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Business Recorder
10 hours ago
- Business
- Business Recorder
Was that all, folks?
I'm not surprised that financial markets were the first to call Iran's retaliation 'de-escalatory' (Bloomberg) – oil fell, equities and futures rose as ballistic missiles targeted the al Udeid airbase in Qatar. It's remarkable how markets now decode foreign policy more astutely than the press briefings meant to explain it. Within minutes, risk assets began recovering, pricing in not the beginning of a regional war, but a carefully orchestrated endgame. But I'm still trying to make sense of how the war fizzled out so suddenly. Because if Iran really telegraphed the move perfectly enough to get a public 'thank you' from Donald Trump himself—especially if POTUS also tipped the ayatollahs off before dropping Midnight Hammer, helping save lives and uranium—then Netanyahu would not be a happy man. Either that, or Israel too is reeling from Iran's shocking response and isn't sure about the opportunity cost of pushing for regime change at this point. Whatever the case, he'll have to work harder to sell 'victory' to his people than Khamenei. Even after successfully engineering genocide in Gaza, destroying Hamas, gutting Hezbollah, ending the Assad dynasty rule in Syria, isolating and then bombing and pulverising Iran, even finally getting America to 'obliterate' its nuclear facilities, he knows he still needs to feed more blood and war to the extremist coalition that'll keep him in office till the next election. He's done so much for their cause, but he didn't come back from Iran with the head of the mullah regime. Instead, memories of the failure of the Iron Dome—and Gaza-like images from Tel Aviv and Haifa—will linger. Also, who'll answer for the 400kg of missing Iranian uranium? But all that's true only if Trump can be trusted this time. After all, his penchant for deception is now at the heart of the most important policy calculus of the most powerful country in the world. In just the last two weeks, he's twice boasted about lying to fool Tehran. First, he admitted that direct talks were a ruse—a way to 'pin down' Iran's leadership before giving Israel the green light. The same was true for his two-week window, when America directly bombed Iran. Two is a trend—and this trend of talks-betrayal-war-spin shows duplicity as doctrine. Besides, he mulled regime change just a day before thanking Iran for its restraint, not long after his secretary of state and VP went to great lengths to stress that the US only targeted nuclear facilities, not the leadership. So who's to know if Trump really meant it when he ordered Israel to 'BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW!' or if this is the prelude to another video showing Netanyahu smirking about how they once again tricked the Iranian leadership into lowering its guard—just before going in for the kill. People close to the region are in no doubt. Author, journalist and editor of the Palestine Chronicle, Ramzy Baroud, calls Trump's latest burst of anger at Israel a 'manufactured farce'. 'What we are witnessing is a staged political performance—a carefully orchestrated spat between two partners playing both sides of a dangerous game,' he wrote in his column. 'In truth, this was always a joint US-Israeli war—one planned, executed, and justified under the pretext of defending Western interests while laying the groundwork for deeper intervention and potential invasion.' Nobody who knows this business really doubts that the Israelis and Americans have been working to take out Iran's theocratic regime ever since Bashar al-Assad was forced to flee Damascus on the early morning of 8 December 2024. And almost all of them are convinced that the plan had to be shelved—or at least paused—because of Iran's shocking success in hitting Israeli targets, repeatedly and with precision. Even after Israel's brilliant campaign successes—especially the early wave that took out Iran's entire military high command and top scientists—and the fact that four militaries from three countries and two seas attempted to intercept Iran's ballistic missiles, Iran still scored higher in terms of beating expectations, even though much more of it lies in ruins than Israel. It has also shattered the myth of the IDF's invincibility. Now everybody knows that even a sanctioned, cornered, poor and badly hit country can easily target Israel's vulnerabilities—the biggest being its reliance on a much bigger power for something as basic as its own security. Even the Iron Dome works only when American taxpayers subsidise its interceptors. So far, the choreography of this de-escalation has left a lot of people breathing easier. Trump doesn't know what more he needs to do to win the Nobel peace prize. The Iranians honoured their reputation, fighting back with dignity and pride even against the most overwhelming of odds, always preferring death to disgrace. The ayatollahs survived the most direct lunge at their jugular. The markets are calm and war risk premiums are fading. But the real mood in Tel Aviv—even as it publicly celebrates victory over evil—will only become clear once Bibi's radical cabinet delivers its own verdict on the restraint Trump has apparently forced on it. They have elections in October next year. And if, by then, the same mullahs that bombed their cities are still entrenched in power—and also able to resume their nuclear programme—then they'll want Netanyahu to deliver yet more. And that, more than Trump's peace tweets or f-bombs or Tehran's self-congratulatory broadcasts, will determine whether this ceasefire holds. Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
Al-Ahram Weekly
28-01-2025
- Politics
- Al-Ahram Weekly
Palestinians still hold ground - World - Al-Ahram Weekly
US President Donald Trump's admonition to Egypt and Jordan to 'clean out' Gaza and 'take on' approximately one and a half million of its 2.5 million Palestinian inhabitants was one bombshell he threw this week, in an apparently off-the-cuff statement made to reporters while on Air Force One on 25 January. Advocating the forcible transfer or relocation of the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, designated by UN statutes and international law as Palestinian, is not new for either the Israeli extreme right or for Trump. In 2017 during his first presidential term, Trump adopted the idea, which was subsequently abandoned. For the Israeli far right, freeing up the West Bank, which is now witnessing a Gaza-like incursion by the Israeli military, and appropriating it by means of settlements into Israel, remains a long-harboured dream. More surprising than the suggestion itself, however, was the speed with which it was made, barely five days into the Trump presidency that began on 20 January. It also seemed flagrantly expressed, in view of Trump's repeated statements that he would be the man to 'bring peace' and 'end conflict' in the Middle East. The transfer suggestion came on the back of a spate of declarations by Trump, also within hours of coming into office, in which he declared his intention to appropriate Greenland, the Gulf of Mexico, and prior to that, Canada. Trump made the claims within the context of his MAGA (Make America Great Again) policy, and he did not mince his words regarding 'clear gains' that would accrue to the US if it somehow annexed these territories. By contrast, he said his motive for the suggestion to transfer the Palestinian population out of Gaza was a humanitarian one and was intended to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people in the wake of Israel's war on Gaza. 'Almost everything is demolished, and people are dying there,' Trump said, adding that clearing the Gaza Strip of its inhabitants who were now living in ruins, and which he described as 'looking like a demolition site,' would help speed up its reconstruction. Asked by reporters if his proposed transfer of Palestinians from their land would be temporary, Trump said, as if in an after-thought, that it 'could be temporary, [or] it could be long term.' The designated hosts of Trump's transfer plan, Egypt and Jordan, also the two countries with the longest-standing and most strategically important peace treaties with Israel, unequivocally refused Trump's suggestion. Their foreign ministries underscored their governments' continuing commitment to a political solution to the Palestinian question, in line with UN resolutions and international law, and ultimately leading to the establishment of a state for the Palestinians. An Egyptian Foreign Ministry statement referred to the Palestinian issue as the 'central issue in the Middle East, which necessitates a political resolution and whose delay is continuing to fuel conflict within the region.' Even as Trump made his proposal for their transfer, on the ground thousands of Palestinians stood in southern Gaza waiting for the Israeli military's permission to return to their homes in northern Gaza, as part of the implementation of the ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel. After over a year of displacement, they proceeded to pitch their tents and construct makeshift homes in the rubble of their houses, which had been almost completely destroyed by Israel's war. At the onset of his second term in office, Trump's pro-Israel policy is a perfect reproduction of what he adopted during his first term. The current ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, which his administration played a major role in forging even before he formally started this presidency, gives Israel the leeway to opt out and resume its war on Gaza at any time that it deems fit. This has been bolstered by the removal of the armaments hold enforced by the Biden administration on the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with Trump this week signing an affidavit for the release of MK-84 bombs to Israel. In 2017, Trump recognised Israel's sovereignty over East Jerusalem and the Occupied Golan Heights. He moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem and stopped US funding of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and UNRWA, the UN Palestinian refugee agency, which is the world's largest and most long-standing. UNRWA was established in December 1949, specifically for Palestinian refugees in the wake of the establishment of the state of Israel. The current curtailing and debilitating of UNRWA's work in Gaza still stands, to the detriment of endeavours to effectively aid the war-ravaged population there. Trump also wasted no time during his first term in giving top priority to pro-Israel policies that saw him appoint extreme-right advisers, such as his personal bankruptcy lawyer David Friedman, whom he designated as US ambassador to Israel, and Nikki Hailey, whom he appointed as US representative at the UN and whose record showed her to be flagrantly anti-Palestinian. Now, with Trump's second presidency starting, Israel's far right and extremist factions have been emboldened by seeing their policies bolstered by the new US president's fiercely pro-Zionist foreign policy team, which is operating within a hawkish and extreme right vision of how Israel should conduct itself versus its 'adversaries.' Trump's Secretary of State Marco Rubio, his just-appointed Secretary of Defence Pete Hethgeth, his Representative to the UN Elise Stefanik, and his newly appointed Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, have been hailed by the Israeli far right as a 'dream team' whose partiality to the Zionist vision far exceeds its wildest expectations. A case in point is Trump's appointment of Huckabee as US ambassador to Israel. Huckabee, an evangelical Christian, has been appointed to a crucial diplomatic position in a country where the Palestinian presence is a fact of daily life both demographically and in terms of politics. Yet, Huckabee, fuelled by ideological and religious fervour, has been known to totally deny the existence of the Palestinian population, whether physically or historically. Trump's suggestion of the transfer of the Palestinians out of their remaining land, which could spread to encompass the West Bank, was hailed by former armed settler and extreme right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. In Trump's world, as well as that of his pro-Zionist foreign policy advisers, the transfer of the Palestinians out of historic Palestine would be the perfect, in the words of Smotrich 'out of the box' solution to the long-standing presence of the Palestinians whose existence continues to obstruct the realisation of the Zionist dream. Such a solution would resolve other problems for Israel as well, since it is not known who will undertake the reconstruction of Gaza if Hamas is still operating there, or who will rule it with whom, whether the PA, the Palestinian factions, or other bodies. If made devoid of its demographic content, a construction-site-like Gaza would lend itself to being managed by a hybrid arrangement of administrators and security personnel who would represent investors forging new and profitable deals. But it is only to a mind devoid of any sense of history or of the reality on the ground that such a vision could represent a solution for Israel or just treatment of the Palestinians. Trump's first foreign policy visit as first-term president in May 2017 was to Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, and Egypt. Today, with the start of his second term, Trump has said that he might once again make Saudi Arabia his first foreign policy destination, in view of the investment and trade opportunities that exist for both the US and Saudi Arabia, in addition to regional geopolitical interests. But the Palestinian issue still looms large, throwing its shadow over all potential deals and understandings. It cannot be 'demolished' like an old and ruined structure or eradicated to give way to a new and more commercially profitable 'arrangement.' What was once called the Arab-Israeli conflict has over the past two decades been renamed, mainly in the US and Western media, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It is as if a conceptual redefining of a huge problem somehow makes it less so. The continuing aggression by Israel on occupied Palestinian land and the ongoing dispossession of the Palestinians are not a simple territorial spat affecting two 'groups,' the Palestinians and the Israelis. These things are part of an act of injustice of historic proportions that has continued to impact virtually every country in the region for the past hundred years. It is an Arab-Israeli issue and must be recognised as such. Virtually all of the Arab countries, Saudi Arabia and the UAE included, have repeatedly stated that any peace deals with Israel can only be predicated on a resolution to the question of the Palestinians displaced from their land in 1948 and 1967, and to their ongoing dispossession and the creation of a Palestinian state. If this were not the case, why would the quest for the completion of the so-called Abraham Accords, touted as bringing the normalisation of diplomatic relations between Israel and the Gulf states and beyond, and which is so coveted by Israel and Trump, still continue to be derailed? Trump wants to be remembered as a unifier and a man of peace. It is to be feared that instead he may demolish his way forward. * A version of this article appears in print in the 30 January, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Short link:
