The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey

It doesn’t matter which Middle Eastern conflict one looks at; escalation is the name of the game, despite stepped-up diplomatic efforts to avert renewed warfare and hopes that elections in Israel and the United States will open doors and help lower the temperature. That is true for the Iran and Yemen wars, Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria. Efforts to avert escalation like this week’s visit to Tehran by senior officials of the Mecca Agreement, the tripartite Saudi Turkish Pakistani mutual defence pact, or hopes that elections in Israel will bring a less provocative government to office are, at best, band-aids that may produce the immediate aversion of more death and destruction and temporary breathing space, but no sustainable solutions. The same is true of efforts to reduce the region's dependence on the Strait of Hormuz for oil, gas, and other exports.

James discusses on Radio Islam the expected escalation in the Iran and Yemen wars, why the United States will continue to be the backbone of Gulf security, why US Israeli relations are set to change, and the fate of Iranian Kurds.

Israel’s defence doctrine, adopted in the wake of Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on the Jewish state, embodies everything that would make overt collaboration with Saudi Arabia against Yemen’s Iranian-backed Ansarullah Houthi rebels all but impossible. This includes the doctrine’s rejection of Saudi Arabia’s demand that Israel agree to an irreversible pathway for the creation of an independent Palestinian state as a pre-condition for the establishment of diplomatic relations. Moreover, Saudi and Israeli strategies are diametric opposites. Saudi Arabia emphasises economic cooperation and regional stability as cornerstones of its policies, not permanent war, pre-emptive military strikes, and occupation as envisioned in Israel’s defence doctrine. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu last week offered to assist Saudi Arabia in Yemen in the hope that it would open the door to closer security ties to the kingdom and pave the way for Saudi recognition of Israel.

James discusses on Radio Islam this week’s Middle East developments, including religious ultra-nationalism’s growing influence in the Israeli military, what Israel can learn from NATO’s new strategy, how efforts to destabilise states or change regimes fuel the region’s multiple conflicts, and the Yemen war’s derailing of Saudi sports ambitions.

Increasingly, destabilisation, if not regime change, has emerged as the subtext of the Middle East's multiple conflicts. The notion that civil wars, ethnic insurgencies, sectarianism, and social unrest can, at least, weaken hostile adversaries, if not produce more friendly regimes, complicates prospects for negotiated solutions and, in some cases, thwarts diplomacy, heightens the risk of prolonged wars, and turns disputes into existential conflicts. Middle Eastern governments and external powers, like the United States, did not only recently discover destabilisation and regime change as a possible strategy. It's that notions of destabilisation and regime change have moved centre stage.