Israel-Iran war fuelled by US-Sunni sheikhdom nexus

How has a tiny country like Israel with a population of 7.2 million Jews, surrounded by hostile Arab states, defended itself from repeated attacks since its founding in May 1948?

The short answer: the United States.

Since its founding 76 years ago, Israel has functioned as Washington’s security outpost in the Middle East. The US has poured more military and financial aid into Israel than to any other country. It was the first nation to recognise Israel as a sovereign state – on the same day, May 14, 1948, that Israel declared itself an independent country.

Without American weapons and money, Israel would not have been able to fend off attacks on it by the Arab states that surround it.

But there is another element that has helped Israel survive in the turbulent crucible of the Middle East: a coalition of Sunni Arab states. Led by Saudi Arabia, the Sunni Arab sheikhdoms fear the rise of Shia Iran (a non-Arab country) and a resurgence of terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and IS.

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The Muslim Brotherhood and the Arab Spring in 2011 threatened the feudal Sunni Arab monarchies. It led them to make a Faustian bargain with the US-led West and Israel. The bargain was that the oil-rich Arab states would allow Israel to live in peace in return for US military protection from militant groups and radical elements that sought to overthrow their monarchies.

The Saudis believe in the old adage: the enemy of your enemy is your friend. The common enemy of Saudi Arabia and Israel is Shia Iran. That is the basis for the silent understanding between the Saudi-led Arab states and Israel.

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When Iran attacked Israel with hypersonic missiles on October 1, 2024, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other Sunni Arab nations helped Israel. Jordan closed its airspace when the Iranian attacks began and attempted to shoot down missiles launched from Iran as they flew over Jordanian airspace.

Who then are Iran’s allies in the Middle East? Principally, four Shia Arab states: Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon. Though Lebanon has a large Christian community, it houses the Shia militant group Hezbollah which is armed and funded by Iran.

Till 1979, Iran was America’s puppet state under the sybaritic, pro-West Shah of Iran. Shia-majority Iraq too was an American client state under Saddam Hussein. Both went rogue and fell out of the US-led West’s orbit with a decade.

The Iranian revolution deposed the Shah in 1979 and brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power. He reversed the Shah’s pro-West policy and imposed harsh Sharia law on what till then had been a secular, Westernised country where Iranian women went to work in skirts.

Across the border with Iran, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, an American protectorate, in 1990. Iraq overnight became a target for Washington. A US-led coalition liberated Kuwait from Iraq. A devastating decades-long US-imposed no-fly zone over Iraq starved several thousand Iraqi children of food and medicines, leading to a humanitarian disaster. In 2003 the US and Britain invaded Iraq on the false pretext of destroying its (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

Saddam was hunted down and killed in 2006. Another Arab dictator who had defied the US, Libya’s Muamar Gaddafi, met the same fate in 2011.

Rattled by the Arab Spring protests against their sheikhdoms and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood that could endanger their rule, the Sunni kingdoms of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain agreed in 2020 to what would have been unthinkable a decade ago. They established diplomatic relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords signed in the White House in the presence of President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Saudi Arabia had in principle also agreed to sign up on the Abraham Accords and recognise Israel as a sovereign state. The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, put those plans in limbo.

 The nuclear option

Sunni Arab states fear that Iran is close to acquiring a nuclear device. Israel, an undeclared nuclear state, has long told the US that it should be allowed to destroy Iran’s nuclear bomb-making facilities lying over a hundred feet beneath concretised bunkers.

Iran’s uranium enrichment could reach a critical stage soon, according to Israeli’s intelligence agency Mossad which has penetrated Iran’s security establishment. It says Tehran could have a deliverable nuclear device ready in less than two years.  

A joint US-Israel attack on Iran’s nuclear sites with bunker-busting bombs may however not be enough. Iran is believed to have spread its centrifuges and other nuclear fuel equipment to several mountain sites that US-Israel air attacks may not be able to access. US President Joe Biden has advised against an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. An attack on Iran’s oil refineries is another option. But Iran has threatened to retaliate by bombing the oil assets of countries allied to Israel, including Saudi Arabia.

If Iran does acquire nuclear capability, it will present an existential threat to Israel. Iran’s attacks on October 1 demonstrated that Iran has hypersonic missiles that can hit targets with pinpoint accuracy. Their flying time from Iran to Israel is 12 minutes.

Israel’s Iron Dome and Arrow Anti-Missile System would be ineffective against a nuclear-tipped hypersonic missile. Even if it is intercepted in the sky, nuclear radiation on the ground would pulverise a city.

Biden has pressed Netanyahu to accept a two-state solution with a sovereign Palestine co-existing in peace with Israel. It could be Israel’s only guarantee of long-term security.

 A race against time

Both Israel and Iran are racing against time: Iran to develop a nuclear bomb; Israel to destroy Iran’s nuclear capability. Israel knows that an Iran with nuclear weapons will have a veto over the Middle East.

Israel occupies land that for centuries was under the Ottoman Empire. The defeat of the Ottomans in the First World War in 1918 created a vacuum of power in the Middle East. That vacuum was filled by the victors of WWI: Britain, France and the US. They encouraged European Jews to occupy Arab homes and land, by force if necessary, where Palestinians had lived for centuries under the Ottomans. It was a turning point in the history of the Middle East.

One century later, the conflict between Israel and Iran could prove a second turning point.

The writer is an editor, author and publisher. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.