The Paper's special contributor Liu Zhongmin
When discussing the core issues of the Middle East, people are very accustomed to regarding the Palestinian question as the core issue of the Middle East, which is indeed in line with the history and reality of the Middle East for a long historical period. However, in recent years, the Middle East peace process has stagnated and the Palestinian issue has been continuously marginalized since the "Arab Spring", while the Iranian nuclear issue has become a long-term hot issue affecting the evolution of the international system and regional pattern at the global and regional levels, and has become a driving force affecting the differentiation and combination of international relations in the Middle East.
While the moral emphasis on the importance of the question of Palestine is justifiable, its marginalization is a harsh reality. Has the Iranian issue replaced the Palestinian issue as the central issue in the Middle East? Have the main contradictions in the Middle East also changed? This is the question that I am trying to think about.
On May 29, 2022, local time, Palestinian Ramallah, Palestinian protesters and Israeli border police broke out into clashes. This article pictures People's Vision Infographic
Changes in the core issues of the Middle East: an issue worth pondering
For a long time, the Palestinian question has always been regarded as the fundamental issue of the contemporary Middle East, and the resulting Arab-Israeli contradictions, that is, the Arab-Israeli contradictions, have also been regarded as the fundamental contradictions in the Middle East, especially the five Middle East wars (1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982) that accompanied the outbreak of Arab-Israeli contradictions, and have also become the main clue to the historical evolution of the contemporary Middle East, and the settlement of Arab-Israeli contradictions, especially the Palestinian issue, has always been the core discourse of the international community on Middle East affairs. The divergent combination of international relations in the Middle East and the relationship between major powers have also been carried out with this as the core, especially the Middle East peace process around the settlement of the Palestinian issue has become the core of Middle East affairs in the late 1970s and early 21st centuries.
Regrettably, the Palestinian question has not been resolved to this day, and conflicts have broken out from time to time and even led to local wars (such as the Gaza conflict in 2009, 2014 and 2021), but its intensity, scale and impact cannot be compared with the five Middle East wars. Although the international community, and the United Nations in particular, continue to pay attention to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the palestinian question, since the Middle East peace process came to a standstill in 2000, there has been even less hope for a political solution to the question of Palestine. Since the "Arab Spring" in 2011, the domestic development and transformation that Middle East countries have paid more attention to, as well as the Syrian crisis, the Libyan crisis, and the fight against the extremist organization "Islamic State" have successively become new regional hotspot issues, and the marginalization of the Palestinian issue has become an indisputable fact.
With the Stagnation of the Middle East peace process since the 21st century, another hot issue in the Middle East region, the Iranian nuclear issue and the international community's game around the settlement of the Iranian nuclear issue, has become a global issue that continues to this day and has far more contradictions and tensions than the Palestinian issue. In particular, in 2015, the Iranian nuclear agreement was reached, the United States withdrew from the Iranian nuclear agreement in 2018, and the United States restarted the Vienna negotiations on the Iranian nuclear agreement in 2021, and the P5+1 negotiation mechanism on the Iranian nuclear issue has become a platform for the extensive participation and complex game of the "five permanent members" of the United Nations Security Council and the world power centers such as Germany.
At the regional level, the constantly divergent combinations between Israel, arab countries, and Iran based on the Iranian nuclear issue have made the Iranian nuclear issue the core driving force affecting the evolution of the pattern in the Middle East region, and even strangely transformed the long-standing Arab-Israeli contradiction into an alternative combination of Israel and Arab countries jointly confronting Iran, the United States has promoted the normalization of Arab-Israeli relations through alienation of the Palestinian-Israeli issue and the so-called "Abraham Agreement", and the grip of the United States' political mobilization of Arab countries is the "Iranian threat".
Since 2021, complex internal and external factors have led to the intensification of the strategic overdraft situation of regional powers, and many contradictions erupting from the "Arab Spring" have been relatively eased, which in turn has led to a positive relaxation of relations between regional powers, the relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab countries, the relations between Turkey and Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other Arab countries, the relations within the Gulf Cooperation Council, and the relations between Arab countries and Syria. Israel, on the other hand, continues to improve its relations with Arab countries, normalizing relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco in 2020-2021.
At present, there are three main lines of détente in international relations in the Middle East, namely, the détente of regional international relations promoted by saudi arabia, Turkey and Israel as the main body, in this process, the limited détente between Iran and Arab countries is also part of the détente of regional international relations, but it is worth noting that the confrontation between Israel and Iran is still intensifying, and the dialogue détente between Saudi Arabia and Iran is still insufficient.
During the administration of former US President Trump, the United States vigorously promoted Israel and Arab countries to establish a Middle East version of NATO, that is, the "Middle East Strategic Alliance", which is obviously aimed at Iran. During the Trump administration, the United States not only withdrew from the Iranian nuclear agreement and restarted sanctions on Iran, but also promoted Saudi Arabia and Israel to confront Iran. On the Palestinian-Israeli issue, the United States has forced the so-called "agreement of the century" that is difficult for the Palestinian side to accept, and has vigorously favored Israel on the issues of the occupied territories, the status of Jerusalem, and Jewish settlements, completely ignoring Palestinian interests and feelings.
On July 16, 2022, local time, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, at the "Gulf Cooperation Council +3" summit, US President Biden took a group photo with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (center).
Since the current US President Joe Biden took office, the content of its Middle East policy has mainly included restarting negotiations on the Iranian nuclear agreement, reducing political and military support for allies such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, cooling down hotspot issues, and re-proposing the "two-state solution" to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli issue, but because its strategic focus has shifted to countering the strategic competition between China and Russia, it has continued to implement a strategic contraction policy of reducing investment in the Middle East, and the Middle East policy has made little achievement. With the evolution of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the status of Middle East allies, especially the Gulf energy powers, in the US sanctions against Russia is rising day by day. Therefore, while promoting the acceleration of negotiations on the Iranian nuclear agreement, the United States has recently attempted to form a "Middle East Air Defense Alliance" through Biden's visit to the Middle East, so as to achieve the dual purpose of containing Iran and controlling allies. It can be seen that the focus of the Us Middle East policy is once again focused on Iran.
Therefore, in the author's view, from the perspective of the driving force affecting the relationship between major powers and the regional pattern, the Iranian issue has replaced the Palestinian issue as the core issue in the Middle East. What needs to be explained is that the Iranian nuclear issue is only a part of the Iranian issue, not the entirety of the Iranian issue, it is only the most prominent manifestation of the Iranian issue in a specific period, and the Iranian issue is a comprehensive issue that includes a series of issues such as the contradictions between Iran and the West, especially the contradictions between the United States and Iran, the Islamic Revolution, the rise of Iran, and the contradictions between Iran and regional countries.
On November 10, 2019, local time, Bushehr, Iran, Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant.
Second, the iranian question is of increasing regional importance relative to the Palestinian question
In the affairs of the Middle East, the status of the Palestinian issue has gradually declined, the impact of the Iranian issue has been rising, and major changes have taken place in international relations in the Middle East, especially between arab countries, Israel and Iran.
As is well known, the question of Palestine is a product of Western colonialism, especially the divide-and-rule policy of Britain, and has long been the subject of the Arab National Liberation Movement's opposition to Western colonialism, imperialism and hegemonism. In an era of rising Arab nationalism, arab countries, under the leadership of Egypt, waged a long struggle against Israel and the West, highlighted by the first four Middle Eastern wars.
However, with the decline of Arab nationalism, Egypt made a separate peace with Israel (1979) after the launch of the Fourth Middle East War in 1973, which led to a serious division of the Arab world. Since then, Arab nationalism has nearly died out after the impact of the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf Crisis and the Gulf War, the Iraq War, and the "Arab Spring". It was precisely with the decline of Arab nationalism that the question of Palestine began to shift from the Arab-Israeli contradiction representing the collective Cause of the Arabs to the Palestinian-Israeli problem itself, that is, the transformation of the Arab-Israeli conflict into the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. While Arab states continue to support Palestine at the moral and political levels, their support and impact are nowhere near the same as in the 1950s and 1960s.
In Middle East affairs, the declining role of the Palestinian-Israeli issue and the rising role of the Iranian issue began in 1979, and its landmark events were the peace between Egypt and Israel and the outbreak of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran, as an ally of the United States, mainly as a strategic pillar of the United States in the Gulf region, played a relatively limited role in the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Palestinian issue, and Iran and Israel were also allies of the United States, although the relationship was not close, but also in the field of security cooperation. Due to the nature of Iran's Islamic state, Iran naturally cannot openly pro-Israel on the Palestinian issue, and the contradictions between Iran and Arab countries are not prominent.
However, the Islamic Revolution in Iran has completely changed the pattern of tripartite relations between Arab countries, Iran, and Israel, and Iran has ideologically opposed Israel and the pro-American Arab countries (especially the Gulf Arab countries) as vassals of the United States and the West. Israel, as a follower of the "Great Satan" United States, is the "Little Satan" that must be eliminated, instead becoming the core of Iran's revolutionary ideology and serving Iran's legitimacy and leadership in the Islamic world. Saudi Arabia, Iraq and other Gulf countries became the target of Iran's export revolution, and thus became one of the reasons for the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988. As a result, the ideological, ethnic, and religious contradictions between Iran and Israel and Arab countries have risen at the same time, and in fact Iran has become an enemy that Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries and Israel jointly oppose.
It is worth noting that even behind the Arab-Israeli conflict there is an Iranian element against Israel. Prominently, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Allah Party, which began a long-term confrontation with Israel as an iranian proxies, was one of the reasons for Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the fifth Middle East war, and the Lebanese-Israeli war in 2006; As a radical force against Israel, Palestinian Hamas has long been supported by Iran.
After the Cold War, the Gulf War brought Iran's contradictions with Arab countries and Israel under certain control. However, with the rise of Iran after the Iraq War in the 21st century, Iran's nuclear development has been regarded as a threat by Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, and the ethnic contradictions, sectarian contradictions, and conflicts between Iran and Saudi Arabia since the "Arab Spring" have intensified in an all-round way, and the contradictions between Arab countries and Iran have intensified in an all-round way.
The contradictions between Israel and Iran have also continued to intensify, from public opinion attacks to shadow wars to conflicts in third parties (such as Syria). Iran supports the Allah Party, Hamas and other attacks on Israel, while Israel has done everything possible to strike at Iranian targets and personnel at home and abroad, and strongly opposes the Iranian nuclear agreement.
Since the 21st century, although the Palestinian-Israeli conflict still exists and conflicts break out from time to time, Israel's relations with Arab countries have been constantly improving, and the promotion of the United States and the joint confrontation with Iran are the driving force for Israel and Arab countries to continue to get closer. In addition to Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994), which established diplomatic relations with Israel earlier, israel normalized relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco in 2020-2021 under the impetus of the Trump administration's Abraham Accord, and Israel has normalized relations with nearly 1/3 of Arab countries, and it is still likely to continue to increase in the short term. The United States, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and India have also established a "quadrilateral dialogue mechanism."
In 2022, Relations between Israel and Arab countries will develop at an unusually rapid pace, and economic and security cooperation will continue to deepen. Israel has established a free trade area with the United Arab Emirates and deployed radar installations in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and its cooperation is in full swing. The United States is also pushing Israel to establish diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia and to establish a "Middle East Air Defense Alliance" with Arab countries. Since April 2022, the United States, Israel, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, morocco have held the Negev Desert Summit; Egypt, Israel and the United Arab Emirates held a tripartite meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh; Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq held the Aqaba Summit. This series of activities is closely linked to the strong promotion of Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and aims to strengthen political and security cooperation against Iran.
To some extent, between Arab countries and Israel, the separation trend between the Palestinian-Israeli issue and Arab-Israeli relations is becoming increasingly clear, that is, the Arab countries, although opposed to Israel on the question of Palestine, are more and more at the level of morality and public opinion. However, the political, economic and security cooperation between The Arab and Israeli sides against Iran is real, and its essence is that the role of the Palestinian-Israeli issue in the tripartite relationship has declined, while the role of the Iranian issue has risen.
On November 8, 2021, local time, Iran, Iran began to hold large-scale military exercises. The exercise, code-named "Zul Fagar-1400" (Zolfaghar -1400), took place in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Oman.
Third, the global importance of the Iranian issue relative to the Palestinian-Israeli issue continues to rise
At the level of the international system and major power relations, the Palestinian issue is also becoming increasingly marginalized, while the Iranian issue has become the focus of the great power game, and its strategic importance and urgency in the international order and global governance are increasingly higher than the Palestinian issue.
There is no doubt that the Palestinian issue was once the focus of great power struggle, and the Middle East peace process was once the core of the Middle East affairs under the leadership of the United States after the Cold War. During the Cold War, the Arab-Israeli conflict was the focus of the contradictions and struggles between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the United States and the Soviet Union were basically the main supporters of Israel and the Arab countries respectively, respectively, of course, the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union and the Arab countries was extremely complex.
With the decline of the Soviet Union, the détente of the Cold War, and the division of the Arab world, the United States began to promote the Middle East peace process in the late 1970s and became an important path for the United States to establish a regional order and global leadership in the Middle East. In the 1990s, the United States promoted the Middle East peace process made significant progress. The 1991 Madrid Conference of Spain and the 1993 Oslo Accords established the principles of the "two-State solution" and "land for peace"; In 1994, a Palestinian Self-Government was established. However, the Middle East peace process promoted by the Clinton administration of the United States ultimately failed, and after 2000, it stagnated with the intensification of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and since then, the war on terrorism, the Iranian nuclear issue, and the "Arab Spring" have successively become the main topics of the US Middle East strategy. The George W. Bush administration and the Obama administration have also tried to push the Middle East peace process forward, but have been visibly inadequate and with little success. The Annapolis Conference on the Palestinian-Israeli issue held in 2007 failed, and the United States has exhausted its efforts to promote the Middle East peace process. In 2013-2014, the United States pushed for the Peace Talks in Washington between Palestine and Israel to an end.
In the Trump era, the core of the US Middle East policy is to continue to carry out strategic contraction and reduce investment, by curbing Iran's integration of the increasingly estranged alliances during the Obama era, focusing on strengthening the alliance between the United States and Saudi Arabia and Israel, so that it can assume more tasks and costs in the fields of containing Iran and counter-terrorism, thereby enhancing the dominance of the United States in the Middle East affairs.
The content of Trump's policies on the Palestinian-Israeli issue includes: First, the United States has adopted a policy of clear favoritism toward Israel on the Palestinian-Israeli issue in an attempt to force a solution to the so-called "agreement of the century" on the Palestinian-Israeli issue, which includes the recognition of Jerusalem as israel's capital and Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights; Recognition of Israel's sovereignty over parts of the West Bank; On the issue of Palestinian statehood, the United States intends to establish a disarmed Palestinian State without an army, that is, with incomplete sovereignty, which completely subverts the basis of the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. Second, promote the establishment of diplomatic relations between Arab countries and Israel and divide the Arab world.
In short, since 2000, the Middle East peace process has been constantly frustrated and stagnated, and the combination of the failed Middle East policy and the Palestinian-Israeli policy of the United States with the great changes in the situation in the Middle East has further aggravated the serious marginalization of the Palestinian-Israeli issue.
Let's briefly analyze the rising importance of the Iranian issue.
First of all, one of the root causes of the Iranian issue is the profound contradiction between the United States and Iran, and the long-term confrontation between the United States and Iran is a structural contradiction that restricts the Iranian nuclear issue and the negotiations on the Iranian nuclear agreement, which have repeatedly fallen into difficulties, and has made the Iranian issue, especially the Iranian nuclear issue, a global and regional strategic issue.
The reversal of U.S.-Iran relations also began in 1979, when iran's Islamic Revolution overthrew the U.S.-backed Pahlavi dynasty, turning Iran from pro-American to anti-American, and confronting and containing Iran has since become the core issue of the U.S. Middle East strategy. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Gulf War, the United States dominated the Middle East, and the United States relied on the policy of "promoting peace talks in the west and curbing the two Irans in the east" to dominate Middle East affairs.
From iran's point of view, anti-American, anti-Western, anti-Israel as the core content of the Islamic revolutionary ideology, directly related to the political legitimacy of the Iranian Islamic regime, Iran through the "export revolution" to support and shape the anti-American forces in the region, threaten the United States regional allies and other countermeasures against the United States and the West, are the ideological and practical roots of the United States hatred of Iran. From the perspective of the United States, the long-term political pursuit of subversion of the Iranian Islamic regime by the United States, the long-term economic sanctions have led to the deep economic difficulties of Iran's economy, and the continuous deterrence of military deterrence has aggravated Iran's sense of insecurity, all of which are the root causes of Iran's long-term pursuit of anti-Americanism.
Since the signing of the Iranian nuclear agreement in 2015, especially since the Trump administration withdrew from the Iranian nuclear agreement, the content of the game between the United States and Iran includes the Iranian nuclear issue itself, but the more difficult problem to solve is a series of structural contradictions outside the Iranian nuclear issue, the core of which is the ideological struggle and geopolitical confrontation between the two sides.
From a deeper level, the contradictions between Iran and the West are extremely complicated, involving the history of the long-term conflict between the ancient Persian Empire and ancient Greece and Rome, as well as the aggression and intervention of the Western powers and Europe and the United States in modern times, and its historical and practical factors are extremely complex.
In addition, the Iranian nuclear issue, as the concentrated embodiment of the Iranian issue, is not only the focus of the US Middle East policy, but also the focus of the great power game under the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations and the P5+1 mechanism, and it is also a difficult problem for global governance. Since the emergence of the Iranian nuclear issue, the negotiations around the Iranian nuclear issue have been complicated under various mechanisms such as the European Union, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations Security Council, and the P5+1 mechanism, and have been influenced and constrained by Israel, Saudi Arabia and other regional countries, and at the same time have been seriously negatively affected by the withdrawal of the Treaty by the United States, and are also subject to the special constraints of the domestic politics of the United States and Iran, which is extremely complicated, which can be described as the most ups and downs and tension-filled hot issues in international relations since the new century.
In summary, it is not difficult to find that at the regional and international levels, the Palestinian-Israeli issue is in a situation of declining status, a stalemate in the peace process and a serious marginalization by all parties; Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the regional and international impact of the Iranian issue has been rising, and the international tension it has triggered has also expanded. As a result, the Iranian issue has replaced the Palestinian-Israeli issue as the core issue in the Middle East. The author's view is not subjectively contemptuous of the Palestinian-Israeli issue, still less is it a favoritism over the other, and the above judgment is mainly to emphasize the practical complexity of the Middle East issue. In fact, there are also complex links between the Palestinian-Israeli issue and the Iranian issue, and facing up to the strategic importance of the Iranian issue, the joint efforts of the international community to resolve the Iranian issue will also help create conditions for the settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli issue.
"Middle East Review" is a column by Professor Liu Zhongmin of the Institute of Middle East Studies of Shanghai University of foreign Chinese, which adheres to the combination of reality, theory and foundation, and responds to practical problems with historical and theoretical depth.
Responsible editor: Zhu Zhengyong Photo editor: Chen Feiyan
Proofreader: Liu Wei