At first, there was Libya, where a block of Islamist parties lost to the union of secular political forces in the country in parliamentary elections in 2012. After that, there was the failure in Mali, where France has managed to prevent the formation of the independent Islamic state Azavad headed by the odious pro-Qatar group Ansar al-Din in the northern part of the country.

Then the failure in Syria and the military coup in Egypt, which was followed by a ban of the Muslim Brotherhood in the country, seem to have finally knocked down the main “ringleaders” of the Islamist integration project in the region.

As a result, last autumn, the until recently “irreconcilable” Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Khalifa Al Thani sent a sensational proposal to President of the Syrian Arab Republic Bashar al-Assad for the restoration of diplomatic relations between Doha and Damascus, which were broken on the initiative of Qatar after fighting erupted in Syria.

The Qatari regime has always been characterized by a keen political instinct. Apparently, Doha was ready to continue sponsoring “revolutions”, even despite its unsuccessful struggle against the excessive ambitions of France in the region of the European southern neighborhood and political problems in Qatar. However, the change in U.S. Middle East policy priorities, primarily the rapprochement between Washington and Tehran, was a signal for retreat.

Of course, the White House can be understood. The improvement of relations with Tehran will allow Barack Obama to use Iran as a counterweight to the potential growth of influence of the Taliban after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

In addition, it will allow the current U.S. leader to finally get rid of the policy of the neoconservatives that called for the “democratization of the Greater Middle East”, which Obama inherited from the previous administration, and to concentrate on solving domestic problems.

However, while the more flexible Qatar has “figured out” the situation, another sponsor of the Arab Spring, the slow “gerontocratic” Saudi regime seems to have failed to catch the new geopolitical trends. Therefore, it now faces a difficult choice: either continue sticking to its line stubbornly, expressing its dissatisfaction with the “treacherous policy” of its recent key transatlantic ally at every opportunity, or, like Doha, to accept the role of the “extras” in the new U.S. Middle East scenario.

For the present, it is apparent that stubbornness prevails. In particular, this fact is evidenced by the story of Riyadh’s refusal from becoming a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council.

In addition, the statement of the head of Saudi intelligence Prince Bandar bin Sultan, during a meeting with Western diplomats, is eloquent in this respect. He said that his country would soon “significantly change its foreign policies”, reconsidering its relations with the United States. One of the most influential people in the CSA explained this decision by the differences in approaches to the key Middle East issues. First of all, it concerns the Syrian issue, where the White House decided to refrain from using radical methods, having finally realized that the current Syrian regime might be replaced by insane Islamist groups.

Moreover, in particular, the Saudis were irritated by the process of normalization of relations between the USA and Iran, which is the main rival of the CSA in the region. This process began in the second half of last year.

Of course, Riyadh is hoping that the friendship between Washington and Tehran would be a temporary phenomenon, and soon everything would return to normal. However, every day they are starting to understand more and more that the current U.S. leadership has really lost interest in the Arab Spring project, and the Americans seem to have decided to go the other way – and concentrate on the “big anti-China game”.

This means that the Wahhabi Project, which was started with the Tunisian-Egyptian “blitzkrieg” in late 2010 – early 2011, is now in a stage of decay. This project had aimed at the integration of the “Arab oecumene” under the auspices of the Arab monarchies of the Gulf (primarily Qatar and Saudi Arabia) by subjugating moderately strict, paramilitary, authoritarian secular regimes, primarily in Egypt, Syria, Libya, and Tunisia.

Having actually turned the Arab League into the “executive authority” of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf at the stage of the most “revolutionary” enthusiasm, Doha and Riyadh have failed to create an integration backbone for the future “Arab EU” from out of all this.

The clash of geopolitical interests with France in North Africa, changes in the regional appetites of U.S. foreign policy, and finally the “betrayal” of Qatar, followed by rapid cooling of relations between Doha and Riyadh have resulted in the fact that now Saudi Arabia remains, in reality, the only country that still stubbornly promotes the idea of the Arab Spring.

Obviously, Riyadh still hopes that the current pro-Iranian sentiment will soon blow over in Washington. Otherwise, it would have to place its hopes that the Arab Spring project will become of interest to the new occupant of the White House.

Vitaly Bilan, PhD in history, an expert on the Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook“.

In late October, the pro-South Sudan Ngok Dinka tribe in the disputed province of Abyei began to vote unilaterally to join the territory. Reports of this caused great anger in Khartoum and among the leaders of the nomadic Misseriya tribe, which is under its control and passes through the territory of the province several times a year with its herds. The latter have already stated that their 30,000-man army is “ready with weapons in hand” to defend the territorial integrity of Sudan, if the Ngok Dinka proclaim Abyei to be a part of South Sudan.

Considering the fact that the mandate of the United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA) is ending in late November, the resumption of hostilities between Khartoum and Juba is becoming more real. 

It would seem, from the European point of view, that nothing, right now, could be like the military conflict between North and South Sudan.

And, indeed, both countries are mutually dependent on “oil” dollars, which are the basis of life in both the North and the South (95% and 98% of their respective revenues).

Moreover, Khartoum’s current monopoly on transportation of South Sudan’s oil is, in essence, a key factor in avoiding a new civil war.

Besides this, there is another reason why the two countries seem to have to tolerate one other: the socio-economic situation in both Sudans. After the global financial crisis, and especially over the past two years, substantial problems have arisen in the Sudanese economy. They are connected, first of all, with a severe “drain” of capital abroad.

Because of this, the war between North and South Sudan, despite the perhaps most pressing issue of ownership of the oil-rich area Abyei, seemed unlikely due to the basic lack of funds to carry out such a war.

However, experience has shown that Western logic applied to Sudanese territory seriously falters.

The predicted failure of negotiations between North and South Sudan on the issue of border demarcation and the rights to extraction and transportation of oil has put a maximum of strain on relations between Khartoum and Juba.

As a result, in March of last year, the largest armed confrontation since the Civil War of 1983-2005 began between the two countries. In April, South Sudan troops seized the Heglig oil field in the province of Abyei and then repelled a massive counterattack by Khartoum troops. In response, the Sudanese parliament adopted a formal declaration in which South Sudan was named an enemy state.

Generally speaking, the situation escalated to the limit. It was only the intervention of the UN Security Council, with its adoption of the resolution on the withdrawal of Sudanese and South Sudanese military from all disputed territories, which somewhat reduced the degree of tension.

Then again, time has shown that the “Abyei question” is an enduring one.

It is well-known that the Abyei region provides about 55% of the total oil production of Northern Sudan. In fact, this is the main reason that Khartoum did everything it could to prevent the vote on South Sudan’s independence from being carried out there in January 2011. This was done by insisting that the nomads from the aforementioned Misseriya tribe, who are loyal to the north, participate in the referendum.

For the same reason – the oil – Sudan has also introduced its troops to the area, which caused quite a stir in Juba. Then, as a result, the signing of the agreement in June 2011 in Addis Ababa succeeded in bringing down the surge, requiring both parties to immediately withdraw their troops from Abyei, to form a joint administration, headed by a representative appointed by Juba, and to elect a legislature, headed by a representative of Khartoum.

However, negotiations on implementing these requirements initially stalled, and then reached a complete stalemate.

Juba demanded that Khartoum first withdraw its remaining troops from Abyei, and then proceed to create the administrative management body. In response, Sudan, speaking through its foreign minister, Ali Karti, countered that it agreed to withdraw its military forces from the disputed area only after the joint creation of the administration with South Sudan.

Last fall, the African Union proposed to hold a referendum on the status of the district Abyei without the participation of representatives of the Misseriya tribe, who live in the area a few months out of the year. But the Sudanese government predictably rejected this proposal, saying that it “violates previous agreements,” since only the Referendum Commission has the right to determine its participants.

Realizing the futility of the situation, and understanding that, due to the complete economic collapse and subsequent famine, the country could simply splinter into small feuding factions, the former guerrillas, and the current powers that be in Juba have gone the already proven path of propaganda, just like in the civil war of 1983-2005, in the style of “Arise, great country.”

In particular, there has been a significant increase in the recruitment of local farmers to the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. The program of “total military training” is being introduced, and pervasive indoctrination of the population about the “criminal regime” in Khartoum continues, alongside all kinds of separatist sentiment being fueled in Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile.

So what is Juba planning, to have so abruptly turned toward the total militarization of its population? By all appearances, it is counting on a “small victorious war” at first, and then when the country’s economy gets really bad, on Paris and its ambitions to come forward as the main “driver” if not in the entire African continent, then at least in its northern part.

It should be noted that in the context of France’s “practical” African policy, South Sudan has recently begun to occupy one of the leading roles in the African vector of French foreign policy, considering its hydrocarbon reserves.

In particular, the French company “Total” has become a key “driver” in South Sudan oil and announced its intention in the near future to triple the current level of oil production, as well as to build “as quickly as possible” an alternative North Sudan oil pipeline through Kenya to the Indian Ocean (China plans to build an oil refinery in Kenya, costing about $1.5 billion).

But Juba should take into account the fact that the current occupant of the Elysee Palace, Hollande, unlike his ubiquitous predecessor Sarkozy, seems to be preoccupied, for the moment, with the internal problems of France and the European Union.

Then there’s another question: will Hollande go along with the further cooling of relations with Washington, which has a different view from Paris on resolving Sudanese problems? On top of everything else, a worsening of relations between Paris and Washington has recently been observed in connection with the almost diametrically opposing views on the question of achieving peace in Sudan’s province of Darfur.

Hollande certainly understands that the differences in the American and French interests in Sudan, and the potential draw for the major governments interested in the problems of Sudan (China, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Iran) could become an important risk factor for the development of the “optimistic” scenario in this situation.

All this, of course, wouldn’t necessarily heighten the mood of the current rulers in Juba. But there, as well as in Khartoum, it seems they still haven’t had enough fighting yet, after decades of civil war.

So once again, this non-sober, militaristic, gung-ho mood is starting to dominate, capable of maximally igniting the already volatile situation in the region.

Vitaly Bilan, Ph.D. in History, expert on the Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

It appears that the present state of affairs in the signing of cooperative security agreement between the U.S. and Afghanistan is becoming a serious problem for the current U.S. administration. Procrastination is prompting geopolitical rivals (notably China and Russia) to augment their influence in the region, and the signing of an agreement on terms that are unacceptable to the White House is likely to aggravate relations with key regional allies of Washington. 

Anyone who regularly follows the international reportage published in the American press couldn’t help but notice the U.S. media hoopla over the signing of the U.S.-Afghan cooperative security agreement.

However, this is not surprising. After all, Afghanistan is at the very centre of where regional and global powers’ security interests intersect, namely those of the U.S., Russia, Iran, India, China and Central Asian states. Thus the formation of contacts with the Afghan leadership, with which the U.S. has recently had a complicated relationship, is entirely on point.

For Washington, Afghanistan is “a local manifestation of a global problem: the preservation of American leadership in the world,” as the well-known international observer Fyodor Lukyanov aptly noted. Exiting Afghanistan without establishing at least a modicum of governance would mean a serious blow to the prestige of both the United States and NATO.

And since it seems unlikely that the Iraq experience (i.e., training local forces and gradually handing over administrative functions to them) can be duplicated, the White House now appears to have lower expectations for Afghanistan than was the case in previous plans. The United States is striving to turn Afghanistan into a “moderately stable country” that is not a base for extremists.

Barack Obama’s own words support this view. “We’re not going to try to build a country in the image of America or to wipe out the last remnants of the Taliban,” Obama said. “That would require many more years, many more dollars and many more American lives. Our task is to destroy al-Qaida, and we’re proceeding to do exactly that.”

Achieving this goal is a precondition for implementing the so-called “dignified exit strategy” for Afghanistan that would preserve the U.S. image as the leading force in the world.

On the other hand, from the perspective of Moscow and Beijing, the most problematic scenario for future enhancements is a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and a simultaneous desire to remain in the region, especially in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

Proceeding from this mentality, Russia and China are offering to resolve the Afghan problem through established prominent regional institutions such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Collective Security Treaty Organization. In this light, the SCO is viewed as the political guarantor and the Collective Security Treaty Organization as the security safeguard.

According to Moscow and Beijing, the Afghan conflict cannot be resolved without clear coordination of the steps involved and dialogue with NATO, the CSTO and the SCO as well as the U.S., Russia and China.

If each of the concerned parties were to take security measures unilaterally, the objective incongruity of interests would obviously breed mistrust among the major global players and, consequently, further destabilise the situation in Afghanistan and the region as a whole.

Of course, Washington deems this position unacceptable and sees it as a strategy of squeezing the U.S. out of the region.

Obama has apparently decided that in this way he can maintain the shaky stance he has adopted recently. On the one hand, he is not caving in to Russia and China, and on the other hand, he is burnishing his dovish credentials in the eyes of Americans.

This aim is being furthered by the current American media activity in regards to the signing of the U.S.-Afghan cooperative security agreement.

According to Obama’s timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan, all American forces should be out by the end of 2014, with the exception of instructors helping the Afghan army and also small groups of special forces to carry out counterterrorist operations against al-Qaida.

The plan also envisions these instructors and special forces (as supposed, up to 10,000 of them) staying in the country after 2014 to be stationed at Afghan military bases. Washington strategists surmise that the agreement should serve notice to the Taliban that waiting out the international presence and then overthrowing the Afghan government is not an option.

The reality, however, is not so smooth. Kabul has recently lodged numerous complaints with Washington. For example, the Afghans are unwilling to agree to a stipulation that Americans be allowed the right to conduct operations against al-Qaida without coordinating their actions with Afghan authorities.

In Kabul, that provision is an especially sore spot in the wake of the American military’s arrest of a senior commander of Pakistan’s Tehreek-e-Taliban, Latifah Mehsud, in eastern Afghanistan. Mehsud was in the country at the invitation of Afghan intelligence to organise peaceful negotiations between Kabul, Islamabad and the Taliban. According to Aimal Faizi, a spokesman for Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president “became indignant” after learning of Mehsud’s capture by the Americans.

Furthermore, the Afghans are demanding that the American administration not conduct separate negotiations with the Taliban and that the Taliban office in the capital of Qatar be closed.

Each side has its own notions of the agreement between Kabul and Washington. For example, the White House would like to remove a treaty provision on the obligation to defend Afghanistan against all external enemies. Such a stipulation would put the United States in a very awkward position if the current cooling of relations between Kabul and Islamabad were to suddenly lead to a conflict.

On the whole, Afghanistan is seemingly becoming a real headache for Washington. On one side of the spectrum, signature of the agreement with Kabul cannot be delayed. As mentioned, geopolitical rivals are by no means standing idly by. And domestically, time plays into the hands of the Republicans, who espouse a long-term policy on Afghanistan that is diametrically opposite.

But on the flip side, growing discontent with the Kabul regime may result in the signing of an agreement on terms unacceptable to the White House, followed by the deterioration of relations with major satellites of Washington in the region (above all Pakistan).

Afghanistan is truly a special place on the world’s geopolitical map. To a significant degree, it proved fatal to one of the superpowers in the previous century. It appears that the lessons of that bitter experience are being lost on yet another superpower. 

Vitaly Bilan has a PhD in historical science and is an expert on the Middle East and a special contributor to the New Eastern Outlook online magazine.

Which, in general, is not surprising. As we know, Arab nationalism was a romantic anti-colonial movement of the army elite who, impregnated with Western ideas, sincerely believed that with the establishment of European government institutions, standards of living would also automatically rise to European levels (still, however, an important factor in the spread of Arab nationalism in the middle of the last century was the creation in the region of the Israeli national state, however, this is a topic for another discussion).

Pro-Western military romantics did not understand that, unlike in Europe (and Israel for that matter), Arab nationalism is a classical “chimera.” After all, tribal identities completely dominated the ruins of the former Ottoman Empire in the middle of the last century and therefore the conditions did not exist for bourgeois revolutions, and, consequently, the creation of nation-states.

Therefore, Nasser, Gaddafi, Hussein and Assad Sr.’s pursuit of statism, secularism and decolonisation was profoundly alien to the general population and these countries’ streets only remained calm while there was a global confrontation between Moscow and Washington.

With the collapse of the bipolar world and, correspondingly, the withdrawal of support for nationalists from their main ally in the region – the Soviet Union – the Arab nation-states have become, in effect, an “abandoned geopolitical field.” In addition, the defeats in three Arab-Israeli wars, in which the nationalist regimes played a leading role on the Arab side, made the apologists for nationalism extremely unpopular on the Arab streets.

As a result, at the end of the last century a course was taken towards the ideology of the Cold War’s victor – Western-style liberalism. But this path did not sit well with the Arab world. As a result, in the last few years Islamists led by Qatar and Saudi Arabia have tried to fill the ideological vacuum.

However, as I have already said, in those Arab states where over decades they have become accustomed to secular living, there are increasing fears of the spread in their territory of the Wahhabi model of society which is characteristic of the main integrators of the Arab world; and that is leading to noticeable diminishment of the integration drive on the part of Doha and Riyadh.

Thus, the main instigators of the Arab Spring, who inflicted a devastating blow to the institution of the nation-state in the region, currently are unable to offer the Arab world the promised “new Caliphate.”

And this means that, most likely, with the destruction of the Arab nation-states we will not see an Arab EU analogue emerge, but a “large Arab Somalia.”

In general, people are speaking more and more of the “Somalisation” of the Greater Middle East in recent times. And there is good reason for this.

There is the “parade of autonomy” in Iraq, starting with Saladin Province two years ago, followed by Basra, Fallujah, Diyala, Nineveh and other cities. Then there is the question of the proclamation of independence of the so-called Republic of Iraqi Kurdistan and the establishment of the Western Kurdistan autonomous region in the North of Syria, close to the border with Turkey.

And it goes without saying that many decisions taken by the Cyrenaica People’s Congress that took place in the outskirts of Benghazi concerning the creation of Barca Federal Union District were worrying, as was the anti-government uprising in Bani Walid as well as the autonomist sentiments in Misrata, Sabha and other parts of Libya.

The nature of what is happening in these regions demonstrates that all these autonomous regional trends and the weakening of the national governments is more clearly following not the path of European regionalism, or as some researches have suggested – “glocalization,” i.e. a specific local response to the process of gobalization (the term coined by British sociologist Roland Robertson), but rather the return to banal tribal identities. That is to say, a clearly typical tribalization of the Greater Middle East.

It is on the European continent that the current globalization processes may lead to (and this still remains a big question) the implementation of the concept of European regions in the spirit of traditional German geopolitics – from the Central European project of Pastor Friedrich Naumann to the pan-regional ideas of Karl Haushofer to Carl Schmitt’s concepts of large spaces, proposing full integration, real self-governing territories, the cooperative nature of central and regional relations, subsidiarity, solidarity, the recognition of the historical development of regions’ specific cultural characteristics, social orientation, the priority of regional authorities and trans-border cooperation.

In the Arab Ecumene the destruction of the nation-state is a direct path to archaism of the region, it’s “Somalisation” and permanent inter-tribal clashes in the fight for natural resources.

However, it is possible that “the powers that be” are counting on this. Indeed, the tribalization of the hydrocarbon-rich Arab world is the dream of any energy importer, as negotiating with the leader of some “local-area” tribe, which owns significant oil or gas resources and is not burdened with national problems, is much easier.

However, it remains to be seen whether European energy importers have taken into account all the risks, as well as the now obsessive overseas strategy of curbing China’s geopolitical ambitions.

The notorious “theory of controlled chaos” in the Middle East Ecumene could fail after all with fatal consequences that go far beyond the region.

Vitaly Bilan, Candidate of Historical Sciences and an expert on the Middle East, еxclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Source: Thinkstock

With the sharp deterioration of the situation in Sinai (especially in its northern part), which occurred in Egypt after the overthrow of the regime of the “Muslim Brotherhood”, the issue of control (or rather, the lack of control) in the Sinai Peninsula has been renewed in the world media.

So much so, that the leaders of the Bedouin tribes that live in Sinai issued a statement of intent to create their own security forces in the peninsula until the formation of the “Bedouin army”.

However, the big question is whether the “militias” will give way to positive action. After all, even in the “best of times”, the Israeli-Egyptian border was a serious problem for both states. It should be noted that despite constant talk about the effectiveness of border control, in the “Mubarak” period socio-economic problems still prevailed on the Egyptian-Israeli border. The Israeli-Egyptian border back then turned into a source of the illegal migration of African residents into Israel, and has become a real “headache” for both Israel and Egypt.

Israel has repeatedly expressed outrage at the “inaction” of Egypt against the penetration of illegal immigrants into its territory, as well as the smuggling of goods and drugs.

In turn, the Egyptian authorities have regularly pointed to the groundlessness of such claims. Moreover, Cairo laid a good deal of responsibility for the unfavorable situation on the Israeli side of the border, focusing on the fact that the interest of cheap labor in Israel is one of the “key” factors for the influx of illegal migrants through the outposts. As proof, the Egyptians refer to the Israeli media, which, in particular, at the end of August 2009, reported that a network for the delivery of illegal immigrants from Africa was uncovered in Israel. The central office of the organization is in Lod.

However, after the “Tahrir Revolution”, the emphasis dramatically shifted to the politicization of the Sinai Peninsula, for which there seems to be good reason.

In particular, after the attacks on Eilat, the terrorist attacks last August in southern Israel that killed eight people, and attacks on police and other public facilities in Al-Arish, the regional media paid even more attention to the activities of Islamist organizations in the territory of the peninsula.

The first is the Palestinian organization called “Popular Resistance Committees”, founded in the fall of 2000 by figures of the well-known Abu Samhadana clan, who are centered in the Gaza Strip and control, as is commonly believed, the smuggling of arms and goods from Egypt into Gaza.

In addition, reports are made on the deployment of a flurry of activity on the peninsula by veterans of military conflicts in Afghanistan, the Caucasus and the Balkans (for example, one of the coordinators of the Caucasian militants, Egyptian Abu-Rabia), as well as the creation of large training camps for militants in Al-Arish in North Sinai.

Thus, both Israel and Egypt become victims of the Camp David Accords they signed back in 1979. As is known, in accordance with the provisions of the 1979 Peace Treaty, after the withdrawal of IDF troops from the peninsula on Egyptian territory in 1982, three zones were created: “A”, “B” and “C”, and in Israel “D”, within which the number of troops, weapons and military equipment was restricted.

Without going into too much detail, we can say that in zone “B”, which covers almost the entire peninsula (50 km east of the Suez Canal and 20 km west of the state border of Egypt with Israel and the Gaza Strip), Egypt is allowed to have just four battalions (of up to 4 thousand people) and they can only be equipped with light weaponry.

Area “C” (20 km of the Egyptian border zone) is, according to the Treaty, only for the Egyptian police and the deployment of international forces (under the agreement this involves the placing of a contingency of UN troops).

Moreover, they above-mentioned areas constitute a zone, where Egyptian combat and reconnaissance aircraft are restricted, as well as naval ships and early warning systems, and Egyptian border guards are not allowed to carry armed helicopters.

It is therefore not surprising that in the late 80s and early 90s Sinai became a haven for radical Islamists of every persuasion, who in recent years have been growing bolder and have been sharply increasing their activities taking advantage of the confusion of post-revolutionary Egypt.

Generally speaking, there is currently a stalemate in the peninsula.

On the one hand, in the face of increasing Islamist activity on its southern borders, Israel must agree to review the provisions of the Camp David Accords, and allow a sufficient number of Egyptian forces to enter the territory of the Sinai Peninsula in order to monitor the situation.

On the other hand, most of those Egyptian forces are dominated, to put it mildly, by those who don’t carry pro-Israel sentiments.

So far, it seems, Israel is still counting on the U.S. (and indeed Western) financial “leverage” in relation to Cairo (after all, $1.5 billion will be welcome for the Egyptian army under any government), as well as tactical concessions (like, say, the recent agreement on the deployment of two Egyptian infantry battalions in Rafah and Al-Arish).

However, after all, sooner or later, a decision will have to be made between having one of the most powerful – and significantly Islamized – armies in the region, stationed directly on the Israeli border, or dealing with regular shelling by Islamists not only in the territory adjacent to the Gaza Strip, but also Israel’s entire southern region.

Vitaly Bilan – Candidate of Historical Sciences, expert on the Middle East, exclusively for New Eastern Outlook.

The unsuccessful attempts to overthrow the Assad regime are increasingly moving Israel to center stage, and the footdragging on Syria is significantly hindering a decision on what is perhaps Israel’s key foreign policy issue: Iran.

In a late July speech at the the National Security College’s graduation ceremony, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that the international community’s failure to deal with Syria shows that Israel can rely only on itself.

Then the Israeli media took up the theme of preventing Syrian chemical weapons from getting into the hands of terrorists with everything that implies. The reason for that was a statement by Nawaf Fares, a former Syrian ambassador who defected to the opposition. During an interview with the BBC in London, he said the Assad regime could use chemical weapons. The fact that Fares had also been director of intelligence and a senior party official gave his statement greater weight.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman reacted immediately. Predictably, he drew a connection to Hezbollah, which was a particular irritant to the Israeli right after the Second Lebanese War in 2006; he said the transfer of chemical weapons to that organization would be regarded as nothing less than a casus belli. Damascus called that statement “infantile and hasty” and said an attempt by Israel to destroy Syrian chemical weapons depots would also be seen as a casus belli, and Damascus would have to respond in kind.

However, Hezbollah seems to be well on the way to becoming a trump card in the great Syrian game. Israel’s sensational air raid on a Damascus suburb the night of May 5 provides clear confirmation of that.

Apparently, Israel is really tired of passively waiting and idly watching as its Western allies and the Gulf monarchies dawdle about with the Assad regime to no avail Indeed, Tel Aviv is convinced that it is time to do something about Iran because Iran is what “liberal democratic civilization” fears most in the region.

An article in the intelligence/analytical publication Stratfor by the well-known American political analyst George Friedman, who was no less well-known in the past for his anti-Russian views, presented that phobia in concentrated form. “If al-Assad survives,” he wrote, “Iran will be the big winner. If Iraq falls under substantial Iranian influence and the al-Assad regime — isolated from most countries but supported by Tehran — survives in Syria, Iran could emerge with a sphere of influence stretching from western Afghanistan to the Mediterranean (the latter via Hezbollah).”

Friedman believes that the place to block Iranian ambitions should not be Iraq, where Iran already has the upper hand. It should be Syria. Therefore, everything possible must be done to overthrow Assad.

And it must be done quickly. According to Israeli intelligence assessments, Iran is close to developing nuclear weapons, which would threaten Israel’s security. Consequently, the Israeli government is convinced of the need for a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The optimum route for making such an attack probably lies through Syria. The inability of the West and its Middle East satellites to deal with Assad’s uncompromising regime seriously annoys Israel’s leaders on a daily basis.

They could, of course, take a chance and try overflying Syrian territory without waiting for the current Syrian government to be overthrown. Especially since Israel has already succeeded in doing so twice: once in September 2007 when the Israeli Air Force bombed a Syrian facility where a nuclear reactor was presumably under construction, and again during the early May airstrike on a Damascus suburb mentioned above.

However, this was before the hotly debated sale of Russian S-300 systems to Syria came up. Judging by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s behavior in Sochi, it igreatly concerns Syria’s neighbor to the southwest..

However, even that probably is not the Netanyahu government’s main headache with respect to Iran.

After all, recent recent military conflicts show that objectives are virtually unachievable by air strikes alone without a ground operation.

With its foreign policy focus on Syria, therefore, Israel apparently no longer wants to attack Iran but rather to involve other countries in its campaign against Iran, primarily the United States.

And Washington evidently does not much want to get involved in a totally unpredictable Iranian campaign and is placing its hopes on the “miraculous” impact of tough economic sanctions.

Given that under the circumstances it would be very difficult to push the current US administration into a war with Iran, harping on the “chemical” issue and the proliferation of heavy weapons and air defense systems among Islamist organizations along Israel’s northern border gives Tel Aviv an excellent justification for lighting the fuse for an attack on Syrian chemical facilities (and other strategic facilities surreptitiously) in hopes of smoothly segueing into a military campaign on Iranian soil.

Vitaly Nikolayevich Bilan holds a Candidate of Science (History) degree and is an expert on the Middle East. Exclusively for New Eastern Outlook.

Against the backdrop of recent White House political missteps, Barack Obama has decided to gamble on making at least some progress towards resolving the Middle East problem. He is entrusting it to John Kerry in hopes that if anything is achieved it would be a victory for Obama’s policies, and if not, it could be written off as Kerry’s failure. We see clear confirmation of that from Obama’s recent Middle East tour, and from newly-crowned Secretary of State John Kerry’s trips, as well.

Indeed, Obama’s March visit to Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan looked like nothing so much as a “courtesy call” to introduce America’s new man on the Middle East — John Kerry, who accompanied him on the visit.

A short review of Obama’s dealings with the Middle East is in order. It got off to a promising start.

After Obama took office in early 2009, the new American administration found it necessary to beef up US foreign policy on the Middle East and take it in a new direction after its collapse during the Bush administration. On June 4, 2009, Obama spoke at Cairo University and addressed the entire Muslim world, giving his views on the problems of the Middle East. I recall very well that the Arab-Israeli issue was a key part of his Cairo address.

At the time, his speech seemed so pro-Arab that the “unbreakable” relationship between the United States and Israel was barely evident. But it was in vain. We soon saw how easily the current US president changes his views.

Obama’s verbal balancing act was obvious in May 2010 when he became the first US president to say that the future Palestinian state should be established within the 1967 borders.

Three days later, however, after a barrage of criticism from the Israeli government and the “Jewish Street” in the United States, the US leader expressed what was virtually the opposite position in a speech in Washington to an audience of 10,000 at the annual meeting of the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

It is no wonder that Obama’s inconsistency has prompted many people to look at him from the standpoint of psychology.

In early 2009, that “patriarch” of American foreign policy Henry Kissinger used a very accurate image when he compared Obama with a chess player who is playing simultaneous chess and has opened his game with an unusual opening.

The opinion of the journalist Byron York, who looked into Obama’s student life in Chicago, is also noteworthy with regard to that. He pointed out that Obama was magnificent at organizing people, but not very good at deciding what they should be doing, i.e., in other words, he did not see the big picture.

Obama is definitely suffering from a flare-up of his old “student” disease. At least he is as far as the Middle East peace process is concerned.

But is that the only place where it is happening? If Obama became president of the most powerful country in the world today with this kind of shortcoming, he obviously must possess phenomenal political instincts. In fact, he demonstrated that during the AIPAC meeting, and he is apparently still doing so.

After all, it is obviously almost impossible to find an acceptable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue as things currently stand because of the intransigence of the parties to the conflict.

Then there was also the Arab Spring. It was driven by America’s satellites in the Arabian Peninsula but has stalled in Syria and is not going to spread further into Central Asia.

That is a serious matter for Washington. A delay in exporting revolutions in Central Asia could result in the United States’ chief competitor for world domination — China — gaining a foothold here.

I have previously said in New Eastern Outlook that beyond Beijing’s impressive economic success (according to some forecasts China could become the world’s leader in industrial production by 2015), it is on the move and, is developing its own “Eurasian” ideology.

According to the new ideological winds blowing from China, its history includes not just the history of the Han ethnic group, but also that of peoples conquered by China for at least a short period of time and of peoples that had conquered China. Therefore, modern Chinese historians include the conquests of other states (e.g., Mongolia) among China’s territorial acquisitions.

This reading of the “historical myth” allows China to have far-reaching plans for almost all of the Eurasian oecumene, especially Central Asia.

The White House, of course, understands very well that China’s economic successes backed up by a solid Eurasian ideology could produce a change in geopolitical leadership. And Washington is apparently developing a new deterrent system around China to prevent that from happening. It is somewhat reminiscent of the policy of deterring the Soviet Union developed by George Kennan in the late 1940s, as well as the famous Cohen-Kissinger anti-Soviet “anaconda.”

Apparently, the White House cannot deal with the Israeli-Palestinian problem right now, especially since a rather strong reason for turning its attention to the Asia-Pacific Region has cropped up — North Korean nuclear “horror stories.”

And when you come right down to it, Obama, with his phenomenal political instincts, has almost nothing to lose by letting Kerry take center stage on the Middle East.

Kerry can, of course, take the blame if his attempts to shake things out on the Arab-Israeli track fail.

If a miracle happens and the ambitious current Secretary of State succeeds in bringing the Israelis and Palestinians to the negotiating table and getting them to sign a more or less acceptable agreement, a master of the public relations like Obama will be able to take credit for it.

After all, history has shown that in the end those who get the victor’s laurels in this area of American foreign policy are not the secretaries of state, whether they are Cyrus Vance or Warren Christopher, who laid the groundwork for Camp David ‘79 and Oslo ‘93, but their bosses — Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

Vitaly Nikolayevich Bilan holds a Candidate of Science (History) degree and is an expert on the Middle East. This article was written expressly for New Eastern Outlook.

Source: Flickriver

Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohammed Amr visited the French capital in early April. Egyptian news agencies reported that Amr was received by both his French counterpart, Laurent Fabius, and French President François Hollande. That allowed both Amr and the controlled media to extol the “close relations” and “strategic cooperation” between Cairo and Paris.

However, anyone who has been closely following the evolving situation in the region cannot help but notice a recent shift in emphasis between Egypt and France. It particularly affects issues where France’s interests conflict directly with the chief “sponsor” of the Arab uprisings, including the one in Egypt — Qatar.

Everything was quite different before the Egyptian “revolution” of January-February 2011. Over the past decade, the European policy of Mubarak’s Cairo was traditionally focused on France and emphasized the French vector of its foreign policy for two main reasons:

- First of all, for “foreign policy bartering” with the United States and Russia (primarily for military-technical cooperation), with Germany (for financial and technical assistance in managing its border with Palestine) and with Saudi Arabia (over its image as the “key country” and the “chief peacemaker” in the Middle East);

- Second, for “domestic consumption” (to retain its position of power within the country by strengthening its diplomatic activities).

Egypt was, by tradition, key to France’s Middle East policy, which had come to play a bigger role since the time of President Nicolas Sarkozy, who had stated his determination to embark on a qualitatively new relationship with the countries of the European Union’s “Southern Partnership.” For that, Sarkozy employed both personal ties and his favorite but nonetheless broken foreign policy “toy” — the Union for the Mediterranean.

Several reasons for France’s desire to play a leading role in the region are immediately evident. First of all, there was the significant increase in the role of Middle Eastern energy resources as part of the global energy system in the early part of the 21st century. In addition, the United States lost some of its dominance in the Middle East due to several foreign policy blunders by Washington. That energized the United States’ chief rivals in the Middle East (a number of American Middle East experts refer to it as a campaign to “lure Arab countries away from the American camp”).

Of course, there is also the inability of the region’s countries to manage their own political, economic and humanitarian space and develop a stable system of foreign relations (like that of the European Union), and that is transforming the Greater Middle East into a “geopolitical testing ground” for resolving clashes among the main global political actors.

Under the circumstances, and due to the destabilizing processes in the region, Paris, as the main “operator” of EU politics in the so-called “Southern Neighborhood,” is trying to establish a kind of “cordon sanitaire from Ukraine to Morocco” along the EU’s entire southern and eastern perimeter. In this game, which Paris started, Egypt is acquiring strategic importance for both France and the entire European Union. A number of factors have contributed to that:

- Geographic location (the interrelated nature of issues in both the Middle East and Africa);

- Ambitions to be a regional leader (mainly by virtue of having one of the most powerful armies and the largest population in the Middle East);

- The threat of a massive emigration of Egyptian citizens to European countries given the demographic boom now taking place in that country (Egypt’s population grew by 25 million between 1995 and March 2013 — from 60 million to 85 million; on average, its population grew by about 1.3 million each year during that period), and unsuccessful attempts by the Egyptian government to reduce the rate of population growth and its inability to meet their minimum needs.

And all would be well if France and Qatar — the chief “miners” of the transformations currently happening in the Greater Middle East — had not begun squabbling. In fact, Paris and Doha currently are almost in open conflict. It happened first in Libya, where Qatar, which by the middle of last year could barely restrain its irritation at Paris’s activities in Africa, backs Libyan tribal leaders in oil-rich Cyrenaica.

The deaths in Libya of two directors of private French security companies, the so-called “French debt” that was first voiced last year by the most talkative of Gadhafi’s sons — Seif al-Islam — and the acrimonious remarks about French leaders in Al Jazeera news reports provided clear confirmation of that.

In addition, the outlines of several restless Arab monarchies in the Persian Gulf have been visible in recent years behind the Islamist groups that challenged Paris in Mali (Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the Salafist Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, and Ansar al-Din).

Analysis of the leadership of Ansar al-Din (Defender of the Faith) reveals a very interesting picture. “Sheikh” Iyad Ag Ghali, its founder and current ideological leader and military commander, became imbued with the ideas of Salafism and radical Islam while serving as Mali’s envoy to Saudi Arabia (which actually resulted in his recall home). The organization’s number two man, Alghabass Ag Intallah, one of the most famous men in Northern Mali, has links to Doha. It is generally thought that he is on good terms with Qatari emirs and controls injections of cash from Qatar to Ansar-al-Din.

On the whole, it is quite obvious that what we see in the Mali theater of war is actually an outgrowth of the conflict between France and Qatar. It has frequently happened in the history of the world that former allies began dividing up the spoils after achieving the desired result. If the chief actors in the fight against the “authoritarian regimes” of the Greater Middle East fail to agree soon on spheres of influence in North Africa, the situation in Western Sudan will deteriorate and the conflict will spread to neighboring countries.

And that means both Paris and Doha will try everything they can to win the region’s “key” countries over to their side. On the other hand, countries like Egypt have an additional option for pursuing the balancing act that has become their favorite ploy since Mubarak’s time.

On the one hand, therefore, we will apparently hear Egyptian President Mohammed Mursi pleasing his Qatari sponsors from the banks of the Nile by saying that Cairo will not welcome France’s direct military intervention in the military conflict in Mali. And on the other, Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr will offer rhetoric about the “strategic cooperation” between Egypt and France.

Let’s just hope Cairo can avoid getting carried away by its balancing act once more and outsmart itself again.

Vitaly Nikolayevich Bilan holds a Candidate of Science (History) degree and is an expert on the Middle East. This article was written expressly for New Eastern Outlook.

Carte blanche

The UN Security Council supported the military operation France carried out in Mali on January 14 and gave Paris quite a helping hand in restoring that country’s “constitutional order and territorial integrity.” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also stood behind Paris, noting that “bilateral partners are responding, at the request and with the consent of the government of Mali, to its call for assistance to counter the troubling push southward by armed and terrorist groups.”

It was reported that same day that the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was dispatching troops to assist Mali as well: Nigeria is sending 600 soldiers, Senegal, Burkina Faso, and Togo 500 each, and Benin 300. The United Kingdom is providing two C-17 transport planes, and the United States has promised logistic support.

In unscheduled debate on the Mali situation during a plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, MEPs were almost unanimous in their support for France. Encouraged by this development, France’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Gerard Aro, said after the Security Council session that his country is counting on the speedy deployment of African Union troops to Mali. He said Operation Serval is not a substitute for the deployment of African forces to Mali, and Paris is not planning to be the only guarantor of security in the region.

The Tuareg “golden share”

The Tuaregs of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad have expressed their willingness to assist the French and the Mali government. They rebelled against the central government in Bamako last spring, and until just recently they despised the Mali authorities. They are motivated by the fact that it would be easier expel Islamist groups from their territory than military forces from Nigeria, Senegal, Togo and other African countries. In addition, the Tuaregs have the “weapons and, more importantly, the desire to rid their native Azawad of terrorism.”

However, representatives of the Tuaregs’ main political force stressed that they do not want Mali government troops to return to Azawad, which they consider independent of the central government in Bamako.

The Tuaregs’ interest in the situation is clear. They, like the Iraqi Kurds in 2003 or the Syrian Kurds during the ongoing Syrian crisis, are trying to take maximum advantage of the situation, justifiably believing that they own a “golden share” in the escalating conflict. Of course, the Movement’s leaders are counting on French support to legitimize last year’s proclamation of independence while simultaneously evening the score with their chief oppressors.

Let’s try and understand why Paris is so concerned about the situation Mali’s hapless leaders find themselves in.

Parisian ambitions

In a previous article for New Eastern Outlook, I wrote that France has been saying ever since Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidency that it is determined to put relations with countries of the European Union’s Southern Partners” on a new footing by using the personal touch and its favorite but as yet non-functional foreign policy “toy” — the Mediterranean Union.

On that score, I would note that the Sarkozy government is focused both on the former French colonies and countries in non-francophone northern Africa, especially Southern Sudan and Libya. The one has potential hydrocarbon reserves, and the other is actually producing oil. The Africa-France summit in Nice was revealing. In addition, the French Army had contributed to regime change in Côte d’Ivoire, Chad and the Central African Republic prior to its involvement in the Libyan campaign of 2011.

The new resident of the Palais de l’Elysee, Francois Hollande, has apparently decided to follow in his predecessor’s footsteps. It is now a point of honor for the new administration to outdo Sarkozy’s team by leaning on Syria and avoiding a repetition in Mali of the mistakes made in Libya — especially since there are sound economic reasons beyond personal ambition for doing so.

Everything was proceeding more or less smoothly at first. Since early last year, however, the French have increasingly been encountering problems — especially in Libya, where Qatar is backing the tribal leaders in oil-rich Cyrenaica. By the middle of last year Qatar was no longer suppressing its irritation at France’s activities in Africa.

On the French-Qatari front

The confrontation between Paris and Doha recently has been almost overt. The killing of two private security firm heads in Libya, the so-called “French debt” issue which was first mentioned last year by the most outspoken of Gadhafi’s sons — Seif al-Islam — and the increasingly acrimonious comments addressed aimed at France’s leaders by Qatar-based Al Jazeera all provide clear confirmation of that. And behind the Islamist groups challenging Paris and Mali we can see the shadows of several Persian Gulf Arab monarchies that have become restless in recent years.

Three Islamist groups currently are the chief troublemakers in the Mali crisis: al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the Salafist Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, and Ansar al-Din (“Defenders of the Faith”).

Ansar al-Din may be the leader of this troika. Little is known about that organization. However, analysis of the group’s leadership yields a very interesting picture. “Sheikh” Iyad Ag Ghali, its founder and current ideological leader and military commander, became imbued with the ideas of Salafism and radical Islam while serving as Mali’s envoy to Saudi Arabia (which actually resulted in his recall home). The organization’s number two man, Alghabass Ag Intallah, one of the most famous men in Northern Mali, has links to Doha. He is on good terms with Qatari emirs, and he is believed to control injections of cash to Ansar al-Din from Qatar.

Overall, it is quite obvious that the military operations in Mali are an outgrowth of the conflict between France and Qatar.

It has frequently happened in the history of the world that former allies begin dividing up the spoils after achieving the desired result. If the chief actors in the fight with “authoritarian regimes” in the Greater Middle East fail to agree soon on spheres of influence in North Africa, the situation in Western Sudan will deteriorate and the conflict will spread to Europe itself.

Vitaly Nikolayevich Bilan holds a Candidate of Science (History) degree and is an expert on the Middle East. This article was written expressly for New Eastern Outlook.

The “Russians” are coming

The issue of “Russian” Israelis has reemerged in the Israeli media as the early parliamentary elections scheduled for January 22 approach and Likud allies itself with the Russian party, Israel Our Home 

More oil was poured on the fire by the early December report about the formation of a new Russian party, Ha Yisrael (“The Israelis”), which is led by David Cohn, a former star of the Russian-language channel 10 in Israel.

I should point out that the idea of a “Russian” Israeli party is not new. There was the Yisrael Hamithadeshet (Renewed Israel) party that participated in the 2009 elections, Our Home Israel and, of course, Yisrael Ba’aliya, the Israeli Russian street’s pilot project that was established in 1996. Now we are witnessing a “rebirth” of that idea.

More than one lance has been broken in the lists of the Israeli media about the advisability of forming a “sectoral” party for immigrants from the former Soviet Union, beginning with notice of registration of Cohn’s party (literally 10 minutes before the deadline).

Some, like Marina Solodkin, the veteran of Israeli politics and a former assistant professor of Moscow State University’s Department of Economic and Social History, believes that such a party should exist “in theory.” After getting the unelectable eighth spot on the Kadima Party’s slate, she emotionally told the Russian-language portal IzRus that it was an “insult to the entire returnee community” and that “a new ‘Russian’ party would definitely emerge” in future Knesset elections.

Others, like the well-known journalist and author Nelly Gutina, believe that means taking a step backward, returning to a “sectoral sandbox” instead of “becoming integrated into the highest echelons of power.”

In any event, the issue is being discussed constantly. Everyone understands that the distribution of seats in the next Knesset will depend primarily on the Russian electorate.

The Russian street

There are two main aspects to the situation. First, the way Israeli society was formed contributed to it, and, second, there is the nature of the “Russian” Aliyah itself.

I should point out here that “ethnicity” in Israel has always been a means of defense against attempts to integrate all returnees into a single Israeli melting pot.

As the noted Israeli historian Saul Friedländer has said, “tribal” structures in Israel exhibit a kind of “reverse evolution”: Instead of becoming more moderate and integrating with national movements, they become more militant and aggressive and are guided by their own internal principles.

This has contributed to the fact that Russian Jews in Israel live according to different social norms than the Jews who moved to Europe or the United States from the former Soviet Union.

Vladimir (Ze’ev) Khanin, a recognized expert on the Israeli Russian Street, has said that the Russian Jewish emigrant groups in host Western countries (the United States, Canada, Germany, etc.) usually become politically institutionalized in local Jewish communities that avail themselves of an established formal mechanism for lobbying local authorities.

The situation in Israel is fundamentally different. In this country, where returnees from the CIS countries comprise about 16% of the population, a powerful institutional Russian community infrastructure has formed that constitutes one of the most important aspects of the country’s political process.

Therefore, there are no lobbyists between the Russian community and the authorities in Israel to direct the community’s interests along a particular ideological path.

As a result, the Russians have been a key factor in virtually every electoral campaign since the last major Aliyah in the 1990s. They will actually determine whether the next Knesset is leftist or rightist. As the leading Israeli publication Haaretz aptly pointed out recently, there is no party in Israel that can take power without the support of the Russians, and the members of various parties are tensely watching what is happening on the Russian street. The statistics show a particularly revealing picture.

“The key” electorate and electoral manipulation

According to various sources, IzRus in particular, the number of Russian-speaking immigrants entitled to vote lies between 750,000 (as estimated by Vladimir Khanin) and 850,000 (from an estimate by Israel’s Central Election Commission). This equates to between 27 and 30 of the 120 seats in Israel’s parliament.

In reality, because their turnout is relatively low in comparison with the ultra-Orthodox and the Arabs, Russians will win about 10 seats fewer than that (18 to 21). However, even that number is enough to tip the scales towards either the left or the right.

Realizing that, political forces of various stamps have been trying to use the Russian electorate to benefit their electoral campaigns. It is easiest for those on the right, of course.

First of all, the overwhelming majority of the “Russian million” live beyond the so-called Green Line — in the Golan Heights, in Galilee on the border with Lebanon and in Sderot or Ashkelon near the Gaza Strip. People living in the Palestinian territories or near the border with Lebanon or the Gaza Strip obviously will be more radical than the residents of relatively prosperous Tel Aviv and its suburbs.

Second, a strong antipathy to liberal views was ingrained in Russian Jews during their past life in the Soviet Union. Moreover, the liberal media widely believes that immigrants from the Soviet Union are “most aggressive” because their “Soviet-Russian” mode of thought makes them unable to adapt to a new life in Israel, and because they brought a Trotskyite-Stalinist brutality with them to Israel.

Third, opinion polls say that, far from holding right-wing views, almost half of the Russian-speaking electorate votes for Israel Our Home or Likud out of habit because they see no alternative.

And many analysts believe this generated the idea of taking votes away from the clear favorite in the current electoral campaign — the Likud and Israel Our Home alliance (Likud Beiteinu) by establishing another “lure” for the country’s Russian-speaking electorate. Obviously, it currently is the Ha Yisrael party of David Cohn.

There is also a great deal of interest outside Israel for eroding the habitual Russian vote for right-wing parties — primarily in Washington.

Given the likelihood that relations between the United States and Iran will improve, the White House probably is not ecstatic about the growing strength of the Likud Beiteinu alliance “hawks,” who will continue pressuring Washington for airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Given that the Likud Beiteinu alliance’s rating has been steadily declining in recent weeks, the campaign to steal the votes of the Russian Aliyah is yielding results.

This means the Israeli “Russian million” with its potential to decide the country’s destiny is once again at risk of becoming the instrument of another electoral maneuver.

Vitaly Nikolayevich Bilan holds a Candidate of Science (History) degree and is an expert on the Middle East.