US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is slated to visit the region to advance two goals that are basically one: mobilize support for the US move to renew international sanctions on Iran, and add more Arab states to the historic alliance between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
After a stop in Israel, Pompeo plans to take off for the UAE, to prepare for next month's signing of the peace agreement on the White House lawn. From there, he will continue to neighboring Bahrain and then to Sudan – the two most likely candidates to pursue normalization with Israel.
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Bahrain was among the first countries to endorse the agreement between Israel and the UAE. In Sudan, there is still an internal debate over any such move, a debate that has meanwhile led to the ouster of a Sudanese Foreign Ministry spokesman, who rushed to announce talks between Khartoum and Jerusalem were underway.
But a rapprochement with Sudan is likely to materialize sooner or later, if only because of its strong desire to be removed from the US list of countries supporting terrorism.
When Oman and Morocco come on board – a move likely to be followed by Saudi Arabia – it would form an impressive coalition, one that clearly demonstrates the dramatic shift in Middle East policies prompted by Emirati Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan's brave decision to pursue full diplomatic ties with Israel independent of any future resolution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
It is true that many countries in the Middle East share Israel's desire to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapons and stop its hegemony aspirations in the region by destabilizing other Arab regimes, but it will be a mistake to say the emerging alliance is being formed solely to counter the Islamic republic.
The Emirati crown prince, who seeks to position the UAE as a regional and global power, sees the rise of political Islam as even a greater threat than the one posed by Iran.
He seeks to push a vision of social, cultural, and religious pluralism and tolerance – values Israel can easily relate to. In that sense, bin Zayed is not only a staunch opponent of the ayatollahs' regime in Iran but also of the Erdogan regime in Turkey, and of Qatar, which supports Hamas.
Not all of the pieces on bin Zayed's chessboard are ready to make their move, but the counter-coalition of Iran, Turkey and Qatar is far less stable. All three may tout political Islam but they do not share the same goal. Shiite Iran and Sunni Turkey are in a race for the leadership of the Islamist world and so far, neither is in the lead.
Between these two emerging coalitions in the Middle East, the Palestinians have, as usual, chosen the belligerent Turkey, Qatar, and Iran over the Gulf States.
Rather than acknowledging the new regional reality, Ramallah accused the UAE of "stabbing the Palestinians in the back" – only to realizes that not only was the Arab League in no rush to condemn the peace deal, it even issued a statement saying that every state has the right to decide for itself what type of ties it wants to have with Israel.
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