Generational Dynamics World View

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 28-May-16 World View -- Report: Israel and Saudi Arabia are allying against Iran and Hezbollah

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Report: Israel and Saudi Arabia are allying against Iran and Hezbollah
  
• Iran and Hezbollah turn focus of hostility from Israel to Saudi Arabia
  
• Shifting Israeli alliances in the Mideast
  

****
**** Report: Israel and Saudi Arabia are allying against Iran and Hezbollah
****


1938: English girls giving Nazi salute returning from a field trip to Germany - 'We had the time of our lives!' (Der Spiegel)

As I've been writing for years, Generational Dynamics predicts that
Iran, India and Russia will be allied with the West against China,
Pakistan, and the Sunni Arab nations in the coming Clash of
Civilizations world war.

For the last few weeks, there have been increasingly widespread
reports in the media that Israel and Saudi Arabia have all but severed
ties with the United States, and are forming an independent military
alliance against Iran.

This development runs counter to a very powerful Generational Dynamics
trend prediction, and so it needs to be analyzed. Either the trend
prediction is wrong (which it isn't), or the Israel-Saudi alliance
must be relatively short-lived.

Several days ago, Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly
announced a significant change in policy, as he asked the Arab nations
to help in a "real deal" with the Palestinians:

[indent]<QUOTE>"The initiatives I’m referring to are regional
initiatives – meaning, aided by the Arab countries in the region
to reach a real deal with the Palestinians. We always thought it
would be the opposite, but that is the direction today. I am
constantly trying, including over the last few hours, to further
contacts with various leaders in the region to help in this
direction."<END QUOTE>[/indent]

A couple of days previously, Netanyahu responded to an offer by
Egypt's president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to mediate between Israel and
the Palestinians by saying, "Israel is ready to participate with Egypt
and other Arab states in advancing both the diplomatic process and
stability in the region. I appreciate President al-Sisi’s work and
also draw encouragement from his leadership on this important issue."
According to reports, the Arab countries include Saudi Arabia, the
Gulf states, Jordan and Egypt.

Netanyahu had previously rejected the help of Arab mediators in the
Palestinian issue, because they were insisting on the "right of
return," which would allow the descendants of Palestinians lost their
homes in the 1948 war between Jews and Arabs to reclaim their
grandparents' real estate. However, reports suggest that the Arab
nations are backing off from that demand.

The Palestinian issue is only the latest of the issues uniting the
Saudis, Egyptians and Israelis. As we've reported for years,
President Obama has managed to alienate all three countries and
offended their leaders. This has led to a shared sense of betrayal
and abandonment, especially after Obama's vigorous pursuit of a
nuclear deal with Iran, creating a widespread impression that he was
more interested in a good relationship with Iran than with them.

There have been signs that the rapprochement in Israel's relationship
with Egypt and Saudi Arabia have crossed over into the military
sphere.

Israel and Egypt signed a 1979 peace treaty that Egypt's Sinai
peninsula was a demilitarized zone. Yet Israel has approved Egypt's
requests to move additional troops into Sinai, near the border with
Israel. More recently, Israel raised no objections to Egypt's transferring two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia,
even though the transfer affected Israel's security.

Israel and Saudi Arabia share the common interest and belief that the
biggest threat is Iran. Reports have surfaced in the past that the
Saudis gave Jerusalem approval for Air Force jets to pass through
their airspace if Israel decides to attack Iran's nuclear facilities.
This suggests that Israel and Saudi Arabia have military to military
contacts regarding Iran, and may be sharing intelligence or making
other plans. Breaking Israel News and Israel National News and Politico (EU) and Jerusalem Post (12-Apr)

****
**** Iran and Hezbollah turn focus of hostility from Israel to Saudi Arabia
****

According to recent reports, Israel has ordered Hezbollah to suspend
operations against Israel and to target Saudi Arabia instead.

Lebanon's Shia terrorist group Hezbollah and its leader Sayyed Hassan
Nasrallah have been Iran's puppets for decades, and have had as their
main objective "resistance" to Israel, or the destruction of Israel.
Israel and Hezbollah fought a war in Lebanon in 2006, and Hezbollah
has supported Hamas and other Palestinian groups in conducting terror
operations against Israel and Israeli targets.

But the war in Syria has changed all that. Under orders from Iran,
Hezbollah sent thousands of its fighters into Syria to fight alongside
the army of the regime of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad. The
targets have been anyone who opposes al-Assad, all the way from
peaceful protesters and children in school all the way to the jihadist
groups, so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) and the
al-Qaeda linked Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Nusra Front).

Last week, Nasrallah admitted for the first time that he had lost "a
large number" of his fighters in battles in Syria. Some reports give
a figure of 1,500 to 2,000, or one-third of his entire army.

The new orders from Iran were triggered by a number of devastating
Iranian and Hezbollah losses in Syria, including the assassination of
Hezbollah's top military commander Mustafa Amine Badreddine, who was
leading Hezbollah forces in Syria. ( "14-May-16 World View -- Syria's Aleppo campaign falters after disastrous Iranian loss at Khan Tuman"
)

The death of Badreddine was extremely significant, and statements by
Iran and Hezbollah make it clear that they blame his death on jihadist
forces funded and supported by Saudi Arabia.

As we reported yesterday, Iran has announced that it would not let its
citizens participate in the Hajj in Mecca on September 9-14. This is
Islam's holiest event, and non-participation by Iran is quite
significant. ( "27-May-16 World View -- Increasingly hostile Iran-Saudi relations affect this year's Hajj"
)

According to reports, Iran has instructed Hezbollah to initiate
actions against Saudi Arabia before the beginning of the Hajj in
September. Middle East Eye (17-May) and Middle East Eye and Reuters (20-May) and Al Arabiya (20-May)

****
**** Shifting Israeli alliances in the Mideast
****

I am asked frequently it's conceivably even POSSIBLE that Iran will be
an American ally in the coming world war, as I've been predicting for
ten years would happen, given the political situation of the last ten
years.

There are examples in World War II that serve as precedents. Russia
and Josef Stalin were our bitter enemies before the war, but we were
allies during the war. Britain and Nazi Germany were close before the
war, but were bitter enemies during the war. Before the war, Germany
and Russia signed a non-aggression pact, called the Molotov-Ribbentrop
Treaty, but Germany invaded Russia anyway.

A generational crisis war, like World War II, is very different from
an "ordinary" war because it's considered existential, a threat to the
very existence of a country and it's way of life. None of the wars
that America experience since the end of WW II -- Korean war, Vietnam
war, Iraq wars -- was anything like that. Non-crisis wars are based
on political decisions. You have Christmas truces in non-crisis wars.
Crisis wars are based visceral hatred, a desire to exterminate. There
are no Christmas truces.

So right now, Saudi Arabia and Israel are allied against Iran. But
this is a purely political alliance. There is no visceral hatred
among Israelis for Iranians, and there is no visceral hatred among
Iranians for Israelis. (See, for example, "9-Nov-15 World View -- Political crisis in Iran grows over nuclear agreement"
)

On the other hand, the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Iran is
based on deeply visceral hatred. We see signs of this all the time,
such as the Iranian firebombing of the Saudi embassy in Tehran in
January, with apology forthcoming. Iran and Saudi Arabia will be
involved in an extremely bloody generational crisis war with absolute
certainty, and it appears that the time is approaching rapidly.

So what about Israel? There is little hatred between Israelis and
Iranians, but there's enormous hatred between Israelis and
Palestinians, particularly among younger generations. The prediction
that I first posted in May 2003 is still just as true today as it was
then: Jews and Arabs are headed for a new generational crisis war,
re-fighting the 1948-49 genocidal war between Jews and Arabs that
followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state
of Israel. (From 2003: "Mideast Roadmap - Will it bring peace?")

OK, so what about Egypt? Israel and Egypt have had a peace treaty for
over a quarter century. Will Israel be at war with Egypt?

To address that question, one first has to point out that Egypt is at
war with itself. Egypt's army is fighting ISIS and Bedouins in Sinai,
and there have been major riots targeting Coptic Christians in Egypt.

This example is a small illustration of a vastly larger problem in
analyzing generational trends in the Mideast -- that there are ethnic
fault lines that go beyond the easily predicted sectarian fault lines.
Especially with the rise of ISIS, al-Nusra and the Kurds, we can
already see signs of Sunnis fighting Sunnis in Syria, for example.

What's needed is a deep, thorough analysis of the trends among all the
ethnic groups in the Mideast. Remarkably, this would be a lot easier
today than it was even ten years ago, because today there's a huge
wealth of social media that can be looked at.

Analyzing that huge volume of social media is far more work than I'm
capable of accomplishing. But if some college student is looking for
a thesis topic in order to accomplish something really important and
develop valuable information on the future of the Mideast, then this
is it. Der Spiegel (13-Jun-2013) and World War II: The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact


KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt,
Benjamin Netanyahu, Abdel al-Fattah al-Sisi,
Hezbollah, Iran, Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, Syria,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Nusra Front, Lebanon, Bashar al-Assad,
Mustafa Amine Badreddine, Russia, Josef Stalin, Nazi Germany,
Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty

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John J. Xenakis
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