Sock It to Me

Posted by Graeme Wood

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The countries surrounding Iran have condemned Israel’s attack today. Some statements were more florid than others, and some were more convincing. Bahrain, whose monarchy Iran has repeatedly attempted to topple, urged Israel to de-escalate. Azerbaijan, whose secular government is constantly at odds with Iran, “resolutely” reproached Israel for its attack but gave no indication that it would cease being a resolute ally of Israel and the United States. Iraq, whose Shiite-led government in many ways owes its existence to the Iranians, vowed that it would help Iran retaliate by sending a sternly worded letter to the United Nations. Among the quicker and more vigorous denunciations was Saudi Arabia’s. “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia expresses its strong condemnation and denunciation of the blatant Israeli aggressions against the brotherly Islamic Republic of Iran,” it said, adding that the attacks were “heinous.”

Green’s Dictionary of Slang notes that the word heinous, when used by American teens, has at times meant fantastic, and it is no secret that among the countries that have issued denunciations are many senior officials who would consider the destruction of Iran’s nuclear program heinous and rad indeed, an extreeeeeme escalation in the Harold and Kumar sense. Almost all of the countries surrounding Iran have reasons to prefer a weak Iran and to dread a nuclear one. Diplomacy often takes the form of elaborate, staged meetings and statements whose plain meanings differ from what the country’s leaders actually feel. What they actually feel is not usually difficult to discern.

This lineup of eager denouncers is like the cast of a drawing-room murder mystery, where everyone is a suspect because everyone has a motive. The fact that Israel actually plunged the dagger into the deceased is incidental. Bahrain is ruled by Sunnis and has a mostly Shiite population permanently restless over its servile condition. Azerbaijan, too, is mostly Shiite, but it is proudly secular in orientation, and welcomes Iranians who come across its border to escape theocracy, get drunk, and take off their veils. Aykhan Hajizada, the spokesperson for the Azerbaijani foreign ministry, told me in Baku last year that Iran would sometimes conduct aggressive military drills across the border and complain about Azerbaijan’s friendships with Iran’s enemies. “We are very open with them,” Hajizada said. “We are building relations based on our national-security interests, and not based on the interests of the neighboring country.” A nuclear Iran would effectively end that independence.

[Read: What Trump knew about the attack against Iran]

But the clearest case of this duplicity (denunciation in public; You know, he kind of had it coming in private) is Saudi Arabia’s. “We don’t look to Israel as an enemy,” Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, told me in 2021. “We look to them as a potential ally” with many common interests. By contrast, he referred to Iran as a neighbor that he “could not get rid of,” and with whom he would realistically be forced to find a modus vivendi. In 2023, Saudi Arabia and Iran made a deal, brokered by China, that restored diplomatic relations and in theory healed the long-standing divisions between the countries.

But the fundamental facts of their relationship are irreconcilable. Theirs is not a love marriage. Iran’s drones and missiles are aimed at Saudi Arabia’s oil fields, and the biggest threat to the kingdom is, and has been for at least three decades, the possibility that Iran would destroy or disrupt its energy industry. Saudi Arabia on its own has no way to counter or deter that threat—which is why the United States and Israel are its natural allies. Iran has additionally fomented open revolt against the Saudi monarchy. In cities in the Shiite-majority Eastern province of Saudi Arabia, where much of the oil industry is, one can still see bullet-pocked walls and collapsed buildings where Saudi security services fought and ultimately crushed an Iranian-backed revolt in 2017.

None of these countries wants all-out war. And they certainly do not wish to volunteer themselves to be attacked, should Iran decide that Israel itself is too hard a target, and its allies are safer to pick on. Iran’s neighbors have plenty of beef with Israel too, and have populations that would be pleased to watch the Jewish state humbled. But Israel’s humiliation, if it must come, can wait. Iran has been unique among regional powers in its tendency to cultivate and arm allies abroad, and to aid those allies in their efforts in order to make trouble for incumbent autocracies, from Cairo to Baku to Sanaa. For Iran to go nuclear, and be able to dictate the terms of these relationships under the leisurely protection of an atomic umbrella, would be catastrophic for them all. Just don’t expect them to say so.

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