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Menu There is no diplomatic solutionIsrael should declare three nos;
no to nuclear Iran, no to two-state solution, no to bi-national state
no to nuclear Iran, no to two-state solution, no to bi-national state
Hope your right, Bear. MSB is an improvement on past Saudi rulers, and less hostile to Israel.
@ adamdalgliesh:
90% of the US Press is anti-Trump. In interviews Trump, Kushner & other others have made it fairly obvious that they are not interesting in getting rid of MBS. That is even if they could. They have it clear that have mutual national interests. MBS in fact runs Saudi-Arabia and his father is now mostly the figure head.
Yes MBS has stepped in it and has a massive PR problem. Those in the US media who persist on bringing this up are for the most part also trying to bring Trump down also.
Bibi is going openly to bat for MBS in the US & EU. In the USA he will have some influence. Mathis has no final say on matters with Saudi Arabia and Bolton counters his influence very strongly. This whole thing may eventually blow over. It is already far less in the news cycle.
@ Ted Belman: Ted, neither you, nor President Trump, nor Abdullah nor Mudar Zahran, nor Erdogan, nor Putin are powerful enough to stop me from worrying! Some people will say, “the glass is half full.” Others will say, “the glass is half empty.” I will say, “don’t drink it! It’s filled with poison chemicals and bacteria!” When anyone tells me that something good is going to happen, I say,”I’ll believe it when I see it, but not a second before.”
@ Edgar G.: Edgar, its just my intuition from years of following the media and U.S. politics. The press almost never launches a campaign against a foreign leader without some very high-level support from some people high up in the government. The press has mainly sources the Turkish government for its accusations against the Saudis, but also anonymous “sources.” Why should the u.S. press believe the Erdogan government, with its long history of hostility to the U.S., not to mention Saudi Arabia, unless some people high up in the USG are feeding them this crap? I don’t think that Trump has it in for Saudi Arabia or MBS, but he is definitely not the only person in the USG who has power. He has himself, or his spokesmen, have noted many times that the “deep state” is conspiring against him, and trying to undermine his policies. They are even trying to remove him from office, using Mueller as their tool. In the case of Saudi Arabia, Secretary of Defense Mattis has made it clear that he hates the Saudi government and MBS in particular. And Mattis is a deep-stater if their ever was one. Trump frequently tries to compromise with some deep-staters, and appoints them to his team, in the hope of winning them over. This is understandible, but I don’t think it has worked in Trump’s favor. It definitely hasn’t been helpful to the de facto, semi-secret Israeli-Saudi alliance against Iran.
Adam- Where dd you see that the US is trying to get rid of MbS….?
@ adamdalgliesh:
All I can say is don’t worry.
@ adamdalgliesh:
With all due respect. If Ted, knew these answers he likely not want to reveal them. The USA would NOT want it known publicly that it is talking to people who might overthrow one of their allies.
@ Ted Belman: Have any high-level officials of the Trump administration met with Mudar or other representatives of the Jordanian Opposition Coalition? Has he or his representatives been invited to Washington to meet senior U.S. officials there? Have any press spokesman for the administration mentioned Mudar in press conferences, or commended him? I am asking these questions in good faith, Ted, not rhetorically. I don’t know whether Mudar and the JOC have received any tangible evidence of support from the Trump administration, or if so, what form that support has taken. Of course, these questions are crucial to whether or not he has a realistic chance to gain power in Jordan.
@ Ted Belman: “The (Jordanian) border hasn’t had an incident for decades.” That’s because the Hashemite hasn’t allowed any such attacks since 1970, when Israel intervened to protect it from Palestinian-Syrian attack. That’s also, of course, why Israel continues to support Abdullah in spite of his anti-Israel rhetoric. The Israeli government, as well as the majority of Middle East “experts” in Israel and the United States, don’t share you optimism that a post-Hashemite regime would be friendly to Israel.
@ Ted Belman: Ted, you seem to be minimizing the seriousness of the terrororist threat to Israel.
“What violence?” there is a lot of violence directed against Israelis.
It is only because of the vast human and financial resources that Israel expends on fighting terrorism, the great experince and expertise of its counter-terrorism personnel, and even the enormous competence and expertise of its EMS and medical staffs, that casualties have been kept to a minimum.
And what about the severe psychological trauma inflicted on hundreds Israelis by the terrorist attacks? And the vast amounts of public and private property, including entire forests, inflicted by the terrorists?
There are reasons why Israelis are more concerned about the terrist campaign against them than they are by car accidents and even by the murders committed by common criminals. After all, most deaths resulting from automobile accidents are accidental. Even the deaths and injuries inflicted by common criminals are motivated by the individual criminal’s desire for money or sex, not by a desire to derstry Israel. On the other hand, the terror attacks on Israelis aim at the destruction of Israel as a society, and the murder or at least the expulsion of every last Israeli Jew. Israelis also know that the terrorists are constantly obtaining new and more deadly weapons, and that the regimes that sponsor them, such as Iran, are extremely well armed. Therefore the terrorists do form one component of a larger ‘existential threat” to Israel, which traffic accidents and even common crime do not.
@ Ted Belman: Thanks for your reply, Ted. Just a few observations: In order to feed empty Jordanian bellies, Mudar would have not only to take power, but retain it for a long time. Given the fierce hostility to Israel by nearly everyone in Jordan, I don’t see how Mudar can either gain power or retain it for a long time as long as he continues to follow the pro-Israel stance he has adopted for the past ten years.
Numerous governments in poor countries are attempting to fill the bellies of their people. But progress in this regard is always slow. It is a tall order for even the most well-intentioned politician. Only one who can retain power for a long period of time can make a difference.
It also usually takes extensive administrative experience to purge a government of corruption, encourage the private sector, implement projects to improve the infrustructure and create jobs, promote mechanization of agriculture, etc. Does Mudar have this kind of experience?
Just saw that my computer “hiccuped”, and the last two sentences of the first par. belong in the next one below.
@ adamdalgliesh:
I didn’t see that anywhere….where dd you see that the US is “more or less openly” tryng to removed MbS……. THAT is big news….and I can’t understand why..Kashoggi or not. He’s pro US in a big way so why would they wnt to have him removed. How would they go about t apart from making a fuss about Kashoggi..? After all he was a Muslim Brotherhood and terrorist supporter in a big way.and couldn’t mean anything to the US. They can impose martial law and rule the street if neccessary. They have crowd control equipment that is harmless but very efficient.
I can accept your belief that it would be very difficult to impose an Israel lover over the Jordanians. But Mudar doesn’t actually come across as an Israeli lover more like a pragmatist who wants to benefit his people and making genuine peace with Israel is a step in that direction. He sounds reasonable but emphasizes at every moment that he is first and foremost devoted to bettering their future.
I believe that if the US is on board, they’ll have all the vital preparations made ready and waiting. We just have to wait and see.
@ adamdalgliesh:
The destruction of regimes is usually fuelled by empty bellies.So Mudar will
make sure that they are better off under him.
To date the Palestinians have been fuelled by hope that they will return and Israel will be destoyed. We will kill that hope and replace it with hope for a better future.
The left argue that the violence is fuelled by dispair. We disagree. Violence is fuelled by hope to destroy Israel. Kill the hope and you will kill violence.
As for violence, what violence? There are 6 million Palestinians in Jordan yet our border has been without incident for decades.
There are over three million Arabs in Israel and the West Bank who alledgedly hate us, and for sure many do. Yet the murder rate is extremely low.
:Since December 2005, Palestinian terrorist attacks have claimed at least 223 Israeli lives.” And that is with PA incitement. Traffic deaths in Israel are 10 times greater.
Compare that with 4000 murders a year in Chicago.
@ adamdalgliesh:
Yes, I can safely say that all the experts and the negotiators had it wrong. None of them produced peace.
Mudar and I have been calling for him to replace the king for almost a decade. We went into high gear with the election of Trump. We have made a lot of progress and expect to succeed.
Guy Bechor clearly does think that Mudar Zahran has a chance, as does Ted. But so far I have not located on the internet any other Middle East experts with academic, intelligence, or military credentials who think that Zahran has a chance. I will keep searching. But I searched the web sites of three think tanks in the US which closely monitor U.S. policy towards the Mideast–JINSA, the Washington Institute, and the Foreign Policy Association–and failed to find any references to Mr. Zahran, although there were more than a million “hits” on them for Jordan. I also checked four Israel web sites with connections to Israel’s intelligence, military and foreign affairs communities, and found only two references on them to Zahran, although there were several hundred articles that discussed Jordan. One reference was just a footnote referencing the article that Zahran published in the Middle East Forum in 2012. The other was a brief paragraph. None of these articles suggested that Zahran and the Jordanian Opposition Coalition were likely to take power in Jordan. They all seemed to think the most likely successor to Abdullah would be a radical Islamist regime of some sort. All this proves nothing, of course. But to me, it suggests that Israel must take action on its own, rather than wait for salvation from Washington, London, or Amman, if it is going to survive in the Mideast wilderness.
The example of Saudi Arabia shows how Israel’s severe Israel’s “image” problem in th eArab and Muslim worlds makes it nearly impossible to for any leader who works cooperatively with Israel to stay in power in any of these countries. Look at “MBS” in Saudi Arabia. He has worked with Israel, although mainly in secret and without establishing diplomatic relations with Israel, openly trading with Israelis, etc., and as a result he is in deep trouble. Do you think that the U.S. would be making such a big issue of the Kashoggi affair, and more or less openly trying to force MBS’s removal, if he had not been dealing with Israel? This demonstrates that relying on the United States to install pro-Israel governments in Arab countries, when the USG actually prefers to have anti-Israel regimes in power (because they are supposedly more “stable” and have more internal support),
To me, this proposed solution, like most if not all the “solutions” offered by people on the Right, represents magical thinking. Polls show that nearly all Jordanian citizens, both “Palestinians” and “Bedouin,” hate Israeland even Jews generally. How then can Israel, or even America, install a pro-Israeli, pro-Jewish politician as the country’s leader? Even in societies used to authoritarian rule, politicians have to have some support from the “street” in order to gain and keep power. I don’t think that the Jordanian ‘street” is ready for a pro-Israel government. And the “colonial” era when Western governments could install regimes all around the world even without much support from the “street,” and keep these regimes in power with their own troops, is over.