The policies of three of the Middle East’s top players have been outlined in a flurry of diplomacy, joint statements and budget announcements over the past two weeks.
The United Arab Emirates sent its national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed, to Iran while also receiving Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. Israel deployed its defense minister, Benny Gantz, to Washington, as Iran doubled its military budget.
As the UAE minimizes tensions with regional capitals and endorses peace, Israel and Iran engage in military buildups and seem to be banging the drums of war.
Bennett made a historic visit, the first of its kind for an Israeli prime minister, to the UAE, where he met with Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed and held one-on-one meetings with ministers.
Bilateral trade between the UAE and Israel stood at near US$800 million for the first nine months of 2021. Direct Emirati investment in Israel has also been on the rise, as cooperation surges between the region’s third- and fourth-biggest economies, with equal-sized GDPs at around $400 billion each.
Such cooperation would guarantee substantial economic growth between Israel, a nation focused on startups, and the UAE, a country with highly developed sectors in financing, marketing and other monetization tools.
Despite the dizzying pace at which the UAE and Israel are coming closer together, the UAE signaled that peace with the Jewish state was economic and cultural, rather than one against Iran. Along these lines, Bennett did not hold a one-on-one with any defense or security official while in the UAE, including with Sheikh Tahnoun, the official who had just returned from Tehran.
With nuclear talks between the world and Iran seemingly going nowhere, the UAE seems to be aware that regional war is closer than ever. Yet Abu Dhabi’s message is clear: It intends to sit out military entanglements in the region, including between Iran and Israel. Emirati neutrality does not mean it has no favorites, but if it does have one, it was not giving it a hand.
Israel, for its part, is drawing a line in the sand: The Jewish state will not tolerate a nuclear Iran and is willing to use military force to stop Tehran from making a bomb. Hence Gantz visited Washington and asked for the acceleration of the delivery of two air refueling tankers that Israel had earlier purchased from the US. Such technology is required when fighter jets fly long-distance missions, exactly like when Israel decides to strike Iranian nuclear facilities.
Meanwhile, Iran announced that for the year 2022 it would double its military budget to $30 billion. Despite the increase, Iranian access to the superior Western military technology will remain limited, which suggests that Tehran will likely increase money it allocates to its regional militias with which it threatens – and often blackmails – regional powers, first and foremost Israel.
Former US president Donald Trump’s policy of “maximum pressure” could not force Iran to come back to the negotiating table, but Trump’s policy certainly put Iranian uranium enrichment on hold. Had Trump been elected to a second term, it would have been unlikely that Tehran would have resumed enrichment at full speed.
But with President Joe Biden, diplomacy has taken an ideological tilt, with the foreign-policy team seemingly more interested in the ambiguous concept of decolonization than in maintaining regional and world peace.
With the US under Biden withdrawn and restricting its foreign policy to irrelevant diplomacy, regional powers are jockeying to fill the void. Israel and Iran are preparing for war, each reinforcing their own points of strength. The UAE, however, wants to minimize the effects of whatever war may have on its economy and prosperity, a prudent policy that countries with similar profiles might be well advised to follow.
What unfolds in the coming months and years remains to be seen. What is certain is that the main players are bracing for drastic change, and that the superpower that used to steady the regional ship is not interested in playing its role any more, leaving the ship to sail leaderless through a lot of turbulence.
This article was provided by Syndication Bureau, which holds copyright.