All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show.
I am the Director of the Libertarian Institute, Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and I've recorded more than 5,000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org.
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All right, you guys on the line.
I've got Ted Snyder again here, turns out, of course, from antiwar.com.
And it turns out that I think it was just a couple of hours after we finished speaking last Friday about the UAE deal with Israel, the news broke that Bahrain had also cut a deal.
Yeah, I think we just hung up the phone.
Yeah, right.
It was almost immediately after, I thought.
I didn't want to overstate it, but it really was.
And then so, yeah.
So the good news is, then Ted turned around and fired off another peace force that we're running at antiwar.com.
It's called Peace Plans That Have Nothing to Do with Peace.
Of course, before that was the subject of last Friday's interview was, what's in the Israel-UAE agreement?
Here's five things that aren't.
I think I'm enunciating that right.
So the Peace Plans That Have Nothing to Do with Peace, and you know what, we don't have to do a whole 45 minute thing on this.
We can basically just do the Bahrain update to our last conversation, maybe remind us again about the Netanyahu doctrine and such.
But anyway, go right ahead, please, sir.
Yeah, I mean, the things that weren't in the UAE agreement are the same things that aren't in the Bahrain agreement.
It's a peace plan that's not a peace plan, because they were always at peace.
It's a new normalization of relations that's not new, because the normalization goes back, you know, a long time.
It's a plan that really has a lot more to do with, you know, hostilities with Iran than it does with peace with anybody or peace with the Palestinians.
The UAE agreement, at least, as we talked about in our last show, at least tried to package it as having something to do with the Palestinians.
The Bahrain one is bold enough to not even put it in the packaging.
It's a complete abandonment of the Palestinians with just, you know, all eyes on their own self-interest and on Iran.
So it's really the same thing as the UAE one, and in some ways, even more extreme.
Man.
So it doesn't even mention the Palestinians at all, huh?
Well, you know, it mentions them, but it does nothing.
I mean, what the statements out of Bahrain have said that, you know, everything we do and everything we've always done has been done in the interest of the Palestinian people and everything.
You know, our decisions are about protecting the Palestinian people and that this one is too.
But, but there's nothing in the agreement that addresses the interests of the Palestinian people.
That's just, it's actually a complete betrayal because Bahrain's always been a signatory to the, you know, the Saudi initiative that said that you don't normalize diplomatic ties with Israel until Israel signed a peace deal with the Palestinians that gives the Palestinians, you know, their own nation in the, in the pre 67 borders.
All this agreement says at all, like the only mentioned of the Palestinians is the text says that we'll continue on our efforts to achieve an enduring solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but continue in our efforts.
Our efforts have been nothing.
So continue on our efforts is a continuation of nothing.
So there's, there's literally nothing in this agreement about the Palestinians, except the sort of placating them by saying we'll keep trying.
But they haven't been trying and there's nothing in the agreement at all.
All this agreement shows is that Israel can make a peace deal with the Gulf Arab countries without addressing the Palestinian issue.
It had always been assumed in the past that there would be no normalization without addressing it.
So this doesn't protect the Palestinians.
It, it abandons them.
The UAE one at least recognized that for domestic consumption, they'd have to make it look like it helped the Palestinians by talking about stopping or suspending the annexation of the West Bank, which was never true.
But at least, at least they knew that the public optic had to include that.
The Bahrainian one is, is kind of bold enough that it doesn't even make that optic.
It just makes the kind of vacuous promise that we look after you, but there's nothing there for the Palestinians.
All right.
So Ted, one thing is not just what difference does it make for the Palestinians, but what difference does it really make for Israel if the deal all along was, well, none of us, you know, Arab monarchies are going to recognize you until you give up the West Bank and let the Palestinians have it.
And now they've decided, oh, well, we'll go ahead and normalize relations with you anyway.
You know, as you talked about, they pretty much already had normalized relations and they never were really lifting a finger to help the Palestinians in the first place.
And so what really changes as a result of the official normalization here?
So we talked about the UAE and Israel having relations normalized going back probably the 1970s.
In terms of Bahrain, it goes back at least a quarter of a century.
Israel and Bahrain have had informal economic relations for a couple of decades.
In 2017, Bahrain had already sent a delegation to Israel.
As early as 1994, Israeli cabinet officials had been to Bahrain.
But it's got sort of the biggest, most telling one.
And I haven't seen much talk about this, but three years ago in 2017, the king of Bahrain had already sent a message to Israel through their foreign ministers saying that he'd already made the decision to move towards normalization with Israel.
So there's nothing new here.
So what does it change for Israel?
I think there's two ways to look at it.
One is, what does it change for Israel?
And the other one is, why did Trump and the states try to make it happen?
Now, what changes for Israel is that there had always been the look that the Arab nations, the Sunni Arab nations, the Gulf nations wouldn't normalize relations with Israel until some kind of Palestinian accord.
But what changes now is that Israel gets to show, Netanyahu gets to show that he can actually make peace without giving up land.
He can make peace with an Arab nation without giving up land to the Palestinians.
And it lets him show that he can make a deal with an Arab nation without taking into consider the Palestinians.
That's a, you know, that's a big thing for Netanyahu to be able to show at a time that he's not pulling very well.
It's also important for Trump for the same reason.
Like, why is it happening now?
Like, this is a question that doesn't get asked a lot.
If the relations were already normalized, then why do this now?
And I think the thing is that, you know, Trump had promised this deal of the century with the Palestinians and after four years in office, it didn't materialize.
He's got nothing to show coming into an election.
So with weeks before an election, not able to get the big deal with the Palestinians, he goes for the low hanging fruit.
He can't get the Palestinian, he can't get the big Palestinian deal.
So what he does is he goes to the countries that already have informal deals with Israel.
And he just says to the people that were already his allies, well, you admit out loud what you're already doing.
So they say, you know, they say, sure, they come and they admit out loud what they're already doing.
So, so this is a way of doing nothing that that looks like something for Trump.
And it looks like a major victory for Netanyahu, because here's a prime minister who can sign two accords with Arab nations, you know, in a in a week, and he can do it without giving up land.
And he can he can show for domestic consumption that I don't need to address the Palestinian problem to make a peace treaty with an Arab nation.
So optically, it's big for Netanyahu and the timing is because it's optically really big for Trump.
Right.
So it doesn't really change anything for the state of Israel, but just for the men who run it.
That makes sense.
It doesn't change anything for the state of Israel.
It changes something for the Palestinians and that they always at least had the look that Arab nations were going to back them.
You know, this is an abandonment by Bahrain and the UAE of the Palestinians who now don't even seem to have the public optic that that Arab nations won't normalize with Israel with unless it gets taken care of in Palestine.
Hold on just one second.
Be right back.
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All right man, well, and as far as Bahrain, I mean this is a tiny little island connected to Saudi by a causeway.
And I say that because I always forget that term when I'm trying to remember it.
Telling the story of how Saudi helped crush the uprising there in 2011 by sending their military across the causeway.
And then- So Scott, what's- It's a tiny- What's the point about that?
What's the population of Bahrain anyway?
It's a tiny little country, but- Oh, I know what you were about to say, go ahead.
I think it's like a million and a half, but I mean, like the important thing is people talk about the Saudis crushing the Bahrainian rebellion, but what you need to remember is when the Saudis crushed the Bahrainian protest, US weapons played a huge role in that.
And so it was the Americans and the Saudis that crushed it.
And the reason is because the US has always seen Bahrain as a really crucial check on Iranian influence and power.
They're sitting on the Straits of Hormuz between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
There are 70% Shia population with a brutally repressive Sunni dictator who every time the Shia ask for any kind of rights, accuses them of being Iranian terrorists.
So even though high level international investigations showed that Iran had no involvement in the Sunni protests in Bahrain, it got blamed on.
The Shia?
Yeah, the Shia.
Sorry, the Shia uprisings in Bahrain, it was presented as an Iranian thing and the US sent massive arms into Saudi Arabia to crush it.
So this is more about, again, Bahrain is more about Iran than it is about Palestine.
They've always been seen by the United States as a way of checking Iran.
The US military controls 20% of the land of Bahrain, right?
There's a massive American presence here as a checkpoint on Iran.
It's the home of the Fifth Fleet.
It's the home of the Fifth Fleet.
It's a massive naval base.
And this has all been presented to Bahrain and UAE.
The American administration has been really clear that this is part of a larger package.
These treaties are a larger package to confront Iran.
And that's why they keep telling Israel, you shouldn't worry about the F-35 planes going to Bahrain or the UAE because this is part of an alliance against Iran and they'll be using these planes against your enemy, Iran.
So Bahrain's always been seen as a sort of check on Iran.
And you know, the Bahrainian foreign minister, when Israel was bombing Arab countries last year, he's bombing Iraq and bombing Syria and bombing Lebanon, all countries seen as allied with Iran, he made it really clear that what this is about, that he sides with Israel against Iran, that that's what the alliance is.
And he actually said that Iran's the one that declared war on us, you know, with the Revolutionary Guard and Yemen and Lebanon.
And he says, if Israel beats and destroys Iranian equipment, then it's self-defense.
So they've made it clear for a long time that this whole sort of normalization and of relations is really about opposing Iran.
And he also said in a really striking comment, I'm going to quote this one Scott, because I don't want to blow it.
He said, this is Bahrain.
We grew up talking about the Palestine-Israel dispute as the most important issue.
But then at a later stage, we saw a bigger challenge.
We saw a more toxic one.
In fact, the most toxic in our modern history, which came in the form of the Islamic Republic from Iran.
So this is Bahrain clearly saying it's no longer for us about defending the Palestinians.
It's completely for us about confronting Iran.
And that's that's all this agreement is.
Which is funny, because you could have said, hey, we care a lot about the Palestinians.
But it's just in this case or something.
Right.
But he didn't even bother with that.
Oh, them?
Yeah.
Let me see how far under the bus I could throw him.
And by the way, this is just for fun, Ted.
Israel asked U.S. for $8 billion worth of warplanes to preserve its qualitative edge.
This is Jason Ditz at news.antiwar.com.
And I'll go ahead and ruin the joke for everyone.
The U.S. has promised F-35s to UAE as part of the peace deal with Israel.
Now Israel is saying, oh, no, the UAE is going to have F-35s.
So that means we want even more F-35s because we're worried that we're going to you know, this is going to start an arms race.
And you might think that they're talking about starting an arms race with Iran.
But what are they going to do?
Buy an air force from Russia or something?
Right.
They're flying F-4s and F-14s that Richard Nixon gave them.
And with no spare parts.
Right.
Scott, if you push that further.
So it's Israel.
Israel is going to have a cold war with UAE with both sides flying F-35s.
I hope they fight soon.
And there's two things there.
If you push that further, if you look sort of, if you push deeper into the Israeli ask, they're not only asking for F-35s, they're not only asking for helicopters, they're also asking for bunker bombs.
And bunker bombs are what you use for hitting Iranian nuclear installations.
So again, this is about Iran.
And the way this happens.
And these are, by the way, weapons that Bush and Obama didn't give.
Well, actually, I don't think that's right.
I think Obama did give them bunker busters.
I think Bush refused.
I think Obama already did give them some.
But what you've got, what you've got, Scott, is you've got Netanyahu saying he opposes the F-35s to the UAE and Bahrain.
And then when Israel concedes that we really can't stop them, because Netanyahu agreed to it, when Israel concedes that we really can't stop them, then they shift to plan B.
If we can't stop the Gulf states from getting the planes, then we need to ask for more.
This really becomes about Israel getting more military equipment from the states.
So that's probably part of what the deal was always about.
They knew they couldn't stop the F-35s, but they knew they could ask for more to keep their military edge.
So they asked for $8 billion on top of what they're already getting, which is, I forget what, $35 billion?
But again, the F-35s for the UAE were part of the peace deal with Israel in the first place.
Right.
Right.
So who's the nuclear, who's the arms race with, right?
It's with themselves.
And, you know, Israel also talks about being afraid that there'll be a change in the governments in some of these countries.
And, you know, looking back, Israel used to have a peace plan with Iran, then Iran changed its government.
And uh-oh.
So part of this is like maybe if they have planes and governments change, they have planes.
But really, this is about, you know, Israel using this to get more military equipment from the states.
And I think the really significant one in there, and this is early stuff, so I may turn out to be wrong.
But I think the really significant one in there is that they're also asking for bunker bombs.
And that, again, means that the focus of this is really on Iran.
Yeah.
Well, and to be specific there, it's not for bunkers.
It's for the Natanz nuclear facility is what that means.
Yeah.
And Iran just announced they're going way deeper underground with, because the Israelis just attacked it and blew it up somehow.
So that drives Natanz, you know, deeper underground, and then you get the Israelis asking for bunker bombs.
This is really early stuff.
Like what Israel's asking, it's very speculative.
So this may turn out to be nothing.
But I think you're absolutely right that part of this thing was that when Israel concedes they can't stop the F-35s, it gives them the opportunity to, in order to keep their edge, it gives them the opportunity to ask Congress for massive amounts of more military equipment for Israel.
Yeah.
And look, the idea that they're building this whole, well, have built and maintain this giant alliance system to deter Iran is just ridiculous.
Deter them from what?
They don't even have a land army.
They don't even have a Navy or an Air Force.
They have no, they certainly have the ability to defend themselves, as we saw in the 80s when America sponsored Saddam Hussein's war against them and Israel backed the Iranian side.
You know, Scott, when Israel's value to the United States was always seen in the context of a Cold War, there were bulk work against the Soviet Union, and when the Soviet Union left was no longer a factor.
It was always in Israel's interest to have a new enemy, a new Iran, that would be a reason for maintaining Israel.
And the Gulf states, they get their weapons from the states because they're a bulk word against American enemies, and now it's Iran.
It's very much in their interest to show that Iran's this danger that we need.
It's how they get their arms, right?
Iran's never been a danger to them.
Iran doesn't have a nuclear bomb.
They're not going after a nuclear bomb.
They've never attacked these countries.
But it's very much in the interest of these countries to say, we need to form an alliance against Iran because that's why America's going to back these dictators.
America has no use for the dictators in Bahrain or Saudi Arabia or the UAE unless those dictators are going to be there to fight Iran.
So keeping Iran as the thing we need this alliance for keeps the dictators in power, and it keeps the arms coming in.
So, of course, you present this as an alliance against Iran, right?
There's nothing there to ally against Iran.
One of the high-level Israeli strategists explained to Trita Parsi that we had exactly the problem you just described with the Soviet Union gone.
We need a new glue for the alliance.
And that was radical Islam, and that meant Iran.
And then, of course- That's exactly it.
Yeah.
And then in the meantime, of course, they can use that so broadly to mean any enemy they want.
And then they can also dispense with it when they want to call jihadist bin Ladenite terrorists moderates or whatever, and use them again like it's the old days and September 11th never happened.
That's exactly as Trita said.
That's the whole reason why Israel made this shift from asking the states to support Iran after the Ayatollahs, after the revolution, to making Iran the enemy.
It was all because they were worried that without the Soviet Union, they're going to have no value to the states.
So they needed a Soviet Union, too.
And Iran got cast in that role.
And all this nightmare we've seen since then with Iran and stopping all this stuff, it's all been about needing Iran to hold the Israeli-U.S. glue together.
That's the whole alliance with the Sunni Gulf nations, is that if you can have them presented as being against Iran, then you can say your interest lies with Israel.
So they ally with Israel and you get these alliances, and that keeps the dictators in power.
It keeps them getting U.S. military stuff, but it's exactly what the quote you just gave from Trita is exactly.
That was the exact same thing I was thinking about.
I did a piece on that for Antwerp a couple of years ago.
I wish I could remember what it was called, where I talked about that whole reason why they do that shift.
And that's what you're seeing now, this sort of fake alliance that if Iran's the common enemy of the UAE and Bahrain and Israel, then they can ally together and sign these alliances in opposition to Iran.
But there is no opposition or conflict with Iran.
There never was any of this, any more than there was ever a war between them to make a peace treaty.
There's always been peace.
There's no need for this peace treaty.
It's optics.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, thanks very much for your time again on the show, Ted.
I appreciate you coming on to catch us up on this.
It's always a pleasure talking with you.
All right, you guys.
That's Ted Snyder, writes for us regularly at antiwar.com.
And the latest is, nope, that's Jason's, Israel asks the U.S. for $8 billion in war planes, which, you know, isn't giving them F-35s kind of sabotage?
That might be anti-Semitic to give them F-35s.
Those things fall right out of the sky.
No, Ted's piece is called Peace Plans That Have Nothing to Do with Peace.
