Fueling the Arms Race Alone

The U.S. and USSR used to sell arms to their Middle East clients, creating an East-West arms race. One of the oddities was that the American government sold both to Israel and to Israel’s enemies – a sale to Saudi Arabia or Egypt prompting counter sales to Israel, while the Soviets sold to Syria, Iraq and (post 1979) Iran. It’s a new day and an old story.

The U.S. and USSR used to sell arms to their Middle East clients, creating an East-West arms race. One of the oddities was that the American government sold both to Israel and to Israel’s enemies – a sale to Saudi Arabia or Egypt prompting counter sales to Israel, while the Soviets sold to Syria, Iraq and (post 1979) Iran. It’s a new day and an old story.

Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States will be purchasing multibillions worth of high tech arms from America presumably because they are concerned about threats from Iran. The U.S. will have to provide arms to Israel either so that it can defend against what the Saudis receive or to ensure that Israel’s friends in Congress will not oppose the Saudi sale. And Egypt, wedded to the Camp David “understanding” (not actually part of the Camp David Accords) demands a percentage of what is sold to Israel.

The U.S. position is predicated on the assumption that Iran will attack Saudi Arabia frontally and the Saudis will have to respond alone – VERY dubious propositions both. Iran is much more likely to subvert the kingdom by inciting insurrection among the Shiites in the oil producing region. JDAMS won’t help. And, should Iran be so foolish as to attack frontally, it is inconceivable that the U.S. would stand by and allow Saudi Arabia – whose long-term security we have guaranteed for more than 50 years – to face Iran alone.

But by our choices, the administration has opened the way for the corollary arms sales at precisely the moment the Russians have been looking to reenter the region as a military guarantor with none of the American – or old Soviet – baggage.

Putin, needing to appease Iran because he has again postponed fueling the Bushehr reactor, and knowing the U.S. can’t very well object, quickly announced the sale of long-range aircraft to Teheran. And, because Russia is flush with cash from high energy prices, Putin has forgiven Syrian debt to the old USSR, paving the way for new sales to Assad on credit.

Somehow it seems much more likely that the Russian clients will use the Russian-supplied arms than that the American supplied clients will use the American-supplied arms to advance the aims of their patrons.

And Israel? It is clear that the Israeli sales were timed to blunt Israeli opposition to the Saudi sales – and it worked. The U.S. and Israel see entirely eye-to-eye on the threat Iran poses to the region – both nuclear and Shiite Islamist fundamentalism. The State Department and the Israeli government also appear to see eye-to-eye on including Saudi Arabia in the circle of countries seeing eye-to-eye. But while Saudi Arabia is happy to climb on the anti-Iranian bandwagon, the U.S. and Israel should be clear on the fact that SUNNI Islamic fundamentalism is a threat to both countries through the funding of al Qaeda, the export of fighters to Iraq and the export of violent, anti-Semitic and anti-Western ideology around the world.

The enemy of my enemy can also be my enemy – as Saudi Arabia proves.