Bahraini Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-ZayaniIsraeli, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Donald J. Trump, Emirati Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan after signing the Abraham Accords, September 15, 2020, on the South Lawn of the White House
April 13, 2024, Iran’s attempted retaliation against Israel marks a watershed moment in the history of contemporary Middle East that might bring Arab monarchies and Israel ever closer than before.
Indeed, major Arab conservative monarchies seem to have entered an unwritten Entente with Israel against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Despite all their condemnations of Israel’s operation in Gaza and its tragic humanitarian consequences, the escalation of conflict between Israel and the Iranian regime may convince the major Arab monarchies in the Middle East that they would rather rise to stop the assault on Israel by Iran and its proxies than sit idly by. Instead of submitting to a balance of terror by Iran and its proxies, they may very well choose to strike a balance of containment and stability. Understandably, such an argument runs counter to a somewhat prevailing view of Hamas’ 7 October attack on Israel convinced must have stalled any normalization between the Arab monarchies in the region and Israel for a long time to come.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken with Arab and Israeli officials in a conference in Israel. March 2022
Yet, on April 13, 2024, after signaling its intention to direct a retaliatory strike from the Iranian soil against Israel, the Iranian regime launched a rather long-winded mixture of kamikaze drones, cruise, and ballistic missiles towards Israel. In coordination with their patron, the Iranian allied regional proxies at once launched projectiles of all types towards Israel. Israel by the afternoon of the same day declared that over 99 percent of the devices had been intercepted and destroyed. Many of them had in fact been eliminated even before they reached the Israeli air space.
In addition to the US, France, and UK that engaged their air defences and air forces in defence of Israel, several Arab countries did at once engage their air defences against such projectiles as they were discovered to be using these countries’ air space. However, with the exception of Jordan, all these Arab countries have been silent about their true role in thwarting the swarm that Iran and its proxies unleashed towards Israel. Even the Jordanian King Abdullah cited the principle of “raison d’état” to justify his country’s intervention: “Jordan won't be an arena for a regional war”. Saudi Arabia’s silence about its possible action against the Yemeni projectiles that flew through its air space to reach Israel is all too conspicuous. It is highly likely that the Kingdom did engage its air defence to shoot down some of the Houthi’s projectiles. Despite such news, many of the Abraham Accords skeptics continue to insist that the Arab countries may distance themselves from US and Israel ever further to shield themselves from the vengeance of Iran and its proxies.
All in all, the Iranian “attempted retaliation” has provided a litmus test for the rigour of the Abraham Accords like no other. And irrespective of Biden’s administration attempts to de-escalate tensions with Iran and prevent an all-out regional war between Iran and Israel, the Arab monarchies that endured a bloody war with the Yemeni Houthis are justified to be wary of the Iranian drone and missile technology in the aftermath of its attempted retaliation against Israel. In a decade or so, memoirs or archival documents may reveal that Saudi Arabia, UAE and Bahrain indeed actively shot down many of the projectiles that were launched towards Israel by Iran and its proxies. Their silence as to their instrumentality in thwarting the Iranian attack is all too comprehensible. They do not wish to come across to the Arab Public Opinion as the defenders of the Israeli state that they have been collectively condemning for the commission of crimes against humanity in Gaza since October 2023.
As actions speak louder than words, the likelihood of the Arab states’ participation in thwarting the Iranian retaliation speaks volumes about which “entity” they perceive to pose the greatest threat to the peace and security of the region: Iran’s Shia imperium and its armed proxies. In the meantime, pundits who have hitherto written off both the Abrham Accords and the Saudi Israeli rapprochement may wish to reconsider their previous “analyses.” Confirmation bias is an odd beast in international relations that preys on those who constantly seek to adjust “facts” to “confirm” the constant relevance of frameworks that have long been rendered obsolete. Recent events establish that Israel and the Arab states of the Middle East are members of a security military Entente against Iran’s Shia Imperium for all intents and purposes. Whether or not this Entente will ever be formalized is just a matter of time.