Prospects for a Near East Treaty Organization

Erstwhile Western Sunni allies (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Jordan) and a former Soviet client (Egypt) seem increasingly amenable to uniting in active defense against “Islamist extremists.” They share an adversary in Iran, which has tentacles in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, and Kuwait, as well as an unsavory history with North Korea and Pakistan. Prospects seem to signal potential for NETO, a Near East Treaty Organization (not a resurrection of CENTO, or an extension of NATO) that would embrace the span between the Eastern Mediterranean (including Israel), the Red Sea, and the edge of the Indian Ocean. Should such an organization materialize, it might well contribute to novel approaches to resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Turkey: NATO’s Odd One Out

Burak Bekdil
June 9, 2017
Paper No. 491

Discounting the sincerity of Turkish President Erdoğan’s fiercely anti-western rhetoric ahead of the April 16 referendum is akin to disregarding bitter facts about once staunch NATO ally Turkey. NATO’s deepening “Turkey problem” is contained in the country’s Islamist ideology, conspicuous “un-likemindedness”, and democratic anomalies, which stand against NATO’s founding values of safeguarding freedom and the principles of democracy, individual liberty, and rule of law.

Israel Upgrades Its Asia Policy

Israel is upgrading its economic relations with Asia by negotiating Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with China, South Korea, Vietnam, and India. These agreements will allow Israel to increase trade with Asia and improve its regional status, further solidifying Israel's pivot to Asia.

Rewriting the Six-Day War

When Israeli officials seemingly questioned their country’s narrative of the Six-Day War, politicized historians and commentators seized on their words as vindication of their claim that Israel had been the aggressor. But what these officials had actually said was abridged, misrepresented, and taken out of context. This distortion provided fodder for a tendentious rewriting of history.

In the Aftermath of Trump’s Visit to the Middle East

In his recent visit to the Middle East – his first visit abroad, and one fraught with symbolic messages – President Donald Trump achieved most of his goals. Never has a US president been received with so much tribute, praise, appreciation, and admiration by both Muslim and Jewish leaders. Heads of the most important states in the Arab world lauded his friendship, qualities, and strategic aims. There is no great surprise here. Trump completely reversed the attitude of Obama, which verged on hostility, towards both the pro-American Arab states and Israel. The Saudi royal reception for Trump was a particularly vivid response to Obama’s policy. The huge arms deal Trump signed with Saudi Arabia could challenge Israel's national security. Trump failed to implement his election promise to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, primarily because it seemed to contradict his plan to engineer an "ultimate deal" between Israel and the Palestinians.

The Six-Day War Was a One-Time Event

The overwhelming victory of the 1967 Six-Day War is sometimes used by proponents of an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank as proof that Israel can defend itself from behind the “green line.” They argue that Israel won the 1967 conflict from behind the pre-1967 borders, and is therefore capable of doing so again, and from the same lines, if necessary. This, they claim, clears the path to a withdrawal. However, this argument ignores all the military-strategic changes that have washed over the region in the fifty years since that conflict. It fails to take into account that the Six-Day War was a one-time event, with unique circumstances that will not be seen again.

The Summit for the Establishment of the Silk Road Forum

On April 14-15, 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping conducted a summit on the Chinese initiative to connect Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. In attendance were high-ranking representatives from Egypt, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Turkey, Syria, and Tunisia. The object of the summit was to clarify the Chinese initiative in the wake of uncertainty that has surrounded it ever since it was announced by Xi in 2013. Israel was not included in the summit, but is nevertheless very much in the picture.

Assad Is Bad News

Arguing that the continuation of Assad’s brutal regime is a vital Israeli interest does not make strategic sense. A Syria embroiled in a civil war has much less energy and means for hurting Israel than a strong Syria. Nor is the Syria of today able to wage an effective diplomatic and/or military campaign aimed at the return of the Golan. Above all, the survival of the Assad regime is a victory for Iran – the main source of trouble in the Middle East and Israel’s arch-enemy. Expressing support for the Assad regime, which is responsible for hundreds of thousands of casualties, for using chemical weapons, for ethnic cleansing, for massive destruction, and for creating waves of millions of refugees, is also morally reprehensible.

The Farhoud Remembered

Dr. Edy Cohen
June 2, 2017
Paper No. 484

Seventy-six years after the mass massacre of the Baghdad Jews, in which the then-leader of the Palestinian Arabs, Hajj Amin Husseini, was deeply involved, his heirs to the Palestinian leadership still sustain an anti-Israel and anti-Jewish campaign of racial and political incitement unparalleled in scope and intensity since Nazi Germany.

Trump’s Air Strike on al-Tanf: No to the Shiite Crescent

The two recent US air strikes on a Syrian convoy heading to the al-Tanf military base in the southern Syrian Desert a few miles from the Jordanian-Syrian border have major strategic importance. The attack signaled for the first time since the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011 that the US would not countenance the reemergence of the Iranian-controlled Shiite crescent that Iran had created through Teheran, Baghdad, Damascus, and Beirut after the US exited Iraq in 2010.

Perspectives Papers