Israel and the Palestinians: 5. The USA and Iran

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Hello and welcome to Understand Israel and the Palestinians.

I'm Katy Adler and I worked in the Middle East for many years.

Amongst the noise and the trauma of the conflict, we're taking a breath and a step back to provide context and a who's who guide to help you get to grips with the complexities of what's going on today.

In this final episode, we look at global players in the region, including the United States and Iran.

And we ask, what of the peace process?

Joining me are two formidable former Middle East colleagues of mine, James Reynolds, he spent years working in the region, and Simon Wilson, former BBC Bureau Chief in the Middle East and then in Washington.

Simon, considering your CV that I just outlined, let's start with the US, self-described close ally of Israel.

How did that relationship become so close?

America, the United States, was one of the early supporters of the nascent state of Israel in 1948.

As the Cold War took hold, America was very keen to have a strong military ally in the Middle East.

There was a small but growing pro-Israel lobby in the United States, and that relationship has grown to the stage now where Israel is by far America's biggest and probably most important ally in the region.

And back in America, American politics has developed to the stage where any U.S.

politician who rises to high office, because of the support they will get from pro-Israel groups, from the evangelical right in the United States, almost on all issues express full support for Israel.

There is also U.S.

interest in having a regional ally that aims to contain Iran, as Israel does, right?

I mean, we'll get to Iran in just a moment.

But James, when we talk about US support, what does it actually look like?

Military support in terms of US hardware.

Diplomatic support in terms of the US being a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

The United States is able to wield a veto to stop any resolutions that would be overly critical of Israel and political support, particularly when either side was coming under attack.

And there's another key thing they have in common, a real fear about regional superpower Iran, especially its potential to one day develop nuclear weapons.

Now, Israel is widely believed to have a nuclear deterrent itself, though it refuses to confirm or deny that, but it does see Iran as an existential threat, and it uses military and cyber capabilities to try and slow down Iran's nuclear program backed very much by the US.

That's right.

Obviously because of the nuclear question in Iran, Israel provides the biggest single deterrent that the US can and does support.

And the fear and obviously the existential fear for Israel is that Iran will have a missile with a nuclear weapon.

And that is the big fear which drives everything about the relationship with Iran, Israel and America.

Okay, so let's talk about Iran in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Iran isn't a neighbor of Israel, right?

It lies more than a thousand miles away to the east, and Israel and Iran have never been in face-to-face combat, so direct conflict.

But Iran hugely supports and influences armed militant groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, and they do attack Israel, and they've both been labelled terrorist organisations by the US and UK.

A big international concern is that through those organizations Iran could be drawn into direct confrontation with Israel and then by association with Israel's great ally the United States the risk there being a perilous global conflict.

So James, bearing all that in mind, why is Iran involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

Partly it is a religious focus.

The government of Iran carried out what it describes as the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

Religion is built in to the government of Iran and part of that religion is the way Iran sees it, reclaiming Jerusalem, which is the third holiest city in Islam.

Part of it is political.

It is about Iran projecting its own power in areas of the Middle East.

But of course then we come to the great divide within the Islamic world in the Middle East, the divide between the Shia areas and the Sunni areas.

Of course, James, the big opposing powers illustrating that are Shia Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia.

Yes, and it's well worth us stressing that the Palestinians are Sunni Arabs, Sunni Muslims, and Iran is on the other side of that divide, the Shia divide.

So in the end, while there may be a tactical alliance between Hamas and Iran, there may be limits to that alliance.

Yeah, I think anyone in that part of the Arab and Islamic world in the Middle East who confronts Israel gains popularity on the streets.

So from the Iranian point of view, to be seen to confront Israel directly or indirectly through a proxy like Hezbollah is seen as a strong motivational reason.

For Iran there is a kind of existential need from their point of view.

Having a strong military force on Israel's northern border gives Iran a potential deterrent to Israel.

So if Israel or the United States ever decide to try and attack Iran or threaten to attack Iran, there is a deterrent that Hezbollah could strike at Israel.

Actually, Hezbollah are making their presence felt at the moment, aren't they?

As the conflict in Gaza escalates, they've threatened to intensify attacks on Israel.

And the danger there is that could trigger the full-scale conflict we've been talking about.

One of the things that's always in my mind, and like you, Katya, and James, I covered several rounds of fighting fighting in the Middle East.

Is there's always this sense of foreboding that the conflict you're in at the moment, there could be a worse one just around the corner.

And Iran isn't the only major player in the region.

Once upon a time, you could generally assume that not just Iran, but the Arab world tended to oppose Israel en masse and support the Palestinian cause.

But these days, it isn't quite as clear-cut as that.

There were peace agreements with Jordan and Egypt, and recently, some leaders in the Gulf, for example, increasingly see Israel as a potentially useful ally, not least as they have their own problems with Iran.

Israel did sign accords known as the Abraham Accords with a number of countries in the Gulf in recent years.

And they were a beginning of normalization of relations, exchange of ambassadors, flights, tourism, that sort of thing.

Primarily, they were with two countries, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, both of whom also fear Iranian influence in the region.

And I think you see those accords as part of a wider realignment between

those who support and or are influenced by Iran and those who are concerned about Iran's growing influence and are aligning with Israel and others.

And there was talk of possible normalizing of relations, ish, between Israel and regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia, known for its strained relations with Iran.

That was totally inconceivable not that long ago.

Well, there's no doubt that Saudi Arabia has been going through a major process of outreach to the West, of realignment in the region.

It's fighting its own proxy war with Iran in Yemen at the moment.

Saudi Arabia, of course, as the guardian of the most holy places in Islam,

it's a much bigger deal for Saudi Arabia to have any sort of normalization with Israel but that was on the cards that was being talked about Saudi Arabia has pulled back from that given the events of recent weeks for now at least and it may be

there may be multiple reasons but it may be part of the reason why the conflict has flared up so viciously now because of the motivation of Hamas and other groups to try and ensure that Saudi Arabia does not come any closer to Israel and America than it has been.

So, James, where has all this left Palestinians?

There was an assumption, wasn't there, until the 6th of October this year, that the Palestinians were potentially being either bypassed, sidelined, or frozen.

That Israel could go around and carry out successful peace accords with the UAE, with Bahrain, potentially with Saudi Arabia, and then at some point, potentially in the future, get to dealing with the Palestinian issue.

Potentially, post-the 7th of October this year, there might be, might be, a rethink of that assumption that in order to look at the wider Middle East, you also need to look firstly at the Palestinian issue before you do anything else.

But peace seems a very, very far away prospect at the moment.

To be honest, the peace process has been pretty much dead for two decades.

But when you hear the US, the EU, and actually much of the world, they still think the answer to this conflict is based on what's known as the two-state solution.

That's where the state of Israel and an independent Palestinian state would live side by side.

Back in the 1990s, James, that idea seemed so close.

So what happened?

In 1993, there were the Oslo accords that we often talk about.

That was essentially an opening of formal relations between the State of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, then led by Yasser Arafat.

And the aim of that was twofold.

Firstly, to allow the PLO to form a Palestinian authority, which would give limited self-governance to a number of areas in which Palestinians formed a majority in Gaza and in the West Bank.

In other words, for the first time, Palestinians would get their own security services, they would get to run their own health service, they would get to run their own education.

Prior to that, it had been the Israeli military between 1967 and the early 90s had been doing that.

That was point one of it.

Point two was that Israel and the Palestinian side, led by Yasser Arafat and his negotiators, would begin the process of good faith negotiations towards creating an end to the conflict, which was widely assumed to be a two-state solution.

But one of the things they did, they took some of the most important, knotty, thorny issues.

Jerusalem, the right of return of Palestinian refugees who fled or were forced from their homes.

homes in the 1948 war and Israeli settlements built on occupied land and they kicked those issues into the long grass.

They looked at them and they thought, if we try to solve them now, we will not be able to.

Perhaps we'll build up confidence and solve them in the future.

That future never came.

Those knotty issues remain and are as complex as they ever were.

Fast forward to today, with a situation so volatile, international voices are getting louder that the world can't afford not to try for peace again.

But US influence has been waning in the wider Middle East, so leaders from the Arab world will be key to any solution.

One of the interesting things of the history of the attempts to bring peace is that it was always thought and was impossible to do it without American support, but actually

most of the initiatives that got anywhere at all actually started in secret without the American backing, and then the Americans came on board.

Final thought, James.

We've discussed a number of perspectives, but why do you think this small, contested part of the world matters so much?

This is something I've been thinking about.

In the days after 9-11, a correspondent came to Jerusalem, stood outside the old city, as we were all thinking of the conflicts around the world, Al-Qaeda, Afghanistan, the United States, the Middle East.

And the correspondent simply said the following sentence, this is where it all began.

And this is where it all must end.

In other words, that so many of the world's religious conflicts eventually could be traced back to division within Jerusalem, and that if it was to be a proper peace in so many conflicts around the world and the Middle East, that proper peace would have to include, or even start with, an agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

James and Simon, thank you.

And that is the last episode in our series.

But don't worry, you can catch up on all of our previous episodes.

They're available now on BBC Sounds.

Thank you for listening to Understand Israel and the Palestinians.

You can come back to each episode whenever you need a refresher.

If, as it so often does in this region, it all gets more complicated.

If you learned something, please do share the podcast with friends and family.

I'm Katya Adler.

The series producer was Phoebe Keene, and the producers were Beth MacLeod, Drew Hindman, Claire Bowes, and Sally Abrams.

The production coordinator was Janet Staples, and the editor was Claire Fordham.

Hello, I'm Tom Bateman, a BBC correspondent based here in Jerusalem.

Now, as you've been hearing, this current conflict does have deep roots.

And there's one period in particular that was foundational.

It was a kind of bauge.

There is one beautiful quote where one British official said, I loathe them all.

They are a beastly race.

And it means Jews and Palestinians.

There was a general perception in the Syrian population that the French were arrogant, brutal conquerors.

This was the basis of everything that went wrong after that.

So much happened in the three decades after the First World War when Britain and France were handed so-called mandates to govern this region that I've made a series about it.

There was a very strong negative reaction among the great majority of the population.

It touched every fibre of my being.

I still feel it today.

I've been speaking to people who lived through that critical period that shaped the modern Middle East and some of the historians who explain it best.

The mandates is available now on BBC Sounds.

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