A regional NATO with Israel and the Saudis? It’s complicated
A Gulf-Israel alliance against Iran seems to be on the way
Answering questions from his audience on Zoom at a Likud event on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of two reasons four Arab states normalized ties with Israel in the past year, and more want to join them: the economic advantages of cooperating, and shared security aims.
Netanyahu referred to his 2015 speech before both houses of the US Congress against the Iran deal: “During the speech, during the live broadcast, senior people from the Arab world called my people – I was still speaking – and they said: ‘We cannot believe what we are seeing... the daring of the prime minister of Israel. If he is willing to stand up against the strongest power in the world, we want to talk to you.’”
The prime minister added: “If there’s something that brings peace more than anything else, it’s that [Arab states] stopped seeing Israel as an enemy, and started seeing us as an ally in security and economically.”
This is a variation on things Netanyahu has been saying for some time, even more often since the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain took the plunge and normalized ties with Israel last year: We were drawn together due to a shared enemy, and then found other advantages to the relations.
What Netanyahu didn’t mention is that talks are ongoing to enhance the cooperation on security and intelligence matters, and not only with Bahrain and the UAE but probably Saudi Arabia as well, even though Jerusalem and Riyadh don’t have diplomatic relations.
These are countries that have been eyeing Iran’s latest steps toward a nuclear weapon with increasing concern, believe that a US return to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal would not prevent Tehran from getting the bomb, and are working together to counter it.
In the past week, several Israeli news outlets, including The Jerusalem Post, have published stories to that effect, with each confirming the others’ reports and adding its own small details.
In some versions a Western country is involved in bringing them together, in some it’s an amorphous group of Middle Eastern countries, while in others it’s the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia specifically. Some imply that the countries are moving toward a structured defense alliance, while the Post reported that the matter is being “informally discussed.”
“There is much to be gained by expanding cooperation,” an Israeli official said.
The Prime Minister’s Office said it was “not confirming the report, but we are always interested in upgrading ties with our Middle East partners.”
The reports came at a time of increased contact between Israel and Arab states, with varying levels of concerns about Iran. Netanyahu spoke with the crown prince of Bahrain, Defense Minister Benny Gantz met with King Abdullah of Jordan, and Gabi Ashkenazi met with his Jordanian and Emirati counterparts. Ashkenazi also spoke with the foreign minister of Oman – another country with which Israel does not have official diplomatic relations, though Muscat has been open about its contacts with Jerusalem. The UAE’s first-ever ambassador to Israel arrived this week, and was given an especially warm welcome.
The talks about increased defense cooperation seem to be very initial at this point. The idea of a Middle Eastern NATO, in which each country commits to defend the group as a whole, seems to be a nonstarter, but an alliance meant to counter shared enemies of the countries involved is on the table.
A well-connected source in Abu Dhabi said the UAE, Bahrain and Israel are ready to move forward.
But the Saudi connection is less clear, the source said. “Channels are open” between Jerusalem and Riyadh, but Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – known as MBS – is very secretive about any details.
That secrecy was clear in November, when Netanyahu
and MBS met in the Saudi hi-tech city of Neom, on the shores of the Red Sea. Israel did not release any kind of official information, but the trip quickly leaked to the media. The Saudi Foreign Ministry released a non-denial; they countered some of the pertinent reported details – such as that then-secretary of state Mike Pompeo met with MBS in Neom that day – but did not explicitly deny that MBS and Netanyahu had met.
This week, there were two interesting indications that Saudi Arabia is willing to take some steps toward recognizing Israel.
First, World Jewish Congress president Ronald Lauder wrote an op-ed in Arab News – republished in the Post – calling for “a NATO for the Middle East.”
Lauder said that his contacts in Arab states view Israel as the only reliable ally against Iran, and that most Israelis he spoke with viewed the Arab world as “the only ally (against Iran) that they trust without reservation.”
They are “contemplating, aghast, the West’s inability to halt these belligerent, dangerous developments” of Iran resuming uranium enrichment and limiting International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors’ access to nuclear sites, he said.
“Facing the accelerating threat of a malevolent Iran and the weakness of a coronavirus-hit world, the path toward self-reliance seems also to be the only path forward,” Lauder wrote. “Israelis and Arabs should seize the opportunity to work together to save the Middle East from the looming catastrophe of extremism and nuclearization.”
Aside from Lauder being well connected and knowledgeable, the op-ed is notable because of where it was published. Saudi Arabia does not have a free press, and Arab News, an English-language daily newspaper published in the kingdom, is owned by Prince Turki bin Salman Al Saud, a son of King Salman and brother of MBS, and is seen as reflecting the Saudi government’s official views.
Hours later, US State Department spokesman Ned Price gave an even stronger indication of where the winds are blowing in Riyadh.
“We seek to accomplish a great deal with the Saudis to end the war in Yemen and ease Yemen’s humanitarian crisis, to use our leadership to forge ties across the region’s most bitter divides, whether that’s finding a way back from the brink of war with Iran into a meaningful regional dialogue, or forging a historic peace with Israel,” Price said in a press briefing. “Saudi actions will determine how much of this ambitious shared positive agenda we can achieve.”
In other words, “forging a historic peace with Israel” is part of an “ambitious shared positive agenda” between the US and Saudi Arabia.
Considering how much meaning is imbued in every word choice in the delicate game of diplomacy, it is unlikely that Price would have included peace with Israel in the list of things the US seeks to accomplish with Saudi Arabia, if it wasn’t something the countries were already discussing.
And, in fact, former Trump administration officials have long said Riyadh is very close to some level of recognition of Israel – perhaps not as warm or total as relations with the UAE and Bahrain, but something open – and it may have already happened had Trump been reelected. That’s not a knock on US President Joe Biden; the Saudis wanted to understand the new US administration’s views before taking a big step.
STILL, AS close as Saudi Arabia may be to recognizing Israel at some level, the messages coming their way from Washington could be discouraging for Riyadh.
That whole list of things the US seeks to accomplish with Saudi Arabia is possible only “in a partnership with Saudi Arabia that respects America’s values,” Price said.
The “recalibration,” as the Biden administration calls it, of relations between the US and Saudi Arabia is a complex issue beyond the scope of this article, but it could either stand in the way of Israel and Saudi Arabia growing closer – with the US not working to encourage it, as long as the Saudis don’t make significant internal changes – or bring the countries together, with recognizing the Jewish state being a Saudi move toward respecting America’s values.
In the meantime, Jerusalem and Riyadh’s cooperation remains below the radar, even as security and intelligence ties between Israel and the Gulf grow in the shadow of the Iranian nuclear threat.
Acourt decision, 15 years in the making, will inevitably land with a boom. It will be labeled momentous, heralded as historic, characterized as a landmark. That boom will be compounded in Israel when the issue being adjudicated has to do with that very fraught topic of religion and state. And that compounded boom will be amplified even further if the decision comes just three weeks before an election.
And that is predictably what happened this week when the High Court of Justice handed down an 8-1 decision on Monday ruling that conversions performed in Israel by the Reform and Masorti (Conservative) movements will be recognized for purposes of citizenship. In other words, people undergoing Reform or Conservative conversions in Israel will be recognized as Jews under the Law of Return, meaning that they and their immediate families, including grandchildren, can make aliyah.
Some have hailed the ruling as a victory for religious pluralism in Israel, others as a step toward the bifurcation of the Jewish people. Some say it will heal rifts with Diaspora Jewry, others that it will deepen them. Some say it will change the face of Israel, others that it will do nothing of the kind. It is worth, therefore, looking at what the ruling is and will do, and what it is not and will not do.
The ruling, as significant as it may be, does not solve the question that has dogged the country since its establishment and comes back every few years in various permutations: Who is a Jew?
At most, the ruling widens the scope of who can become an Israeli through immigration. If up until now the doors of Israel were open to anyone born Jewish or who converted abroad in a recognized community in either Orthodox, Conservative or Reform conversions, now those doors will be open to anyone born Jewish or who converted in Israel as well in an Orthodox, Conservative or Reform ceremony.
The ruling does not deal with the halachic status of the converts as it relates to issues of marriage, divorce or burial. It relates to the narrow issue of converts as Jews for citizenship purposes, and how they can define themselves in their identification card.
Though opponents of the ruling are saying that this will lead to tens of thousands of African workers in the country rushing to Reform and Conservative conversion courts in Israel in search of easy citizenship, the movements themselves argued before the court that this is not their intention, and that their primary interest is in converting non-Jews who are already in the country and married to Jewish Israelis. As such, there is little expectation that the decision will lead to a mad rush for these conversions.
Since there is not expected to be a sudden explosion of these types of conversions, one could argue that the importance of the ruling
is symbolic: recognition by the state, though not the rabbinic establishment, of the Reform and Conservative movements. By recognizing the legitimacy of the conversions in Israel, the state is thereby recognizing the legitimacy of those movements. That is an important symbol, and one that the haredi establishment has been fiercely trying to prevent for years.
In fact, the 2016 compromise allowing for an egalitarian prayer section at the Western Wall fell apart largely because it called for the establishment of a 13-member council to oversee the site that would include representatives from the Reform and Conservative movements.
More than the existence of a separate prayer section at the Wall itself, what infuriated the haredi parties – and led them to threaten Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition with collapse if the compromise was carried out – was membership on an official state committee of representatives from the two non-Orthodox movements, and the interpretation that this was tantamount to official state recognition of those movements.
The Reform movement took a “victory lap” of sorts back then – claiming that it had gained recognition – that boomeranged, because this interpretation of the move compelled the haredim to push back extremely hard and threaten Netanyahu’s government.
At the time the Israel Religious Action Center of Reform Jewry praised the deal in a letter on its website as nothing less than “official recognition by the Israeli government of the vital role Reform and Conservative Jews play in the religious life of the Jewish state.”
This time the movement, wisely, was a bit more low-key, with Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, issuing a statement saying, “the Court has affirmed the reality that the Jewish people are stronger because of the contributions of Reform and Conservative movements and their commitment to bringing more Jews into the Jewish people. We hope this ruling establishes a precedent that will lead to further recognition of the Reform and Conservative movements in Israel.”
Notice the subtle but important difference between this statement and the comments that followed the announcement of the Western Wall compromise. The latter said that recognition was granted; the former, that this is one step toward recognition. Which it is.
ANOTHER THING this ruling is not is an overreach by an activist court. This issue has been kicking around since 2005. The court made it clear that it did not want to rule on such a cardinal issue, but had to step in because the Knesset was unable to make up its mind on this highly sensitive and politically charged issue. A vacuum was created, and the court stepped in to fill it.
Some are arguing that the court should have waited until after the March 23 elections, and that by issuing the ruling now, it was somehow trying to interfere with the election.
There are two problems with this argument. The first has to do with timing. Israel has now effectively been in one big election cycle since the Knesset dissolved in December 2018, which means that any time the
court would have handed down this decision since then could have been interpreted as “too close to elections.”
The second problem with this argument is that the ruling is unlikely to have much of a political impact. Religion-and-state issues are already on the agenda, but having to do more with widespread flouting of the coronavirus regulations by segments of the haredi community, an inability of the central government to extend its authority to certain haredi communities, and whether cities should have the right to open grocery stores and enable public transportation on Shabbat.
Yisrael Beytenu, Meretz, Yesh Atid and Labor were all in various degrees running on these issues before the court decision, so it is hard to see how throwing one more religion-state issue into the mix, especially one that impacts the lives of Israeli voters less than the others, is going to significantly sway the vote.
On the other side of the spectrum, haredi voters did not need this decision to work them up and energize them to come out and vote for the haredi parties; they were going to do that anyhow. Nor were those opposed to judicial activism waiting on the edge of their seats for one more court decision to vote for one of the right-wing parties opposed to that activism; they were also going to vote for those parties already.
No, the decision will likely not have an impact on the election results. But it will likely have a huge impact on coalition building after the election. Shas and United Torah Judaism have already made it clear that a law overriding the ruling will be a condition of their entering into a coalition.
If history is any indication, this will not be a problem for Netanyahu, who did a U-turn on the Kotel issue because of haredi demands. But how about if either New Hope’s Gideon Sa’ar, Yamina’s Naftali Bennett or even Yesh Atid’s Yair Lapid is mandated with forming a government and either wants or needs the haredim inside the coalition? In that case, this demand will badly complicate matters.
And, finally, there is the issue of how this ruling will impact Israel’s relationship with Diaspora Jewry.
If one subscribes to the belief that a major reason for the much-trumpeted “rift” between Israel and Diaspora Jews is the state’s refusal to recognize the pluralistic streams of Judaism, then this decision should be a great help.
If, for instance, the Knesset does not reverse the ruling and it holds, and such conversions are performed in Israel and recognized by the state for citizenship purposes, then – according to those who say that the issue of a lack of religious pluralism in Israel is an impediment to strong ties with Jews aboard – we should all of a sudden see an outpouring of support for the Jewish state.
Don’t count on it. Although there is no denying that many Reform and Conservative Jews in the US genuinely feel insulted and slighted that the Jewish state does not officially recognize their forms of Judaism, and that they cannot pray the way they want at the Western Wall, this is not the reason for the much discussed gap between Israel and world Jewry. The state has never recognized those streams of Judaism, yet the gap was never so large in the past.
Rather, nonrecognition of the liberal streams is only one of a number of issues driving this wedge, with the main one being a lack of Jewish identity in Diaspora communities.
Jews abroad with a strong Jewish identity will identify with Israel, even if it takes policies they disagree with. Jews who have no Jewish identity will not, and the question of whether or not Reform or Conservative conversions are accepted is not going to change their attitude to a state they feel no religious or historic connection to.
But while the ruling may not bring Diaspora and Israeli Jews closer together, if the government – for political purposes – overrides it, then that will have a detrimental impact. Again, while the average Reform or Conservative Jews in the US may not really be all that concerned about this issue, since it may not directly impact them at this moment, the issue will likely be of great content to their rabbis, who will discuss it negatively in sermons and in letters to congregants.
Netanyahu, as it is, does not enjoy overwhelmingly popular support from a number of Conservative and Reform pulpits – partly because of his embrace of former US president Donald Trump, partly because of his reversal on the Kotel issue, and partly because of his right-wing politics. If he is elected again and, to form a government, pushes through legislation that will reverse this court ruling, that will certainly make a tough situation even tougher.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decisions to exchange COVID19 vaccines for an Israeli woman jailed in Syria and to offer doses to allies as a sign of gratitude are part of a shifting dynamic in which a medical serum will join energy and arms as an effective tool in wielding world power.
While economics and diplomacy have forever been intertwined, the commodities of 2021 have shifted. Today, COVID-19 vaccines are the most precious resource on the market. And some of the countries that have them are using them to strengthen and accelerate their global influence.
“The newest entry to the pandemic lexicon might be ‘vaccine diplomacy,’ with some countries using their jabs to strengthen regional ties and enhance their own power and global status,” Dr. Michael Jennings of the SOAS University of London told The Jerusalem Post.
While it is unlikely that vaccine diplomacy will shift world power on its own, according to Eckart Woertz, a professor of contemporary history and politics of the Middle East at the University of Hamburg, it has undeniably become another “aspect of a growing power competition” between China, Russia and the West.
Take what happened with Bolivia. As the country struggled to purchase COVID-19 vaccines, its incoming president, Luis Acre, turned to Russia for help.
“It was a really marathon task,” said Bolivian trade minister Benjamin Blanco of the procurement quest in an interview with a Japanese newspaper, The Japan Times, “but Russia’s political will made it possible.”
He said that Western vaccines makers had told the country that it would have to wait until June to receive any doses. As such, Bolivia secured enough shots from Russia to start inoculating its population in mid-January.
On January 19, Acre spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“The two leaders discussed reviving Russian investments in Bolivia to develop gas reserves, rekindling a nuclear plant project and cooperating on lithium mining,” said Blanco, according to the Japanese daily.
A similar dialogue played out in Egypt, where Russia is already invested in developing a nuclear power plant.
While the United States, Europe and, of course, Israel have spent the last two months vaccinating their own citizens first, China and Russia are sending millions of coronavirus vaccine doses to countries around the world and lagging in their efforts at home.
Russia is home to around 145 million people. It launched its vaccination campaign in December, and, so far, according to a February update released by the country, around two million citizens have been vaccinated.
Nearly two-thirds of Russians are not willing to receive Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, a poll conducted by the Levada Center revealed this week.
China has 1.4 billion citizens. A February report showed that only around 1.6% of China’s population received their first shot by the end of January, and that pace has not really picked up.
A senior health adviser told Reuters earlier this week that the country aims to vaccinate 40% of its population by the end of July, a figure that most analysts have indicated is untenable.
An argument can be made for focusing inward during a time of crisis. But there are growing indications that the West will resurface from the pandemic in a year or two having ceded a critical soft power advantage to its non-democratic rivals.
“Out of humanitarian considerations but also because of their own interests, the US under the new Biden administration and the Europeans should and probably will push their own versions of vaccine diplomacy,” Woertz said.
“Russia and China are using the rollout of their own coronavirus shots to advance their interests,” explained Agathe Demarais, global forecasting director and trustee for the Economist Charitable Trust, an independent charity that is meant to leverage the journalistic expertise of The Economist newspaper.
She said that Russia and China are using their vaccines as part of a long-term strategy to reassert their global footprints, making it harder for the countries they help to say no to their demands in the future.
A report by the Economist Intelligence Unit, for which Demarais works, explained
that “in early 2021 three vaccines, from Pfizer (US)-BioNTech (Germany), Moderna (US) and AstraZeneca-Oxford University (UK), will be rolled out on a massive scale in developed countries. Meanwhile, Chinese and Russian vaccines are being rolled out both domestically and to emerging countries such as Egypt, via diplomatic bilateral deals. This will foster so-called vaccine diplomacy – with Russia and China trying to bolster their global status via the delivery of vaccines – this year and beyond.
“Both countries will also seek to adopt a transactional approach to the delivery of vaccines, using coronavirus shots as a bargaining chip to advance their national interests,” the report said.
Developing countries are vulnerable and therefore susceptible to this type of diplomacy. The Economist report showed that of the around 12.5 billion doses that the main vaccine producers have so far pledged to produce this year, more than half have already been preorders, mostly by wealthy countries. Unlike for Israel, which reportedly paid more than other countries to secure its doses, this is not an option for poorer countries.
The COVAX international effort to supply vaccine doses to developing countries, which is backed by the World Health Organization, is unlikely to be able to vaccinate many developing countries until the end of 2023, The Economist predicted, making alternatives more attractive.
COVAX committed to secure six billion vaccine doses for poorer countries, including two billion that would be given already this year, mainly to healthcare workers. But the supplies have been slow to arrive and be delivered. Moreover, many developing nations do not have the staff or infrastructure to administer the vaccines when they get them.
Some COVID-19 vaccine doses were administered for the first time earlier this week in Africa, for example. So far, the program has allocated doses to India, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire and the Republic of Korea, among other places.
“Vaccine diplomacy could play a big role in determining which developing countries get access to a vaccine in the coming months,” Demarais said.
In the case of China, it is using its homegrown vaccines – now there are four – as
a central component of its Belt and Road Initiative to physically connect Asia with Africa and Europe via land and maritime networks, thereby increasing trade and stimulating economic growth.
The country has agreements to send doses to somewhere between 40 and 60 countries, mostly across South American and Africa, according to various reports and statements.
“In early February, half a million doses of the Chinese Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine arrived in Pakistan, before soon also reaching 13 other countries, including Cambodia, Nepal, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe,” Jennings wrote in an article on the subject. “The Chinese ambassador to Pakistan declared it a ‘manifestation of our brotherhood,’ a sentiment echoed by the Pakistani government.”
Chinese companies and the government have been working in Ethiopia to create cold-chain infrastructure to help transport and distribute vaccines.
Quality and transparent data on Chinese vaccines has been scant, leading some to question the efficacy of their shots. In the clinical trials data that have been published, the Chinese vaccines appear to be less effective than their Western or Russian counterparts. But they do have some advantages for developing countries, such as that they do not require storage in ultracold environments. The newest one requires only one shot.
In any case, for poorer countries that might otherwise not be able to get their people jabbed, a Chinese vaccine would be better than nothing.
On Thursday, the Russian Direct Investment Fund announced the approval of its Sputnik V vaccine by regulatory authorities in Iraq – making it approved for use in 45 countries and more than a billion people, RDIF said.
Sputnik V, like the Chinese vaccines, at first raised skepticism among scientists that the vaccine had not been properly vetted for safety and efficacy. But a February report published by The Lancet on its most recent trials showed that the vaccine has a 91.6% efficacy rate – on par with its Western competitors – and no severe side effects.
AS NOTED, in the US and Europe, governments have been focusing on getting
coronavirus vaccines to as many citizens as possible, especially the most vulnerable. With an eye toward the contrary efforts being made by Russia and China, some in the West have “sought to cast doubt on the credibility of Chinese and Russian efforts, presenting them as cynical ploys for diplomatic advantage,” Jennings said. “You may be getting vaccines, they have been telling the world, but at what cost in your obligations to Russia and China.”
Several thought leaders are inclined to agree.
While no doubt vaccinating as many people in as many places as possible will help bring an end to the global pandemic and, on the one hand, China and Russia are cooperating in their diplomatic efforts, on the other hand, they are “directly competing for the same vaccine markets – and the national prestige that comes with it,” Prof. Elizabeth Wishnick of Montclair State University told the Post.
“Chinese officials want their country to be remembered for Silk Road health diplomacy and successful vaccine development, not China’s role in the pandemic’s origin and spread,” she wrote in a recent post.
Russia also hopes to use the vaccines to improve its public image.
Russia named its vaccine Sputnik V after the Soviet-era satellite that triggered the space race, a nod to the project’s geopolitical importance for Putin.
The satellite launch “changed global perceptions of Soviet military and space power,” Wishnick said. “Kremlin officials see Sputnik V enhancing its soft power overseas and raising the profile of Russian science.”
Jennings said that Russia’s reputation for more than a decade has taken a considerable beating, from being accused of using chemicals and other forms of poisoning to harm opposition figures, human rights violations, and attacks on democracy. Being able to deliver a vaccine that shows scientific strength and knowledge, and then to donate it to help others, could help convert the country’s image from rogue regime to trusted international actor.
“Poor countries will remember who came to their assistance, and when,” The Economist wrote in its report. “Moscow and Beijing saw an opportunity early on, sending masks and protective gear to hard-hit countries last spring. Now, with low- and middle-income countries clamoring for vaccines, countries from Serbia and Algeria to Brazil and Egypt are getting doses from China and Russia.”
Russia and China are presenting themselves as “saviors” of populations in emerging countries, Demarais said, while Western nations are being presented as rich and greedy countries whose vaccines are expensive, leading to a high level of resentment against them.
“Russia and China want to show, ‘we are not like them,’” Demarais said, referring to Western countries. “They say, ‘We have cheap, almost free vaccines, and we have come to save you.’”
But vaccines are not free.
Because it is likely that coronavirus is going to be in the world for many more years, and that even those who are vaccinated will likely need to get booster shots at minimum yearly, it can be assumed that the vaccine ties being formed today will last at least as long.
Russia does not have the manufacturing capacity to produce all the doses it has
committed. As such, it deepened ties with Brazil, India, China, Iran, and South Korea – countries that are now producing Sputnik V vaccines on the Kremlin’s behalf.
In mid-February, RDIF told the Financial Times that it had signed contracts with 15 manufacturers in 10 countries to produce 1.4 billion jabs, enough to vaccinate 700 million people.
“These are not short-term vaccine deals,” Demarais stressed. “This is not just shipping” the vaccines. She said Russia and China are coming with their factories, training local workers, and exerting their influence.
Eventually, she said, it is likely that a country like Russia would create a training program on its own soil and bring locals from these countries to Russia to study and be trained – establishing further goodwill and connectedness.
As the vaccine plants grow, they will become a source of employment and further able to have influence in these countries.
To sign a deal with a country – as opposed to a pharmaceutical company – entails “a completely different mindset,” Demarais said. “When you have a deal between a country and a country, you are talking about politics and diplomacy. These vaccine deals are political.”
Of course, China and Russia are not the only countries that have gotten in on the game.
India, too, has also started developing its own vaccines and shipping them abroad – in part, according to Wishnick, to counter China.
The United Arab Emirates, which is one of the leaders in vaccinating its own people, has also begun donating Chinese vaccines to countries where it has strategic or commercial interests.
“The prospect of global health becoming a new arena for global power competition and rivalry should worry us all,” Jennings wrote. “Whatever benefits may have emerged from such rivalries in the past, they did so through cooperative rivalry.”
He said the global response to coronavirus has thus far been mostly “uncooperative and divisive” and that it is essential that all countries put their support behind COVAX.
“Protecting only your country is not sufficient,” Jennings told the Post. “It increases the opportunity for new strains to emerge that may become resistant to the vaccines.”
“Any working vaccine is helpful from wherever it comes from,” added Woertz.
He said that the large amount of Chinese and Russian vaccines being provided to other countries shows the high priority they attribute to vaccine diplomacy.
“However, over time I would expect the multilateral COVAX vaccination program that was launched by the WHO, the European Commission and the government of France to gain increased importance and possibly overshadow the Chinese and Russian efforts at vaccine diplomacy,” he said. “The multinational nature of the COVAX initiative is preferable to the national approaches of Russia and China.”
Demarais said she expects the US and EU to eventually want to get in on these efforts and, aside from the money they have committed to the COVAX program, also provide vaccines. But she does not envision such a move until perhaps next year, and by then, she said, it may be “too little, too late.”
While the region’s eyes are on recent tensions with Iran in the Gulf of Oman and Syria, a simmering dispute between Iran and Turkey in Iraq appears to be growing. The dispute has origins going back years as Iran has sought greater influence in Iraq, and Turkey has long viewed northern Iraq as its area of influence.
The recent tensions have grown after Turkey threatened an invasion of Iraq’s Sinjar region. This region was home to the Yazidi minority prior to 2014. ISIS attacked Sinjar in 2014 and committed genocide and around 500,000 Yazidis were forced to flee. After Sinjar was liberated by Kurdish forces, a tense time resulted as various Kurdish factions sought control.
What matters is that in 2017, the Iraqi government supported pro-Iranian militias, called Hashd al-Shaabi, to retake Sinjar from the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government. Disputes in Sinjar over whether the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) might remain led to Turkish threats the Sinjar is harboring “terrorists.” In fact, some Yazidis had joined far-Left groups allegedly linked to the PKK as part of the struggle against ISIS. Turkey wanted to use this as an excuse to invade. Turkey has a long track record of invading and ethnically cleansing Yazidis and Kurds, in Afrin in Syria in 2019, and Tel Abyad in Syria in October 2019.
It appears that Iran, having helped the Iraqi government grab Sinjar from the Kurdistan region, doesn’t want Turkey entering Sinjar now. For the minorities, like Yazidis, no one seems to care. Even the pope will be arriving in Mosul soon, but not Sinjar.
In that context, the Iranian Ambassador to Iraq Iraj Masjedi told Rudaw, a Kurdish media outlet, that Ankara should not be violating Iraq’s sovereignty. “We reject military intervention in Iraq and Turkish forces should not pose a threat or violate Iraqi soil,” Masjedi told Rudaw’s Mushtaq Ramazan last week in an exclusive interview. “The security of the Iraqi area should be maintained by Iraqi forces and [Kurdistan] Region forces in their area.”
Masjedi appeared to go even further than opposing an invasion of Sinjar, he said Turkey should withdraw forces from bases in northern Iraq’s Kurdish region. Turkey has long preyed on the Kurdish region, claiming to fight the PKK, and set up dozens of bases. Swaths of villages have been depopulated because of PKK-Turkish fighting in the otherwise peaceful, mountainous region. Recently Turkey launched operations striking PKK bases.
Turkey’s hold on the Kurdish region has also resulted in tensions between the Kurdish authorities in Erbil, led by the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and the PKK. It has also resulted in tensions between Sulamaniyeh, controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party, and the KDP. For Turkey, this is fine because Erbil relies on Turkey for economic lifelines and Turkey can use its leverage here. For the PUK, this is not ideal but the PUK is linked more to Iran’s views.
“What has Sinjar got to do with Turkey?” Masjedi said. “This is an internal matter and the Iraqis themselves must resolve this issue ... It has no bearing on Turkey to threaten or make a decision on this. Therefore, we reject any threat, be it from Turkey or any other side.” Masjedi
is not just a normal Iranian ambassador. He has a past in the IRGC.
He was sanctioned by the US Treasury in 2020. He has in the past threatened Israel and the US. The Middle East Institute and Washington Institute for Near East Policy have both profiled Masjedi. MEI noted “All the three Iranian ambassadors in post-Saddam Iraq have been senior members of the IRGC’s elite Quds Force – reinforcing the notion that the IRGC, rather than the civilian government in Tehran, is in charge of the Islamic Republic’s policies in regional countries.”
Masjedi believes in expanding the IRGC influence and sees Iraq and Syria as a kind of frontline for Iran in its near abroad. This makes it look like Masjedi is more a proconsul in Iraq than an ambassador, helping to run, behind the scenes, the role of pro-Iran militias, the Hashd. Last month, rockets were fired on a US base in Erbil at the airport.
Masjedi’s comments led to tit-for-tat condemnations, as Turkey responded with statements in Iraq and called in Iran’s ambassador in Turkey. Turkey’s ruling politicians are used to insulting and bashing other countries and making extreme statements. Towards that end, the interior minister of Turkey insulted Iran and claimed it is harboring terrorists. The Iranian foreign ministry responded, calling in Turkey’s ambassador, and slamming Turkey’s ambassador to Baghdad Fatih Yildiz.
THE DISPUTE in Iraq is now raising eyebrows in other areas. It is important to remember that going back to the 1920s, Turkey still claimed a swath of northern Iraq as its own. The so-called Mosul Question dominated Turkey-UK discussions over Iraq in the 1920s. In the end,
Mosul went to Baghdad because the British-appointed King of Iraq, Faisal, needed more Sunni constituents and his kingdom without Mosul would be mostly Shi’ites.
That was a boon for Saddam Hussein because Mosul provided the backbone of some of his best military units and he was able to socially engineer parts of northern Iraq, removing minorities and bringing in Arab tribes, consolidating towns and collectivizing areas, while genociding Kurds. Fast forward to 2003, and the US invasion of Iraq and Turkish agents were discovered by the US in Kirkuk in an infamous incident known as the Hood affair.
Turkey had already established itself in Iraq in the 1990s, claiming to fight the PKK. It increased its bases in northern Iraq, mostly small outposts on mountains up until 2014. During the ISIS war, the Kurdistan region was entirely cut off from Baghdad and its lifeline, including oil shipments, was via Turkey. The KDP and the Erdogan government in Turkey appeared quite close up until the Kurdish independence referendum of 2017.
Turkey set up a base at Bashiqa to help train Arab fighters in 2015 and support the Kurdish Peshmerga, who were fighting ISIS. This was a major expansion and Iraq was livid. Iraq complained to the UN. The UN sought to reduce tensions in December 2015. Tensions appeared reduced for several years until this latest controversy. Now there are more commentators pushing for a Turkey-Iran confrontation in Iraq. But the claims that Iran might be trying to pressure the US and Turkey in Iraq may be a misreading of what is going on.
The Hashd or PMU have deployed brigades to Sinjar to make the area appear more well controlled by Iraq. At the same time, this should dilute any role that Turkey can claim the PKK has and would stop a major Turkish operation into Sinjar, or an attempt to put a Turkish base there. However, the deployment of the brigades from Kirkuk to Sinjar on February 13 appeared to dovetail with threats against US forces in Erbil. It also came after a major Turkish raid on Mount Gare in northern Iraq.
In years past, sources in Erbil warned that Iran could use Sinjar to threaten the region, including Israel, by placing missiles on the mountain. It was not clear if Sinjar ever played a role in Iran’s desire for a “road to the sea” via Syria, because Iran uses Al-Qaim and Anbar for that. But it doesn’t have Shi’ite communities much in Anbar, whereas it has recruited militias in Nineveh plains and has sought to work through Turkmen and others in Sinjar.
The war of words now in Iraq between Turkey and Iran is seen by some as a prophecy come true of Turkey possibly seeking to work with the US again and clash with Iran over “geopolitics.”
However, evidence shows that Turkey often prefers to work with Iran regionally on some issues, especially against the US, and work with Russia, while in some areas it may clash with Iran’s interests, the broader trend is an anti-Western trend.
For instance, Turkey and Iran both support Hamas. Turkey is cautious in Iraq now, wondering if Iran has thrown down a red line in Sinjar. Turkey likely never wanted to put a base in Sinjar, but wanted to use the threats to get Iraq to put a firmer hand on Sinjar mountain. With the Hashd flooding the area, this may serve Turkey’s goals in the long term. The IRGC ambassador to Iraq wanted to put Ankara on notice that when it comes to the IRGC, rather than Zarif and Rouhani, there are different interests at work in Iraq.
For others who tend to be pro-Turkey, there is now a line of reasoning that seeks to link the PKK to the Hashd, as if they are aligned against the US and Turkey. This is also a misreading of what is happening
THE LONG-TERM propaganda of pro-Ankara elements that sought to pretend the PKK is linked to Iran and that somehow Iran was behind US support for the SDF in Syria, which Turkey alleges is the US working with the “PKK terrorists” in Syria, is all part of its worldview. Turkey openly claims Iran has PKK elements in its mountains.
These groups are known as PJAK, and for the purposes of this article, all that matters is that in fact Iran has worked with Turkey in the past against these groups. Iran uses whoever it can to get influence, whether it wants to undermine the US in northern Iraq’s Kurdish region by working with Kurdish groups, or whether it wants to undermine the US in eastern Syria by getting the regime to hold out a fig leaf.
In the end, unlike Turkey, Iran has never ethnically cleansed Kurds, and unlike Saddam, it never gassed them, and it never tried to pretend they don’t exist, so Iran’s inroads and ability to talk about defending minorities in places like Sinjar has more weight that Turkey’s track record in Afrin.
When it comes to economic influence though, Turkey’s first-world economy has transformed the Kurdish region, especially Dohuk and Erbil, and all Iran has to offer is what it offers in Iraq: sponging up resources and transferring them to Iran rather than local investment. The overall picture in Iraq between Iran and Turkey, whether one wants to see it as about the PKK or “Ottomans vs. Safavids” is far more multi-layered and complex than is widely acknowledged.