By Ameer Ali –

Dr. Ameer Ali

The reason why Donald Trump took that foolish decision on 28^th February to bomb Iran without any provocation from the victim has now been established as his kow-tow to pressure from that “Zionist entity” called Israel and its powerful lobby in Washington which financially backed Trump’s presidential campaign. It was originally thought to be a two-week affair with hands down victory to the aggressor; but it backfired, and even after four months and with Iranian blockage and Trump’s counter blockage of the Strait of Hormuz the war is dragging on and causing immense financial strain and economic hardship not only to the two warring countries but throughout the world. A war induced cost-push inflation and resource constraint combined with climate crisis is causing crippling food shortages in several countries. But Trump’s rigmarole of conflicting announcements about an imminent solution to the Iran war continues ad nauseam; and surprisingly it is not the Iranian regime which he wanted to overthrow in the first place but his own regime that is desperately looking for a face-saving outcome. It is in this context the reemergence of Trump’s 2020 Abraham Accord calling all Arab countries including Egypt and Jordan to join in and start normalising relations with Israel deserves critical consideration. Already the Saudi Fatwa House has rejected this accord totally even though the Saudi regime like UAE was secretly supporting the US-Israel war against Iran.

The strategic reason for bombing Iran was to remove that country’s legitimate desire to become a counterbalance against Israel’s existing nuclear supremacy in the Middle East. It is an open secret that Israel’s nuclear arsenal is the direct outcome of a US strategy to develop that country as the superpower’s deputy sherif to oversee the US manufactured Middle East Order. Currently, Israel is one of the nine countries possessing nuclear weapons and it is the only one in the Middle East. Israel does not want any Arab country to challenge its military might and that was the reason why US bombed and destroyed two Arab countries, Libya and Iraq, that were previously thought to be preparing to strengthen their own defence capabilities by producing what US and its Western allies called “weapons of mass destruction (WMD)”. The question why an Arab or Muslim country in the Middle East shouldn’t also possess nuclear weapons as Israel to create a balance of power in that region is never raised by any Western analyst or reporter. To Israel on the other hand the existing order also provides a splendid opportunity to realize the long-term Zionist dream of Ersatz or Greater Israel which is said to extend from the river Nile to Euphrates, but to the Zionist extremists it stretches even beyond that and as far as Saudi Arabia. These extremists have not forgotten how the Jewish tribes in Mecca during Prophet Muhammad’s time were treated and eventually evicted from Arabia. Israel’s invasion of and scorched earth policy over Southern Lebanon, its occupation of seventy percent of Gaza’s territory and systematic but illegal eviction of Palestinians from their land and properties in the Occupied West Bank are all part of that grand ideal of Ersatz Israel. Israel has made a mockery of Trump’s every ceasefire declaration over Gaza and Lebanon. The genie is out of the bottle Mr. President!

Coming back to the Abraham Accord, the original intention of this proposal was commercial, and it was to exploit the marine oil and gas resources of Gaza to which Palestinians were legally denied access. Trump wanted Israel to join the other two signatories Bahrain and UAE and build an oil and gas resource base at its own doorstep. When Trump lost the election in 2020 his successor Joe Biden cajoled without success Saudi Arabia to sign in, and Trump’s visit to the Middle East after being re-elected was also to entrap the Gulf countries including Egypt and Jordan to sign that accord to “achieve peace with prosperity”. Steve Witkoff the US Special Envoy for Peace Missions was very optimistic in one of his interviews to the media that the Accord would net in more countries than expected and would bring peace and stability to the Middle East region. Is there a hidden agenda here?

So far, no Arab government has openly endorsed the Saudi Fatwa House’s rejection of the accord. Historically, if there is one characteristic that dominates inter-Arab relations it is their disunity. In his 2019 publication, Arabs, Tim Mackintosh-Smith had detailed this aspect with plenty of evidence. In the 1948 Palestine war for example had it not been for Jordan’s behind the scenes negotiations with Israel the Egyptian army would have won that war according to Jewish historian Ilan Pappe. However, since that defeat the Arab countries should have realised that Israel is an existentialist threat to all of them and they need to act collectively to strengthen their own defence capabilities. Instead, all they did was to surrender their defence needs at the feet of Britain first and US later. Today US maintains around eight bases in the region including Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. When the war broke out in February, Iran retaliated by attacking these bases which made the Gulf countries which frightened the regimes and made them run to Trump to halt attack from those bases. Trump’s response was the Abraham Accord.

Of all the Arab countries the one that is said to be the most American is Jordan, which is historically bestowed with the custodianship over the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest precinct of Islam and Muslims. It also protects the Islamic identity of Jerusalem. But US and Israel are now conniving to erase that identity and wants to divest Jordan of its custodianship over Al-Aqsa, all in the name of transforming Jerusalem into a world centre of multi-faith with shared heritage and equal access to all three monotheistic faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam. If this were to be allowed the Zionists will eventually destroy Al-Aqsa and build David’s temple on that very spot. If Jordan were to sign the Abraham Accord and normalise relations with Israel that would be the ultimate gift to far right Zionism, and Trump could advertise that as his historic achievement out of the Iran war. Will the world of Islam wake up to prevent this hidden agenda becoming a sad reality?