OPEP+: manobras sombrias com participação do Brasil de Lula? - Anton Geraschenko

 Esta é a realidade do foro ao qual Lula acaba de associar o Brasil:

“ Judging by the statements of Saudi officials prior to Vladimir Putin's  visit to the Arabian Peninsula, Arab oil-producing countries are  dissatisfied and even annoyed with Russia's attitude as a member of the  OPEC+ alliance - the Moscow Times.

Preparing to meet the Russian  leader, the OPEC secretariat held a meeting on December 4 where  representatives of the Russian Ministry of Energy, employees of five  international organizations that analyze the state of the oil market, as  well as five agencies that monitor tanker traffic were present.

The  observers' main complaint was the lack of transparency of information  on the Russian side, especially regarding data on oil exports.

"We  wanted to convince our friends in Russia to share data on crude oil and  oil product exports," the Saudi minister told the attendees.

According  to Prince Abdulaziz, the Russian representatives agreed to provide  answers to many of the questions raised and to participate in other such  meetings regularly on the fifth of each month.

Oil and gas  analysts from the Persian Gulf are reportedly extremely mistrustful of  the promises of Russian officials, who have not previously been seen as  particularly keen on providing reliable information to their partners.  They recall in conversations that the Saudi minister has repeatedly  complained about the lack of data transparency from Russia.

Russia's  OPEC+ partners have no idea how much oil Russia actually produces, even  though manipulating the number of barrels is the cartel's main tool in  its efforts to stabilize the oil market. Instead, assurances are coming  from Moscow that for the sake of solidarity with its alliance partners,  Russia is indeed reducing.... not production, but exports.

In  1998, for example, Russia vowed to OPEC to cut its production by 7% but  left it at the same level. The following year, a new promise was made,  this time to cut by 100 thousand barrels per day, however, at the end of  the year the average daily production of Russian oil did not fall, but  increased from 6.17 to 6.18 million barrels. In early 2002, Moscow  announced that it was cutting production by 150 thousand barrels per day  under an agreement with OPEC - and by the third quarter, it had already  become clear that Russian oil producers were ahead of all their plans  to increase production.

In the fall of 2016, Russia, which by  that time had reached its peak production of 11.23 million barrels per  day, promised the cartel to cut this volume by 300 thousand barrels, but  there was no change in volumes in 2016 and 2017.

All the promises turned out to be just promises.

Russia  formally acts as the Saudis' main ally in OPEC+ and declares voluntary  measures to reduce oil supplies to the world market, but as Prince  Abdulaziz's remarks show, there is still a long way to go before a true  sincere, and honest partnership.

Putin's "Arabian tour" is meant  to show the world and the Russian population that somewhere on the globe  there are still countries that are willing to receive him as a guest  and not as a war criminal.

Mikhail Krutikhin, Russian economic analyst, and oil and gas market specialist, in the Moscow Times.”

From Anton Geraschenko

Ativistas de DH e jornalistas condenados na Arábia Saudita e na China

 Arábia Saudita e China são paises que condenam com fortes penas e enviam jornalistas à prisão por simplesmente defenderam direitos humanos, em especial direitos das mulheres, e por informar corretamente temas de interesse da população em geral.

É preciso que façam campanhas em prol desses jornalistas injustamente perseguidos, e que se condene duramente as atitudes desses países.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Arábia Saudita condena ativista dos direitos das mulheres a seis anos de prisão

DIREITOS HUMANOS | há 1h

Loujain al-Hathloul ganhou notoriedade por organizar campanhas pelo fim da tutela masculina e para que mulheres sauditas tivessem o direito de dirigir no reino fundamentalista.

A ativista Loujain al-Hathlou, uma das mais proeminentes defensoras dos direitos das mulheres na Arábia Saudita, foi condenada nesta segunda-feira (28/12) a cinco anos e oito meses de prisão por acusações associadas ao terrorismo. 

SAÚDE | 28.12.2020

Jornalista chinesa é condenada por cobrir pandemia em Wuhan

Um tribunal especializado em casos de terrorismo considerou Hathlou culpada por "várias atividades proibidas pela lei antiterrorismo", segundo relatou o jornal online Sabq. Ela já está em prisão preventiva há dois anos e dez meses, período que será comutado da pena.

Hathloul foi considerada culpada de tentar provocar mudanças na sociedade seguindo objetivos estrangeiros e de usar a internet para perturbar à ordem pública, além de gerar ameaças à segurança nacional. A defesa tem 30 dias para recorrer da decisão. 

A ativista de 31 anos foi presa juntamente com mais de uma dezena de mulheres sauditas que defendiam, em maio de 2018, o direito de poder conduzir veículos, pouco antes de ter sido autorizado, e exigiam a suspensão das leis de tutela masculina, que restringem a liberdade de movimento das mulheres e a sua capacidade de viajar para o exterior.

Ativista denunciou tortura na prisão

Segundo sua irmã, Lina, ela deverá receber o direto à liberdade condicional. Dessa forma, segundo a imprensa local, é possível que deixe a prisão até março de 2021 e cumpra sua pena em liberdade vigiada, caso não cometa nenhum outro crime.

Em 2019, Hathloul se recusou a retirar suas acusações de tortura, em troca de sua libertação. Em 26 de outubro, a ativista iniciou uma greve de fome na prisão que durou duas semanas, segundo informações de sua família e da organização humanitária Anistia Internacional. Na semana passada, um tribunal rejeitou as acusações de tortura feitas pela ativista, alegando falta de provas.

No dia 25 de novembro, a família de Hathloul anunciou que o caso havia sido sido transferido para um tribunal criado em 2008 para tratar especificamente de casos de terrorismo, mas que, segundo várias organizações de direitos humanos, tem sido frequentemente utilizado para julgar presos políticos.

O veredito atraiu críticas de organizações de direitos humanos, membros do Congresso dos Estados Unidos e deputados da União Europeia, além de gerar um novo desafio para as futuras relações entre o reino governado pelo príncipe Mohammed Bin Salman e os Estados Unidos, sob a presidência do democrata Joe Biden a partir de 20 de janeiro.

ONU condena veredito

Os especialistas em direitos humanos da ONU condenaram as acusações e pediram a libertação imediata da ativista. Seus familiares e outras entidades denunciaram que ela sofreu abusos e torturas, como choques elétricos, afogamentos e agressões sexuais. As autoridades sauditas negam essas alegações.

A sentença de Hathloul veio pouco menos de três semanas após a condenação do físico saudita Walid al-Fitaihi por um tribunal em Riad, apesar de intensa pressão dos EUA por sua libertação. Ele foi condenado a seis anos de prisão, em um caso que ativistas denunciaram como sendo de motivação política.

Diplomatas estrangeiros afirmam que os julgamentos têm como objetivo enviar um sinal ao pais e à comunidade internacional, de que a Arábia Saudita não cederá à pressões referentes aos direitos humanos.

RC/lusa/rtr

Saudi Arabia’s Revolution From Above - Joschka Fischer (Project Syndicate)

Saudi Arabia’s Revolution From Above

JOSCHKA FISCHER

Writing for PS since 2006 
140 Commentaries

Project Syndicate, Nov 16, 2017 

JOSCHKA FISCHER

After becoming the heir apparent to the Saudi throne earlier this year, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has quickly consolidated his power and begun to usher in a period of radical change. But as he overhauls the country's domestic and foreign policies, he is also heightening the risk of another conflict in the Middle East.

BERLIN – Seven years after the Arab Spring unleashed a wave of revolutionary fervor across most of the Middle East and North Africa, Saudi Arabia is finally catching up, albeit in its own unique way. A younger generation is demanding that the arch-conservative Kingdom modernize, and it is being led not by revolutionaries in the streets, but by Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the country’s 32-year-old crown prince and heir apparent.

In terms of population and geography, Saudi Arabia is one of the largest Arab countries, and its staggering oil wealth has made it an indispensable strategic partner for the West, and particularly for the US. But, as a country caught between the Islamic Middle Ages and Western modernity, it has always abided extreme contradictions. State-of-the-art infrastructure and American-style shopping malls have come to Mecca and Medina, home to Islam’s most important holy sites.

But, even to this day, Saudi Arabia is home to an anti-Western tribal society, ruled by one family, the House of Saud, as an absolute monarchy since the country’s founding in 1932. Its moral and legal codes appear medieval to most outsiders. And it adheres to the extreme reactionary version of Islam known as Wahhabism, a Salafist doctrine that influences many of today’s most radical Islamist groups.

Owing to the long-term decline in oil prices and the need to provide education and employment to a fast-growing young population – who might otherwise turn to extremism – King Salman and MBS have apparently concluded that the country needs to modernize. To avoid a slow decline, or even an eventual disintegration, they are taking measures to open up the country, not just economically, but socially and culturally, too.

Earlier this month, MBS – who seems to have studied Chinese President Xi Jinping’s own consolidation of power – ordered what the Saudi government has described as an anti-corruption purge. Already, dozens of high-level princes, former ministers, and wealthy and influential businessmen have been arrested and had their accounts frozen. The purge came not long after an announcement that Saudi women will no longer be banned from driving cars or attending public sports events. Clearly, the new leadership in Saudi Arabia intends to orchestrate a veritable revolution from above.

But, lest we forget, the last autocratic ruler in the Middle East who attempted to bypass his country’s Islamic clergy and carry out a top-down revolution was the Shah of Persia, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. He and his “White Revolution” were eventually swept away by Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979.

One can only hope that MBS’s revolution will fare better. If it fails, the radical Salafists who will assume power in Riyadh will make the Iranian mullahs look like liberals. If it succeeds in modernizing the leading bastion of reactionary Islam, the stage would be set for other countries throughout the Islamic world to do the same.

As part of his agenda, MBS has also launched an aggressive new foreign policy, particularly toward Iran. The modernizers around MBS know that the revolution’s success will require breaking the power of Wahhabism by replacing it with Saudi nationalism. And in order to do that, they need a compelling enemy. Shia Iran, with which the Kingdom is competing for regional hegemony, is the ideal foil.

These domestic considerations help to explain why Saudi Arabia has thrown down the gauntlet and escalated tensions with Iran in recent months. Of course, from the Saudis’ perspective, they are merely picking up the gauntlet that Iran already threw down by interfering in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain, Qatar, Yemen, and other countries.

So far, the battle for regional hegemony between Saudi Arabia and Iran has been limited to proxy wars in Syria and Yemen, with disastrous humanitarian consequences. Neither side, it seems, wants a direct military conflict. And yet that outcome can hardly be ruled out, given recent developments. In the Middle East, a cold war can turn hot rather quickly.

Over the long term, the Saudi-Iranian rivalry will shape the Middle East in much the same way that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once did. Consider, for example, an episode that occurred just hours before MBS launched his anti-corruption purge: Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, while visiting Saudi Arabia, announced his resignation from office. According to Hariri, the Iran-aligned Shia militant group and political party Hezbollah, with which his government had a power-sharing relationship, had made governing Lebanon impossible, and may have been plotting his murder.

But Hariri, whose father, former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, was assassinated in 2005, raised more questions than answers. Why leave office now? Was he acting under Saudi pressure, and, if so, to what end?

Shortly after Hariri’s announcement, Saudi Arabia intercepted a missile that Houthi rebels in Yemen had fired at Riyadh. According to Saudi Arabia, because the Houthis are backed by Iran, their attempted missile strike was tantamount to an Iranian “act of war.”

This flurry of unusual developments in such a short span of time can hardly be a coincidence. The question now is whether civil war will return to Lebanon, and whether Saudi Arabia will try to involve Israel and the US in a confrontation with Hezbollah to push back against Iran.

For now, the Saudis lack the power to do that on their own. In recent years, Saudi Arabia has suffered major defeats in the regional struggle for hegemony. The Sunni minority has been ousted from power in Iraq; and Bashar al-Assad’s Iran-backed regime has managed to hold on to power in Syria. MBS may be looking for ways to offset these defeats, in Lebanon or elsewhere.

Saudi Arabia’s revolution from above is a high-risk endeavor that neutral observers must regard with ambivalence. Although it cannot be allowed to fail, given what that would entail, its success is likely to be accompanied by a dramatic increase in regional tensions and the possibility of war.

Joschka Fischer was German Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor from 1998-2005, a term marked by Germany's strong support for NATO's intervention in Kosovo in 1999, followed by its opposition to the war in Iraq. Fischer entered electoral politics after participating in the anti-establishment protests of the 1960s and 1970s, and played a key role in founding Germany's Green Party, which he led for almost two decades.

Arabia Saudita: o proximo Estado "failido" no Oriente Medio? Ainda nao, mas... (opiniao WP)

A opinião é de um ex-dissidente na União Soviética, e portant suspeita, mas que a Arábia Saudita seja um gigante com pés de barro, disso não há nenhuma dúvida. Só que se trata de um gigante apodrecido ainda com muito dinheiro, e isso faz muita diferença...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Opinions

Trust the dissidents, not the diplomats

Men walk through a damaged area after what activists said were at least 20 air strikes by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in the Douma neighbourhood of Damascus February 5, 2015. (Bassam Khabieh/Reuters)

By Natan Sharansky and David Keyes  

The Washington Post, February 6, 2015

 

Natan Sharansky is chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel and a former political prisoner in the Soviet Union. David Keyes is executive director of Advancing Human Rights.

Recently leaders of the free world flocked to Saudi Arabia to meet with the new king , where they praised the country as a partner for peace and center of stability. But many dissidents disagreed. As Mansour Al-Hadj, a liberal activist who lived in Saudi Arabia for 20 years, said: “Saudi Arabia is not stable. Deep down, people are not happy. Sooner or later, the winds of change will come to Saudi Arabia. The regime will fall.”

If history is any judge, the world should bet on the dissidents, not the diplomats.

On Jan. 25, 2011, just two weeks before the fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave her assessment “that the Egyptian government is stable.” That March, Clinton’s successor, John F. Kerry, praised “good-faith” measures taken by Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and predicted that his regime would change for the better “as it embraces a legitimate relationship with the United States and the West.”

Clinton and Kerry were certainly not alone in assessing that these dictators were securely in power. Former Amnesty International USA executive director Larry Cox later said that “nobody that I know of predicted it, no experts, no pundits, no politicians saw the revolution coming.”

After the Arab Spring, many of the same experts and policymakers who had insisted that the region was stable claimed that no one could have foreseen the uprisings. But this is untrue. A chorus of uniquely insightful individuals predicted exactly what would happen: the democratic dissidents who languished in prison cells in Tunisia, Libya, Syria and Egypt.

Witnesses to unimaginable injustice, these men and women felt viscerally that the dictators’ days were limited. They were the soldiers on the front line of the historical drama about to unfold. The experts simply chose not to listen.

In 2006, for example, from the depths of his torture chamber, Syrian dissident Kamal Labwani — jailed for a decade under the Assad regime — predicted that without democratic change, Syria would end up in a situation “no less terrifying than what happened in Iraq, Lebanon and Somalia.” He presaged the rise of radicalism, arguing that “the alternative to democracy is inevitably civil war and fundamentalism.”

Likewise, in 2007, from his prison cell in Egypt, blogger Kareem Amer declared to the region’s tyrants and authoritarians that their “attempts to shut our mouths and restrict our freedom” would eventually fail. “You should be very worried about us,” he wrote. “Your days are numbered and your dark nights are approaching their end.”

There were many such prophetic voices, dissidents who foresaw what would happen in their countries but whose warnings fell on deaf ears abroad. What did they know or understand that our experts and leaders did not? The answer is the power of inner freedom. Having crossed the line from living in fear to questioning and then actively fighting against their regimes, dissidents know how difficult it is to suppress the longing to live freely. As more of their fellow citizens cross this line, dissidents see how much additional energy the regime has to expend to keep its population in check. As Soviet dissident Andrei Amalrik observed, any system that has to spend all of its energy controlling the thoughts of its citizens must break down eventually.

Anyone who remembers the fall of the Soviet Union ought to understand the importance of listening to dissidents. Throughout the 1970s and ’80s and until the last days of the Evil Empire, leading Western politicians and Sovietologists repeatedly diagnosed the regime as stable. In 1992, then-CIA Director Robert M. Gates admitted that it was not until 1989 that the intelligence agency began to think that the Soviet Union might collapse. Amalrik, by contrast, had predicted this years earlier, in his aptly titled 1969 book, “Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984?” He, together with generations of Soviet dissidents led by Andrei Sakharov, paid a heavy price for explaining to the West that the regime’s downfall was inevitable.

Those dissidents were admired, loved and even defended, but they were not listened to. Western experts, blinded by the power of Soviet weapons and the delusory self-confidence of Soviet parades and leaders, dismissed their predictions. Thus, when Mikhail Gorbachev began dismantling the Soviet system and the dissidents’ prophecies came true, these same experts were caught by surprise.

Only a few decades later, the leaders of the free world have all but forgotten this lesson. If they had listened more closely to the Middle East’s dissidents, they might have been better prepared for the 2011 revolutions. Perhaps they would have spent less money arming and funding dictators and more time supporting moderates in their quest for civil society and freedom.

To make matters worse, today we are witnessing a full-fledged return to the policy of supporting dictators. The White House has all but dropped the demand that Assad step down, hinting that he could be a partner in the fight against the Islamic State. U.S. and European diplomats are pursuing deals with the Iranian regime and regard Egypt’s Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sissi as a bulwark of stability. The new Saudi king has been touted as a robust ally.

There may be tactical advantages to partnering with these regimes against the growing threat of fundamentalist terror. But we must not ignore the insights of dissidents who remind us that dictators are not our strategic allies and are certainly not guarantors of long-term stability.

The current propensity to neglect dissidents and prop up dictators guarantees that there will be many more surprises in the Middle East. When coups and revolutions once again upend the region, our experts will surely ask: “But who could have seen it coming?”

Read more about this topic:
The Post’s View: The U.S. sanctions Egypt but expresses shock at repression
Marc A. Thiessen: ‘We believe America is against us’
Natan Sharansky: The West should bet on freedom in Egypt
David Ignatius: Plotting a post-Assad road map for Syria

Choque dentro de uma civilizacao: o caso do blogueiro condenado a MIL chibatadas - Mario Machado

Meu amigo Mário Machado, animador do Coisas Internacionais, tem uma sensibilidade especial para assuntos "civilizatórios", como eu, e sempre se preocupou com o destino de pessoas, como eu, acima e além dos Estados e das religiões.Sua postagem sobre o caso do infeliz blogueiro saudita, é particularmente feliz (se me permitem a contradição nos termos) em capturar o absurdo da sentença punitiva em face do que ele escreveu, que está no centro do conflito de civilização a que eu já me referi várias vezes, e que divide as sociedades islâmicas (não todas, mas várias) dentro delas. Elas não vão poder evoluir enquanto não equacionarem essa impossibilidade de seus próprios filhos não puderem discutir os textos sagrados e fazerem aquilo que se chama de exegese, ou seja, interpretação e discussão. Até lá, teremos pequenas e grandes tragédias como essa.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

A punição Raif Badawi
Mario Machado
Coisas Internacionais, 30 Janeiro 2015 08:59 AM PST

Ontem escrevi en passant sobre os conflitos internos sobre os rumos das civilizações e sobre as forças de manutenção cultural tendem a se valer de leis draconianas para artificialmente coibir a força natural pela mudança que existe em qualquer agrupamento humano e como a comparação (facilitada pela migração e tecnologia) entre civilizações pode ser uma força importante.

Um exemplo, extremo desse fenômeno é a punição administrada ao blogueiro saudita Raif Badawi, 1.000 chibatadas. Acredito que nem a mais relativista das almas consegue não se escandalizar diante das 1.000 chibatadas.

O The Guardian fez uma boa seleção de citações do blog (hoje encerrado, obviamente) de Badawi destaco algumas, que são analises sobre a realidade de seu país e de sua ‘civilização’.

Sobre liberdade de expressão e inovação:
As soon as a thinker starts to reveal his ideas, you will find hundreds of fatwas that accused him of being an infidel just because he had the courage to discuss some sacred topics. I’m really worried that Arab thinkers will migrate in search of fresh air and to escape the sword of the religious authorities.

Secularismo:
Secularism respects everyone and does not offend anyone ... Secularism ... is the practical solution to lift countries (including ours) out of the third world and into the first world.

e;

I’m not in support of the Israeli occupation of any Arab country, but at the same time I do not want to replace Israel by a religious state ... whose main concern would be spreading the culture of death and ignorance among its people when we need modernisation and hope. States based on religious ideology ... have nothing except the fear of God and an inability to face up to life. Look at what had happened after the European peoples succeeded in removing the clergy from public life and restricting them to their churches. They built up human beings and (promoted) enlightenment, creativity and rebellion. States which are based on religion confine their people in the circle of faith and fear.

Sobre o terrorismo de inspiração islâmico:
What hurts me most as a citizen of the area which exported those terrorists ... is the audacity of Muslims in New York that reaches the limits of insolence, not taking any regard of the thousands of victims who perished on that fateful day or their families. What increases my pain is this [Islamist] chauvinist arrogance which claims that innocent blood, shed by barbarian, brutal minds under the slogan “Allahu Akbar”, means nothing compared to the act of building an Islamic mosque whose mission will be to ... spawn new terrorists ... Suppose we put ourselves in the place of American citizens. Would we accept that a Christian or Jew assaults us in our own house and then build a church or synagogue in the same area of the attack? I doubt it. We reject the building of churches in Saudi Arabia, not having been assaulted by anyone. Then what would you think if those who wanted to build a church are the same people who stormed the sanctity of our land? Finally, we should not hide that fact that Muslims in Saudi Arabia not only disrespect the beliefs of others, but also charge them with infidelity to the extent that they consider anyone who is not Muslim an infidel, and, within their own narrow definitions, they consider non-Hanbali [the Saudi school of Islam] Muslims as apostates. How can we be such people and build ... normal relations with six billion humans, four and a half billion of whom do not believe in Islam.

As mil chibatadas em Badawi são um drama humanitário e uma história tristemente exemplar sobre os conflitos internos nas civilizações e nos lembram uma vez mais como é incompleta a explicação do terrorismo e autoritarismo somente pela luta de civilizações, ou como culpa do imperialismo “ianque” (como gostam de dizer).

Não entendam esse texto como uma apologia de uma pretensa superioridade do ocidente que seria o exemplo máximo, por que no seio do ocidente os mesmos temas estão presente e causam acalorados debates, mas é aí que reside o ponto, não é mesmo? Afinal, é contra um debate amplo com alternativas múltiplas que se insurgem os radicais, claro que dão nomes como ocidentalização e infiéis, por que como sabemos palavras além de sua carga semântica, carregam uma forte carga emocional.

Mario Machado

Israelis, Saudis and the Iranian Agreement - George Friedman (Stratfor)

Geopolitical Weekly

Israelis, Saudis and the Iranian Agreement

By George Friedman

Stratfor, Tuesday, November 26, 2013

A deal between Iran and the P-5+1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany) was reached Saturday night. The Iranians agreed to certain limitations on their nuclear program while the P-5+1 agreed to remove certain economic sanctions. The next negotiation, scheduled for six months from now depending on both sides' adherence to the current agreement, will seek a more permanent resolution. The key players in this were the United States and Iran. The mere fact that the U.S. secretary of state would meet openly with the Iranian foreign minister would have been difficult to imagine a few months ago, and unthinkable at the beginning of the Islamic republic. 

The U.S. goal is to eliminate Iran's nuclear weapons before they are built, without the United States having to take military action to eliminate them. While it is commonly assumed that the United States could eliminate the Iranian nuclear program at will with airstrikes, as with most military actions, doing so would be more difficult and riskier than it might appear at first glance. The United States in effect has now traded a risky and unpredictable air campaign for some controls over the Iranian nuclear program. 

The Iranians' primary goal is regime preservation. While Tehran managed the Green Revolution in 2009 because the protesters lacked broad public support, Western sanctions have dramatically increased the economic pressure on Iran and have affected a wide swath of the Iranian public. It isn't clear that public unhappiness has reached a breaking point, but were the public to be facing years of economic dysfunction, the future would be unpredictable. The election of President Hassan Rouhani to replace Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after the latter's two terms was a sign of unhappiness. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei clearly noted this, displaying a willingness to trade a nuclear program that had not yet produced a weapon for the elimination of some sanctions. 

The logic here suggests a process leading to the elimination of all sanctions in exchange for the supervision of Iran's nuclear activities to prevent it from developing a weapon. Unless this is an Iranian trick to somehow buy time to complete a weapon and test it, I would think that the deal could be done in six months. An Iranian ploy to create cover for building a weapon would also demand a reliable missile and a launch pad invisible to surveillance satellites and the CIA, National Security Agency, Mossad, MI6 and other intelligence agencies. The Iranians would likely fail at this, triggering airstrikes however risky they might be and putting Iran back where it started economically. While this is a possibility, the scenario is not likely when analyzed closely.

While the unfolding deal involves the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany, two countries intensely oppose it: Israel and Saudi Arabia. Though not powers on the order of the P-5+1, they are still significant. There is a bit of irony in Israel and Saudi Arabia being allied on this issue, but only on the surface. Both have been intense enemies of Iran, and close allies of the United States; each sees this act as a betrayal of its relationship with Washington.

The View from Saudi Arabia

In a way, this marks a deeper shift in relations with Saudi Arabia than with Israel. Saudi Arabia has been under British and later American protection since its creation after World War I. Under the leadership of the Sauds, it became a critical player in the global system for a single reason: It was a massive producer of oil. It was also the protector of Mecca and Medina, two Muslim holy cities, giving the Saudis an added influence in the Islamic world on top of their extraordinary wealth. 

It was in British and American interests to protect Saudi Arabia from its enemies, most of which were part of the Muslim world. The United States protected the Saudis from radical Arab socialists who threatened to overthrow the monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula. It later protected Saudi Arabia from Saddam Hussein after he invaded Kuwait. But it also protected Saudi Arabia from Iran.

Absent the United States in the Persian Gulf, Iran would have been the most powerful regional military power. In addition, the Saudis have a substantial Shiite minority concentrated in the country's oil-rich east. The Iranians, also Shia, had a potential affinity with them, and thereby the power to cause unrest in Saudi Arabia. 

Until this agreement with Iran, the United States had an unhedged commitment to protect Saudi Arabia from the Iranians. Given the recent deal, and potential follow-on deals, this commitment becomes increasingly hedged. The problem from the Saudi point of view is that while there was a wide ideological gulf between the United States and Iran, there was little in the way of substantial issues separating Washington from Tehran. The United States did not want Iran to develop nuclear weapons. The Iranians didn't want the United States hindering Iran's economic development. The fact was that getting a nuclear weapon was not a fundamental Iranian interest, and crippling Iran's economy was not a fundamental interest to the United States absent an Iranian nuclear program.

If the United States and Iran can agree on this quid pro quo, the basic issues are settled. And there is something drawing them together. The Iranians want investment in their oil sector and other parts of their economy. American oil companies would love to invest in Iran, as would other U.S. businesses. As the core issue separating the two countries dissolves, and economic relations open up -- a step that almost by definition will form part of a final agreement -- mutual interests will appear.

There are other significant political issues that can't be publicly addressed. The United States wants Iran to temper its support for Hezbollah's militancy, and guarantee it will not support terrorism. The Iranians want guarantees that Iraq will not develop an anti-Iranian government, and that the United States will work to prevent this. (Iran's memories of its war with Iraq run deep.) The Iranians will also want American guarantees that Washington will not support anti-Iranian forces based in Iraq. 

From the Saudi point of view, Iranian demands regarding Iraq will be of greatest concern. Agreements or not, it does not want a pro-Iranian Shiite state on its northern border. Riyadh has been funding Sunni fighters throughout the region against Shiite fighters in a proxy war with Iran. Any agreement by the Americans to respect Iranian interests in Iraq would represent a threat to Saudi Arabia.

The View from Israel

From the Israeli point of view, there are two threats from Iran. One is the nuclear program. The other is Iranian support not only for Hezbollah but also for Hamas and other groups in the region. Iran is far from Israel and poses no conventional military threat. The Israelis would be delighted if Iran gave up its nuclear program in some verifiable way, simply because they themselves have no reliable means to destroy that program militarily. What the Israelis don't want to see is the United States and Iran making deals on their side issues, especially the political ones that really matter to Israel.

The Israelis have more room to maneuver than the Saudis do. Israel can live with a pro-Iranian Iraq. The Saudis can't; from their point of view, it is only a matter of time before Iranian power starts to encroach on their sphere of influence. The Saudis can't live with an Iranian-supported Hezbollah. The Israelis can and have, but don't want to; the issue is less fundamental to the Israelis than Iraq is to the Saudis.

But in the end, this is not the problem that the Saudis and Israelis have. Their problem is that both depend on the United States for their national security. Neither country can permanently exist in a region filled with dangers without the United States as a guarantor. Israel needs access to American military equipment that it can't build itself, like fighter aircraft. Saudi Arabia needs to have American troops available as the ultimate guarantor of their security, as they were in 1990. Israel and Saudi Arabia have been the two countries with the greatest influence in Washington. As this agreement shows, that is no longer the case. Both together weren't strong enough to block this agreement. What frightens them the most about this agreement is that fact. If the foundation of their national security is the American commitment to them, then the inability to influence Washington is a threat to their national security.

There are no other guarantors available. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went to Moscow, clearly trying to get the Russians to block the agreement. He failed. But even if he had succeeded, he would have alienated the United States, and would have gotten instead a patron incapable of supplying the type of equipment Israel might need when Israel might need it. The fact is that neither the Saudis nor the Israelis have a potential patron other than the United States.

U.S. Regional Policy

The United States is not abandoning either Israel or Saudi Arabia. A regional policy based solely on the Iranians would be irrational. What the United States wants to do is retain its relationship with Israel and Saudi Arabia, but on modified terms. The modification is that U.S. support will come in the context of a balance of power, particularly between Iran and Saudi Arabia. While the United States is prepared to support the Saudis in that context, it will not simply support them absolutely. The Saudis and Israelis will have to live with things that they have not had to live with before -- namely, an American concern for a reasonably strong and stable Iran regardless of its ideology.

The American strategy is built on experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. Washington has learned that it has interests in the region, but that the direct use of American force cannot achieve those goals, partly because imposing solutions takes more force than the United States has and partly because the more force it uses, the more resistance it generates. Therefore, the United States needs a means of minimizing its interests, and pursuing those it has without direct force.

With its interests being limited, the United States' strategy is a balance of power. The most natural balance of power is Sunni versus Shia, the Arabs against the Iranians. The goal is not war, but sufficient force on each side to paralyze the other. In that sense, a stable Iran and a more self-reliant Saudi Arabia are needed. Saudi Arabia is not abandoned, but nor is it the sole interest of the United States.

In the same sense, the United States is committed to the survival of Israel. If Iranian nuclear weapons are prevented, the United States has fulfilled that commitment, since there are no current threats that could conceivably threaten Israeli survival. Israel's other interests, such as building settlements in the West Bank, do not require American support. If the United States determines that they do not serve American interests (for example, because they radicalize the region and threaten the survival of Jordan), then the United States will force Israel to abandon the settlements by threatening to change its relationship with Israel. If the settlements do not threaten American interests, then they are Israel's problem.

Israel has outgrown its dependence on the United States. It is not clear that Israel is comfortable with its own maturation, but the United States has entered a new period where what America wants is a mature Israel that can pursue its interests without recourse to the United States. And if Israel finds it cannot have what it wants without American support, Israel may not get that support, unless Israel's survival is at stake. 

In the same sense, the perpetual Saudi inability to create an armed force capable of effectively defending itself has led the United States to send troops on occasion -- and contractors always -- to deal with the problem. Under the new strategy, the expectation is that Saudi soldiers will fight Saudi Arabia's wars -- with American assistance as needed, but not as an alternative force. 

With this opening to Iran, the United States will no longer be bound by its Israeli and Saudi relationships. They will not be abandoned, but the United States has broader interests than those relationships, and at the same time few interests that rise to the level of prompting it to directly involve U.S. troops. The Saudis will have to exert themselves to balance the Iranians, and Israel will have to wend its way in a world where it has no strategic threats, but only strategic problems, like everyone else has. It is not a world in which Israeli or Saudi rigidity can sustain itself.

Read more: Israelis, Saudis and the Iranian Agreement | Stratfor 

Follow us: @stratfor on Twitter | Stratfor on Facebook