The foreign policy establishment fails to see that the Middle East balance of power has shifted

Ryan Crocker is an experienced and knowledgeable American diplomat who specializes in the Middle East, having served as ambassador to Lebanon, Kuwait, Syria, Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan. Crocker gave an interview to Politico last week in which he argued that the Arab states are keen to normalize relations with Israel and that the Arab political elite has a deep mistrust of the Palestinians, explaining why Arab states refuse to take in Palestinian refugees. This is partially true, but oblivious to the changing power dynamics in the Middle East.

The Arab states do not want Palestinian refugees for two reasons. First, they do not want a secure Israel. They still plan to eliminate the Jewish State, and they want to keep it stuck within its current fuzzily defined borders and containing millions of resentful, occupied Palestinians. Second, they are afraid of the new power dynamics in the region, which no longer favor the United States.

Arab leaders in Syria, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon never wanted Palestinian radicals to wage insurgency against Israel, not out of hatred of the Palestinians, but out of fear of the consequences. The balance of power was not in their favor. The Arab states were too weak to confront Israel when it inevitably attacked them, rather than the Palestinian insurgents, in response to Palestinian attacks. So it was, and remains, smarter to keep the insurgency within the borders of Mandatory Palestine. That requires keeping the Palestinians where they are.

Crocker also assumes that, because the Arab states do not want the consequences of a Palestinian insurgency, they want to normalize ties with Israel. This is a misunderstanding of the power dynamics — and of the essence of the conflict.

The Israel-Palestine conflict is first and foremost a religious war, in which Arab leaders have accepted their weakness in material and military affairs and sought to normalize with a much more powerful, Western-backed Israel. By contrast, the Iranians, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and others chose a more religiously-sound approach. They accepted that the U.S. could overwhelm them with high-tech “shock and awe” aerial attacks. They chose to focus instead on delivering decisive blows that show that some key aspect of the enemy’s power, some Goliath, such as the air force, is in fact impotent. Such demonstrative strikes are used to show that they can fight on still, demoralizing the enemy and making it think, “what was the point?”

Some examples:

• After Israel’s 34-day bombardment of Lebanon in the 2006 war, Hezbollah ensured that, in the 24 hours before the ceasefire began, it fired more missiles into Israel than during any previous day. This cemented the idea that Israel’s attacks failed, establishing lasting deterrence.
• In the Saudi-Yemen war, after the Saudis (using U.S. jets, bombs, training, logistics and intelligence) had bombed Yemen for seven years, the Houthis attacked Saudi fuel storage depots in Jeddah in 2022. This demonstrated to the Saudis that they could neither win nor stop the Houthis from attacking their critical assets. The Saudis then abandoned the war and reconciled with the Houthis.
• In the current Israel-Gaza War, after over 130 days of bombings, Hamas and Islamic Jihad fired missiles into Ashkelon for three consecutive days, showing Israel that they could fight for another 130 days if needed.
• After several waves of U.S. and British attacks against the Houthis, the group escalated its attacks and proceeded to sink a British ship. This showed the futility of previous airstrikes — and that further airstrikes, like Saudi Arabia’s U.S.-enabled air campaign, will fail.

It is egregious that Crocker, a highly regarded establishment figure, appears unaware that the Iranian-backed groups have changed the balance of power in the region. America’s Arab allies have been watching how Iran shut down the Suez Canal, and how the U.S. has failed to effectively enforce its presumed red lines around energy security and the freedom of navigation, and have drawn some conclusions: American weapons can deliver a powerful first punch, but the U.S. can no longer land a knockout blow or win an extended conflict.

Iran and its allies, by contrast, regularly show that they can keep fighting and landing decisive blows. They, like the Arab peoples led by America’s allies, are religiously committed to destroying Israel. As such, helping the Israelis win by taking in Palestinian refugees, whom the Arabs know Israel would never allow back, is not in the interests of Arab leaders. Rather, their best bet is to stay on America’s good side rhetorically and commercially, but to quietly improve their ties with Iran and other U.S. enemies, and prepare to end their normalization with Israel.

This is why the Saudis reconciled with Iran under Chinese auspices, and why the UAE is helping both Russia and Iran evade U.S. sanctions. The balance of power, which previously forced the Arab states to avoid fighting Israel and antagonizing the U.S., has shifted. Now the balance of power dictates that the Arabs prevent Israel from winning and avoid antagonizing Iran and their own publics.

But the balance of power has not shifted enough for Arab leaders to disengage from the U.S., which is why the Saudis still talk to the Americans of normalization. It should be clear to any astute observer that when the Saudis say that they insist on Palestinian statehood before normalization, they are giving the Americans the mother of all inshallahs. They know that, for the Israelis, a Palestinian state is a nonstarter. That condition is intended to appease the U.S. establishment and shift the blame to Israel.

Crocker does not seem to understand any of this. Like the rest of the establishment, he has failed to digest the lessons from the past two decades of American failures in the region in which he specializes.

Crocker is right to be cynical about Arab leaders. He ought to be more cynical about American leadership, too.

Firas Modad is the founder of Modad Geopolitics and has been a Middle East analyst for 20 years. Follow him @modadgeop.