The Middle East is the suq of subterfuge of backstabbing…
Israel can never afford to hold pat, it’s enemies are always in the process of regrouping.
Erdoğan views himself as a neo-Ottoman ruler and the head of the Muslim Brotherhood. As such, at the outset of the war in Syria, Erdoğan bet on the Sunnis. With halting, lackadaisical U.S. support, he formed the Free Syria Army. The FSA was presented as a coherent fighting force with the will and capacity to defeat Assad and his Iranian patrons, but it was nothing of the sort. The FSA, dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, was a hodgepodge of fighters with no coherent ideology or operational plan. Over time, it was eclipsed by Islamic fanatics who used the FSA organizational framework to form what became the Islamic State (ISIS).
Since Erdoğan supports Islamists, he placed no limits on the entry of foreign fighters to Turkey en route to Syria. From 2013 to 2015, the Turkish side of the Turkish-Syrian border became the logistical base and economic hub of ISIS in Syria.
The massive, but reversible, defeats of Iran and Turkey
(February 23, 2020 / JNS) With our attention focused on other things—Israel’s elections, the legal fraternity’s aggressive lawfare against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan, to name just a few—profound strategic shifts have upended the strategic balance in the Middle East.
Israel’s two most formidable adversaries—Iran and Turkey—both came up short in their quests for regional domination, and Israel is reaping the rewards of their losses.
Two weeks ago, Netanyahu held a previously unannounced meeting in Uganda with Sudanese President Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan. Instant commentaries presented the meeting as a salutary side product of the Trump plan, but the truth is much more significant. The sight of the two leaders sitting next to one another, smiling, made heads explode from Tehran to Ramallah. The Netanyahu-Burhan meeting was no mere byproduct of a peace plan. It was a long-planned and hoped-for result of a set of policies that, aided by good fortune, dealt a cataclysmic blow to Iran and its terrorist proxies in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
Until last April, Sudan was ruled for 30 years by Omar al-Bashir. Bashir, an Islamist, was a major sponsor of global terrorism. From 1991-1995, Al-Qaeda was headquartered in Khartoum.
Al-Bashir was also a close ally of Iran. He permitted the Iranian regime to use Sudanese ports to move weapons to Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, to Hezbollah in Lebanon and to the Assad regime in Syria. Al-Bashir also allowed the Iranians to use Sudanese territory to surround Saudi Arabia, to transfer weapons to the Houthis in Yemen and to threaten the Saudi port in Jeddah, outside of Mecca, and to threaten Saudi oil platforms at Yanbu.
In December 2018, disgusted by rampant corruption and human rights abuses, the Sudanese people rose up against their leaders. For five months, massive anti-government protests were held throughout the country. Responding to public pressure, last April the Sudanese military overthrew al-Bashir.
The units that overthrew al-Bashir were supported by the Gulf states, Egypt, the United States and, according to some reports, Israel. The new regime, which is pledged to transition to some form of democracy within two years, is supported by these governments.
