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Why the Attacks on Iran Won't Lead to an Arab Embrace of Israel
(Mosaic) Hussein Aboubakr Mansour - Leaders, diplomats, and strategists across Arab Gulf capitals have hardly slept since Friday from sheer euphoria. For decades, Iran has cast an ominous shadow over their strategic calculations, an enduring threat they knew they were unable to deter or even meaningfully to contain. Israel's actions have effectively liberated the Gulf states from this menacing constraint. It would be natural to hope that the Gulf states, free of the Iranian threat and full of appreciation for what Israel can deliver, would at last embrace the Jewish state enthusiastically. Unfortunately, it is much more likely that, despite private admiration and cooperation, public acknowledgment and overt alignment with Israel will remain restrained. Arab regimes will undoubtedly deepen their security and intelligence coordination with Jerusalem, expand economic ties, and strengthen diplomatic engagement quietly and incrementally. Privately, Arab Gulf elites continue to marvel at Israeli security prowess. Yet these same elites are dispassionate and transactional. The Gulf monarchs are most likely to put ideology second to practical and achievable goals. Their admiration for Israel, therefore, won't translate into an enthusiastic embrace born of gratitude or generosity. On the contrary, the removal of the Iranian threat reduces, rather than increases, their incentive to make meaningful concessions to Israel. Indeed, the Gulf states may quietly reach out to the now weakened Iranian regime. With their archenemy crippled, vulnerable, and desperate, these countries have a rare opportunity to extend a lifeline, albeit conditionally, in exchange for clear, enforceable guarantees that Tehran abandon its aggressive regional ambitions. Such maneuvers would reflect a longstanding desire to maintain the regional balance of power, which in this case means making sure that neither Israel nor Iran become dominant. The writer is an Egyptian-American author and researcher at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) in Washington.