Text: Yiping
Two "contradictory" messages
Recently, the overall situation in the Middle East has become more and more strange, and we may even scratch our heads when many things first happen, but after understanding the game behind it, we will suddenly realize that there is a feeling that it is the same.
For example, the confrontation between Iran and Pakistan two days ago was really confusing at first, but later it turned out that the two sides were just playing a double play, and it was the extremists supported by the United States and Israel who were injured in the end.
According to foreign media reports, on January 22, Israel suffered its worst defeat since the start of the ground operation, with 24 Israeli soldiers being served by the opposing side in a military operation that Israeli media called "the deadliest day." ”
After the incident, the Israeli high-level officials, who have always wanted to create a myth of the invincibility of the Israeli army, had to quickly stand up and make a statement.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that Israel has indeed been in great trouble recently, and said that this sudden mass death and injury was a heavy blow to the Israel Defense Forces, and he ordered the relevant departments to conduct a detailed investigation of the details to avoid a recurrence of the tragedy!
In contrast, Israeli Defense Minister Gallant's statement was much more literary, as if reading a pre-written eulogy to the dead Israeli soldiers.
Gallant said that the lives of these 24 fighters are like pearls in the country's history, and they come from the south and the north, representing the diverse and resilient national soul of Israel.
However, I would like to say that I wonder if Israeli Prime Minister Lake Netanyahu and Defense Minister Gallant had in the dead of night thought about the lives of more than 10,000 Palestinian children massacred by the IDF, and more than 20,000 Palestinian civilians in total?
Have they ever thought about those Palestinian souls?
The Palestinians can sacrifice more in order to achieve national independence and liberation, regardless of the cost.
And what about the Israelites?
Are they really willing to go on with the Palestinians like this?
Israeli soldiers are now in great trouble under the resistance of the unyielding Palestinians, and the recent death toll is rising rapidly.
It is under these circumstances that Netanyahu and Gallant have had to continue to order the withdrawal of parts of the IDF from Gaza, or they will only receive more bad news.
The embarrassing situation Israel is facing today is unexpected, but something else that has happened recently is even more unbelievable.
According to a January 21 report by Iran's Tasnim news agency, Saudi Arabia, which had previously kept a low profile, suddenly launched an artillery bombardment of the Houthi-controlled city of Bajim in Yemen's northwestern Saada province.
This is definitely an unexpected positive gain for Israel and the United States, which are currently in an embarrassing situation!
Because in the previous Red Sea joint escort activities, the United States had made great efforts, but in the end it failed to convince Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia did not join the US-led Prosperity Guardians joint escort operation.
Just like that, I watched the excitement of the Americans all the time!
and acquiescing in Iranian-backed Palestinian Hamas and Yemeni Houthi rebels against the United States and Israel.
Then the question arises:
Under this new game pattern, how long can Israel hold out?
Will Saudi Arabia resist US pressure and abandon its previous attitude of relative sympathy for the Palestinians?
What will happen to the overall situation in the Middle East?
Let's take a brief analysis of these questions together.
Lao Hu is still hard-mouthed
In the face of this situation, there is no need to ask that Israeli Prime Minister Lake Netanyahu has been under tremendous pressure recently, but as representatives of the far-right forces in Israel, their position will definitely not be loosened in the short term.
Netanyahu said in an interview:
Even if the IDF faces temporary difficulties, Israel will never stop its offensive, but must eliminate Hamas, and after completing the set tasks in Gaza, it will turn the spearhead and completely take the West Bank, and even launch relevant military operations against Allah in Lebanon.
And, more importantly, the Netanyahu government has simply shrugged off the two-state solution offered by the international community, claiming that they oppose any proposal or suggestion of a two-state solution that would completely turn the land currently inhabited by Palestinians and Israelis into Israeli-dominated territory.
This is how I personally see the overall situation in which Israel is still stubborn in the face of its current passive situation.
First of all, the main reason why Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is so arrogant is that the attitude of the United States has always been ambiguous.
After entering 2024, the Biden administration in the United States has significantly increased its constraints on Israel, and has repeatedly shouted through the media, hoping that the Netanyahu government can accept the two-state solution.
But these deceptive tricks can fool children, and we Chinese know too well the insidiousness and shamelessness of the Biden administration through the game with the Americans in the Taiwan Strait affairs in recent years.
They are now saying one thing and doing another on many big issues, and on the surface they will say a lot of beautiful things, as if they will act according to the rules-based order, but in fact what they are doing is despicable and shameless, and if any country credulously believes the promises of the US government, they will be eaten by them without even dregs.
In particular, the stalwarts of opposition to the United States, such as China, Russia, and the Middle East, cannot trust any of the promises made by the US government.
In other words, the reason why the Israeli Government is unwilling to change its hardline stance on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is, in the final analysis, the United States has received a steady stream of practical support and acquiescence.
Far from it, the US military's peripheral operations in the Red Sea region are aimed at tactically blocking the peripheral forces in the entire Middle East region for Israel, so that Israel can rest assured that it will completely solve the problem on the internal front.
We must be soberly aware of this.
When the United States completely withdrew its troops from the Mediterranean and the Red Sea region at the same time, that is when they really put pressure on Israel.
The bomber took off
Second, as mentioned at the beginning of this article, Israeli soldiers' military operations in Gaza are facing growing tactical troubles, and if Netanyahu does not repent, it is bound to drag all of Israel into a dead end.
We Chinese have a saying that is very good, the situation is stronger than people.
This is now the case with the overall anti-American movement in the entire international community, as well as in the struggle against the United States and Israel in the Middle East.
Although the United States and Israel are ostensibly singing a double song in an attempt to completely solve the Palestinian problem through the cooperative model of the United States saying soft words and Israel doing the dirty work, we must also see the following two points: one is that the United States' global discourse power is rapidly weakening, and the other is that the United States has little weapons superiority left.
Just 20 years ago, they could have wiped out a medium-to-high intensity country like Iraq and Iran with a random aircraft carrier group or two, but now they can't even do a good job of slippers like the Houthis in Yemen, because the drones, missiles and rocket launchers in the hands of the other side are also quite lethal.
With the United States unable to completely suppress Israel's outer resistance, the struggle between the IDF and the Palestinian Hamas organization on the inside line is extremely anxious.
Hamas will see greater hope.
What's more, the biggest trouble for the United States is that they originally locked their biggest strategic goal on China, but now they are dragged into the quagmire by the Russian-Ukrainian war and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict at the same time, and it is a pair of troubles with contradictory underlying logic, which makes the United States have been dragged down by Israel both in military struggle and at the level of political public opinion.
The overall passivity of the United States in the global layout will inevitably lead to the inability of core allies such as Israel to continue to do whatever they want.
This is an inevitable ripple effect.
Thirdly, we must also see another possibility, and Israel is not hopeless.
The support of Britain, the United States and other Western countries, as well as the scattered sand of the Arab world, are the key reasons why Israel has once again had the last laugh in the previous five Middle East wars, and it is also their last chance to reverse the overall situation this time.
Speaking of which, we have to mention the latest Saudi military operation.
Although Saudi Arabia and Yemen's Houthi armed forces have been fighting intermittently for many years, which has also made Saudi Arabia, the big brother in the Middle East, very faceless, but on the whole, we have to admit that Saudi Arabia's performance in this Palestinian-Israeli conflict is still quite powerful.
In the context of the strategic rapprochement with Iran, they basically maintained a tacit and tolerant attitude towards these proxies supported by Iran, and did not actively echo the strategic layout of the United States hoping that Saudi Arabia and Israel would shake hands and make peace.
But when it is clear that Israel is already in a strategic stalemate, and even on the verge of defeat, Saudi Arabia has suddenly turned to the Houthis in Yemen, the vanguard of opposition to the United States and Israel.
What exactly does the Saudis think about it?
What's the complexity behind this?
Are the Saudis confused?
I think that the logic behind Saudi Arabia's military action, which ostensibly echoes the United States and Israel, is definitely not so simple, and we must understand this matter from at least three aspects.
First, this once again shows that the current pressure on the United States is too great.
The reason why I say this is that everyone knows the specific situation.
To put it bluntly, Saudi Arabia has been one of the core allies of the United States before, and both countries have made a lot of money from the petrodollar system.
For the United States, which likes to speak most with ideology, the United States has basically turned a blind eye to the special national political structure of Saudi Arabia.
Try it in another country?
The United States does not know how many rounds of color revolutions have been instigated!
Now that the United States is mired in a huge strategic quagmire in the entire Middle East, they will of course continue to put pressure on Saudi Arabia, hoping that Saudi Arabia can help them out of this siege, otherwise Saudi Arabia's huge overseas assets in the United States will also face Russian-style risks.
This, we must understand the Saudis!
Therefore, it cannot be ruled out that they will fire a few shots at the Yemeni Houthi rebels in a performative nature.
In this way, the United States can be accountable, and on the contrary, the resistance forces in the Middle East can act more freely.
Second, Saudi Arabia will never be confused.
At present, the leading big brother in the entire Middle East region is none other than the four major powers of Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran.
As we all know, Egypt has been an active participant in the first few wars in the Middle East, but then they have been discouraged by repeated defeats.
The situation in Turkey is even more dire because their dominant ideology has been oscillating from side to side for so many years.
Let's not look at Erdogan's current fierce call at the United States, but as long as Turkey is given the right price, they can sell anything.
Because of this, the only countries in the Middle East can now be integrated by Saudi Arabia and Iran, and these two countries also have far more resources in their hands than other countries.
A lot of Middle Eastern countries are looking at them.
In this case, Saudi Arabia will definitely not mess around, and their shelling of the Houthis in Yemen should only go so far!
Finally, and most crucially, Saudi Arabia must remind Yemen's Houthis and Iran not to go too far.
The reason for this is that we can see it by looking at this map.
The following map is a topographic map of the entire Middle East, including all the countries in the Middle East and the four most critical seas.
As we all know, the Houthis in Yemen and Iran are fighting a bit at the moment, and they claim to close all the seas in the Middle East, mainly including the four parts mentioned above.
The first part is the Mediterranean, the second part is the Red Sea region, the third part is the Gulf of Aden, and the fourth part is the Strait of Holmz.
Among them, the most influential for Saudi Arabia are the first and fourth parts of the sea, Yemen's Houthis can control the first part of the Red Sea, and Iran can control the fourth part of the Strait of Holms, the latter is called the Middle East oil valve by the media.
In other words, if the Saudis do not say anything, the Houthi forces in Yemen will cut off the lines of action of the United States and Israel, and at the same time suffocate Saudi Arabia, a regional power.
In the current situation, Saudi Arabia has long endured the actions of the Iranian-backed Houthis in the Red Sea region.
If they also want to close the Strait of Holms further, the normal operation of the entire Saudi country will be greatly affected, and the other three surrounding energy powers, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, will also be affected.
In this case, of course, Saudi Arabia must react, otherwise they will be completely reduced to a second-tier country in the entire Middle East in the future, and will be firmly controlled by Iran and the gang of little brothers supported by Iran, which is a situation that Saudi Arabia will never want to see.
epilogue
All in all, the current situation in the Middle East is very complex.
With the support of Russia and other countries, the Middle East resistance led by Iran has achieved a rare advantage.
Then they should take a long-term view, unite more countries, and build a broader Arab united front in the Middle East, and must not push a country as important as Saudi Arabia back into the arms of Israel and the United States because of their own hot-headedness.
If you completely cut off people's financial resources, they will definitely be unhappy, and if the anti-American forces led by Iran are really so short-sighted, they will only swallow the bitter fruit of defeat.
Hopefully something like this shouldn't happen!
Where will the situation in the Middle East go, and will there be a fundamental change in Saudi Arabia's stance? Let's wait and see!