Disaster in the DesertNovember/December 2019 13publicly with its neighbors. Arab states
are often willing to make common cause
with Israel under the table; Saudi
Arabia has been doing so since the
1960s. But an open association with the
Jewish state would allow Iran to pum-
mel them for their apostasy and gener-
ate domestic dissent.
In February o this year, for exam-
ple, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu attempted to
organize an anti-Iran conference in
Poland. Netanyahu tweeted that it was
“an open meeting with representatives
o leading Arab countries, that are
sitting down together with Israel in
order to advance the common interest
o combating Iran.” Yet the Arab
foreign ministers refused to appear on
the same panel with him in the confer-
ence’s general forum. The best the
Israeli leader could do was post an
illicitly Älmed video on YouTube o the
foreign ministers o Bahrain, Saudi
Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates
discussing Israel. (The video was
quickly taken down.) As for the United
States’ European allies, they mostly
sent low-level representatives, whose
fate there was to be publicly chastised
by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence for
attempting to discourage Iran from
breaking out o the nuclear agreement.
In Syria, meanwhile, Israel can’t
achieve its objective o evicting the
Iranian presence, which includes Iranian-
backed militias with some 40,
troops, without outside help. But with
the United States heading for the exits
there, Israel has had no choice but to
seek Russia’s assistance, given its mili-
tary presence and its inÁuence on the
Assad regime. Repeated visits by
Netanyahu to Moscow, however, haveThese moves were not coordinated
with U.S. allies and partners. The
appeals o the other signatories to the
È¢¬—China, Russia, the United
Kingdom, France, Germany, and the
¤—were ignored, and they were even
threatened with U.S. sanctions i they
dared to buy Iranian oil, in contradic-
tion to the agreement they had signed.
Meanwhile, the president was deter-
mined to withdraw U.S. forces from the
region even more quickly than his
predecessor had. The administration
dramatically increased its demands on
Iran, in other words, at precisely the
same time that it was reducing its ability
and will to deter Tehran’s nefarious
activity in the region. The gap between
rhetoric and reality was best expressed
by Pompeo, who, one month after
Trump made clear that he was deter-
mined to remove every remaining U.S.
soldier from Syria, declared that the
United States intended to “expel every
last Iranian boot” from the country.
The chasm between intentions and
capabilities would not be a problem, the
Trump team insisted, because most o
the burden o containing Iran would be
borne by Washington’s two powerful
regional partners, Israel and Saudi
Arabia. There was a superÄcial logic to
this approach, since Israel is now the
strongest power in the region and Saudi
Arabia is rich and inÁuential. But it
cannot stand up to scrutiny.
Israel has formidable military capa-
bilities and a common interest with
Sunni Arab states in countering Iran,
but the United States cannot depend on
the Jewish state to promote its interests
in the Arab world. Israel’s unresolved
conÁict with the Palestinians has placed
a ceiling on its ability to cooperate