Why Are They Mad At Blinken?

Antony Blinken hasn't been having a good tour of the Middle East:

Secretary of State Antony Blinken received a cold reception from Egyptian and Saudi leaders during meetings about support for Israel on Sunday, according to The Washington Post.

Egypt’s Abdel Fatah El-Sisi and Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) rejected Blinken’s call for support of Israel’s counteroffensive in the Gaza Strip, the Post reported on Sunday. El-Sisi and Salman made it clear that they stood with Palestinians and called for Israel to end its “siege” in Gaza.

“I heard a lot of good ideas about some of the things we need to do moving forward,” Blinken told reporters on Sunday following his meeting.

MBS kept Blinken waiting for hours before their expected discussion on Saturday, instead choosing to show up to the meeting the next morning, according to the Post. When the two eventually met, MBS “stressed” that the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) should halt its counter-offensive “that [has] claimed the lives of innocent people” and end the “siege of Gaza.”

. . . In Cairo, el-Sisi told Blinken that Israel’s counteroffensive has exceeded “the right of self-defense” and turned into a “collective punishment,” according to the Post. Egypt and the U.S. have reached an agreement to open a corridor in the Rafah border for U.S. citizens evacuating Gaza.

Neither Saudi Arabia nor Egyot has signed on to the Abraham Acccords. The Biden administration has worked toward normalization of Saudi-Israel relations, but the Hamas invasion has put these efforts on hold. On the other hand, the Egypt–Israel peace treaty of 1979 was the first visible step in the overall effort toward Middle East stability. The problem for both Saudi Arabia and Egypt is that their regimes put their domestic prestige on the line when they support these efforts, but any military action involving Israel takes away any potential payoff to them for promoting normalization.

Thus the Obama-Biden Realignment strategy whereby Iran becomes the regional hegemon has risks if Iran isn't predictable. This is the basic problem with the Hamas invasion -- Iran has demonstrated it can't be relied on to be a neutral third party or an actor with restraint. Thus the departure of the US from the region leaves unresolved issues. In the words of the Wilson Center,

a decade-long era of ambitious American geostrategic involvement in the internal affairs regional states, from regime change to societal transformation, began with the Iraq invasion in 2003 and ended in 2013 when President Obama chose not to enforce his redline on Syrian chemical weapons. Surveys at the time showed that Americans no longer wanted to spend trillions of dollars and lose thousands of troops for ephemeral societal goals with little success.

. . . To square that circle, those administrations de-prioritized American resources committed to the region, with the “delta” taken up by America’s many security partners in the region. This “by-with-through” approach with local allies was first implemented successfully in campaign to defeat the Islamic State. Nevertheless, the perceived disengagement of the United States, as regional states faced the threats of Iranian expansion and secondarily Islamic extremism, led moderate Arab states to reorder priorities.

Israel, with its firm position opposing Iranian expansion, and success combating Islamic terrorism, suddenly appeared to be a partial replacement to the US. Furthermore, Israel’s longstanding desire for diplomatic acceptance in the Arab world and its cutting-edge industrial, technological, energy and trade success, suggested it could help Arab states advance in those realms as well.

It seems to me that the frustration of Saudi Arabia and Egypt is primarily a result of their recognition that relying on Iran to maintain a regional balance against Israel is a vain fancy. Iran will try to wipe Israel out until it finally accomplishes that goal, and then Iran will move to take over everyone else. What MBS and al-Sisi are saying is that the Hamas invasion has shown the failure of the Realignment strategy and put them in a more difficult spot politically in their own countries -- they now have no choice but to oppose Israel, which means they have no choice but to oppose US policy, and they're telling Blinken to fix this. The US should not have let things get this far.

I don't normally have high expectations of Victor Davis Hanson, but I think he edges toward the truth here:

Why does the U.S. discount any possibility of a strategic response from Russia—which reportedly has some 6,000-7,000 nuclear weapons—to attacks on its homeland, but seems almost terrified about calling Iran to account for its central role in arming and funding terrorists to start a war with Israel by slaughtering 1,200 civilians?

. . . There are likely somewhere between 600,000 and 800,000 total wounded and dead in Ukraine, in the most lethal conflict in Europe since 1945. Why is the U.S. so eager to call for a ceasefire after a fraction of those casualties in Gaza, but it is near-taboo to mention a breather amid the historical carnage, with no end in sight, in Ukraine?

In effect, we have two separate strategic policies in Ukraine and the Middle East, and both are proving failures. Why are Biden and Blinken so determined to push both of them, especially as contradictory as they are, through?