saudi
kingdom has threatened to intervene on the side of
the beleaguered Sunnis of Iraq, and Iran (through
Hezbollah) is seeking to overthrow the
Saudi-allied government of Lebanon, as well as
dominate the rejectionist wing of the
Palestinians.
Iran, I warned on September
13, 2005, is running short of oil and soldiers (Demographics and Iran's imperial
design). Its oil exports could fall to
zero within only 10 years, according to new
studies reviewed in the December 11 Business Week.
Iran's circumstances appear far more pressing than
I believed a year ago, when the consensus estimate
gave Iran another 20 years' worth of oil exports.
Apart from oil, Iran exports only dried fruit,
pistachio nuts, carpets, caviar and, more
recently, prostitutes (Jihads and whores,
November 21).
Iran covets the oil reserves
of southeastern Iraq, southern Azerbaijan, and
northwestern Saudi Arabia. With 30% youth
unemployment, 10% inflation, epidemic prostitution
and drug addiction, Iran's fraying social fabric
depends on an oil-derived government dole. Within
a generation it will have half as many men of
military age, and four times as many pensioners.
As currently configured, Iran faces economic and
demographic collapse eventually. If, as Business
Week reports, Iran's oil exports are falling by
one-seventh each year, the reckoning might come
sooner rather than later. The theocratic regime is
a wounded and dangerous beast, prone to hunt
outside its own preserve.
Saudi Arabia's
quasi-official threat of intervention in Iraq
should be read in this light. On November 28, a
Saudi strategic adviser, Nawaf Obaid, warned in
the Washington Post of "massive Saudi intervention
to stop Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias from
butchering Iraqi Sunnis", if need be. "To be sure,
Saudi engagement in Iraq carries great risks - it
could spark a regional war," Obaid added. "So be
it: the consequences of inaction are far worse." I
do not mean to deprecate Saudi concern for the
welfare of Sunnis, but the kingdom faces an
existential threat.
Thanks to The Sunday
Times of London, we know that Prince Bandar
al-Sultan, the Saudi official closest to the US
administration, met with Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert as early as last September. In late
October, Israeli officials, starting with Defense
Minister Amir Peretz, cited the 2003 Saudi peace
plan as a possible "basis for negotiations". It
amounted simply to recognition of Israel by Saudi
Arabia and other Arab states in return for
Israel's withdrawal to 1967 borders. All this
occurred prior to the US elections and the advent
of the James Baker-Lee Hamilton Iraq Study Group.
On balance the Israelis should be pleased
at the development. As Diana West wrote in her
December 1 TownHall column, "Imagine: Sunni Saudi
Arabia vs Shi'ite Iran - and nary an American
soldier ordered to pull his PC [politically
correct] punches in the crossfire." More
precisely, Iran has sufficient influence among the
Palestinians to ensure that Hamas rejects a
Palestinian national-unity government, leaving
Israel no one with whom to negotiate, and a
relatively free hand for the occasional raid.
Jerusalem can stretch one hand in peace toward the
Saudis, and hammer Iran's ally Hamas with the
other.
A long war of attrition against
Iran will succeed unless Iran can break out of
encirclement, which in practice means acquiring
nuclear weapons. I do not know how close Iran
might be to obtaining a deployable nuclear weapon.
If it appears close to that goal, either the
United States or Israel will attack Iranian
nuclear facilities. But if the West as well as the
Saudis is confident that nuclear weapons remain
out of Iranian reach, the Richelieu strategy of
slow and bloody attrition might be just as
effective.
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Haniyeh's meeting with Iranian
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad in Qatar on Saturday.
