The Middle East’s precarious stability is hanging by a thread. For all his far reaching reforms and moves, Mohammad bin Salman could be in for trouble, while Iran plays its game rather smoothly. Obviously, at this moment, Donald Trumps myopic fascination and support to Saudi Arabia’s new strongman doesn’t quite help the region.
Trump’s role in the deepening Middle East morass
Let’s just say diplomacy is not Donald Trump’s cup of tea. But what he’s doing in the Middle East could snowball into an ugly crisis for one of the most dangerous regions in the world, argues Fareed Zakaria in The Washington Post.
“Trump’s foreign policy faces a new challenge that could further disrupt the Middle East, already the most unstable part of the world. Trump has given the green light to an extraordinary series of moves in Saudi Arabia that can only be described as a revolution from above. Some of them suggest real and long-needed reforms. But all appear to have the risk of destabilizing Saudi Arabia and the Middle East.”
“But the greater puzzle and danger is that while following this bold and risky domestic agenda, the crown prince has made a series of aggressive moves abroad. He has escalated Saudi intervention in Yemen, with bombing strikes and air, land and sea blockades. He has tried to quarantine Qatar, hoping to turn it into a submissive satellite state. He has apparently forced the Lebanese prime minister to resign, hoping to destabilize the Shiite-dominated government. All these are part of an effort to fight back against Iran’s growing regional influence.”
“In any event, the Saudi strategy does not seem to be working. The war in Yemen has turned into a disaster, creating a failed state on Saudi Arabia’s border that is seething with anger against Riyadh. Qatar has not surrendered and doesn’t seem likely to anytime soon. So far, the Shiites in Lebanon have acted responsibly, refusing to take the bait and plunge the country into civil war. But everywhere in the Middle East, tensions are rising, sectarianism is gaining ground and, with a couple of miscalculations or accidents, things could spiral out of control. With Trump so firmly supporting the Saudi strategy, the United States could find itself dragged further into the deepening Middle East morass.
Iran is a boggling distraction for the crown prince
By the virtue of its proxies and allies in Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut, Tehran can decisively shape their battlefields and politics, even without direct control. That’s enough reason for Saudi Arabia’s boggling anxiety, writes Emile Hokayem in The New York Times.
“Given these circumstances, Prince Mohammed has good reason to question the value of his predecessors’ risk aversion on foreign policy. Under previous kings, Riyadh was indeed keen to reach out to Tehran despite provocative Iranian actions, including fast-tracking its nuclear program just as King Abdullah courted Presidents Akbar Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, and plotting to assassinate a Saudi ambassador in the United States.”
“Now Saudi foreign and security policy has gone into overdrive. Rather than carefully pushing back Iran and enrolling broad support for this effort, the approach has been haphazard, unsettling and counterproductive — and Iran remains one step ahead.”
“In fact, if its goal is to counter Iran, Riyadh is picking the wrong battlefields.
Lebanon and Yemen are peripheral countries, where wars are costly and complex, outcomes ambiguous and returns low. In the Middle East, the balance of power is determined in Syria and Iraq. But in those countries, the costs are high and the risks even higher. And in both places, Iran is well ahead.”
If anything, the Crown Prince needs to remember that “unattainable foreign ambitions distract, at great cost, from the more important and momentous task of internal reform.”
The region’s own punching bag
One of the most egregious of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s moves was forcing an already precarious Lebanon’s Prime Minister to resign. To be sure, he did nothing new by dragging Lebanon on to the verge of crisis for Saudi Arabia’s own vested interests, argues The Economist.
“Not for the first time Lebanon has become the proxy battleground of outside powers, this time Saudi Arabia, the region’s Sunni champion, and Iran’s Shia regime. For decades, the Saudis poured money into the country only to see Hizbullah become the main political power broker and a potent fighting force. Mr Hariri has done little to curb the group at home or to stop it from supporting Iran’s ambitions in the region. When an Iranian official boasted of his country’s influence in Lebanon after meeting Mr Hariri in Beirut, the Saudis finally snapped, calling the prime minister to Riyadh.”
“The unexpected crisis comes as Lebanon had just begun to recover from years of political paralysis. Last month Mr Hariri’s government passed the country’s first budget since 2005. It has set a date for the first parliamentary elections in eight years. It was about to ask international donors for $10bn-12bn in aid to cope with the burden of 1.5m Syrian refugees and to fix the country’s decrepit infrastructure.
But whether the government is led by Mr Hariri or someone else, it is still Hizbullah that will call the shots. Lebanon will remain the region’s punching bag.”
There’s possibly a method to the Crown Prince’s madness
Attempts to fathom the ongoing political earthquake in Saudi Arabia have only focused on the crown prince. There are more structural reasons, however, that explain the madness in Riyadh, writes Ishan Diwan in Project Syndicate.
“Most efforts to comprehend the dynamics of Saudi Arabia’s ongoing political earthquake have focused on the psychology of the young crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. But there are also structural reasons for Prince Mohammed’s brand of populism. Understanding these factors is key to finding a better path forward.”
“In the past, political stability in Saudi Arabia rested on three separate deals: within the royal family; between the royal family and the Kingdom’s traditional elites; and between the state and the population. With the sharp fall in oil revenues, this political order has become unsustainable,” he writes.
“The challenge for Prince Mohammed is to oversee a transition to a less expensive political order, while generating sufficient economic efficiency gains to prevent the necessary adjustment from fueling instability and civil unrest.”
“Such a Venezuela-style approach could appeal to Prince Mohammed, because its populist fervor aligns with his purges of elites and neutralization of any serious opposition. Foreign and state-controlled firms could replace the notables in delivering necessary private services. And the balance of payments could be stabilized with lower consumption and imports, particularly that of the royals and the rich.”
The devil and the deep sea
A failed Saudi Arabia won’t be in anyone, including Iran’s, interest. Yet, as MBS overhauls the country’s domestic and foreign policies – whether or not he succeeds – he is also heightening the risk of another conflict in the Middle East, argues Joschka Fischer in Project Syndicate.
“The last autocratic ruler in the Middle East who attempted to bypass his country’s Islamic clergy and carry out a top-down revolution was the Shah of Persia, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. He and his “White Revolution” were eventually swept away by Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979.
One can only hope that MBS’s revolution will fare better. If it fails, the radical Salafists who will assume power in Riyadh will make the Iranian mullahs look like liberals. If it succeeds in modernizing the leading bastion of reactionary Islam, the stage would be set for other countries throughout the Islamic world to do the same.”
“Saudi Arabia’s revolution from above is a high-risk endeavor that neutral observers must regard with ambivalence. Although it cannot be allowed to fail, given what that would entail, its success is likely to be accompanied by a dramatic increase in regional tensions and the possibility of war.”