Israeli General in Saudi News Calls for Cooperation Against Iran

Israel's new Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot delivers a speech during his swearing-in ceremon
MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP/Getty Images

Lt. General Gadi Eisenkot, Chief of the General Staff for the Israeli Defense Force, granted a landmark interview to London-based Saudi Arabian online newspaper Elaph in which he discussed Israel and the Saudis cooperating against the “real and largest threat to the region,” namely Iran.

The very fact that a Saudi paper interviewed a top Israeli general is noteworthy; Haaretz calls it “unprecedented,” although the Times of Israel notes Israeli military chiefs have spoken with Arab media on two previous occasions, both of them in 2005.

In the interview, Eisenkot comes up short of announcing a formal cooperative arrangement with Saudi Arabia, but he does say the Saudis agree with Israel’s view that Iran is the great regional threat. He describes an Iranian strategy of building two “crescents” of influence across the Middle East, which he says is one of the major reasons Iran got involved in the Syrian civil war.

“Iran seeks to take control of the Middle East, creating a Shiite crescent from Lebanon to Iran and then from the Gulf to the Red Sea. We must prevent this from happening,” he said.

Eisenkot stated that Israel does not intend to take preemptive military action against Iran’s proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon but warned that Israel has observed “Iranian attempts at bringing about an escalation.”

He judged the odds were against these attempts succeeding but warned in general that local crises could “lead to a broad strategic conflict” in the Middle East. Later in the interview, he expressed some optimism that Hezbollah’s grip on Lebanon is weakening due to a loss of financial support, military supplies, and public enthusiasm, noting that demonstrations against Hezbollah have recently occurred even in the Shiite strongholds of Beirut.

Eisenkot spoke highly of U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to rein in the Iranian ballistic missile program and resist Tehran’s growing influence in Syria and Iraq.

“With President Trump. there is an opportunity to build a new international coalition in the region. We need to carry out a large and inclusive strategic plan to stop the Iranian danger. We are willing to exchange information with moderate Arab countries, including intelligence information in order to deal with Iran,” he said.

Intriguingly, he declined a direct answer to whether Israel is already sharing such intelligence with Saudi Arabia, saying only that “we are willing to share such information if there is need” and noting, “we have many shared interests between us.” He went on to make it clear that Iran is one of those shared interests, specifically praising the strategic analysis presented by the Saudi representative to a meeting of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff he also attended.

Lt. General Eisenkot is scheduled to retire at the beginning of 2019 and has been described as concerned about his legacy, so he might be an interesting choice as an elder military statesman to handle the Israeli end of a new relationship with Saudi Arabia.

Such a relationship would be historic, and politically difficult. As the Jerusalem Post notes, leaders in Hezbollah and Iran have been screaming about Saudi-Israeli cooperation against Lebanon, essentially accusing the Saudis of hiring the Israelis as mercenaries to take out Hezbollah. That would include the great “moderate” hope of the Obama administration, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who said on Wednesday it is “very reprehensible and shameful for a Muslim country in the region to beg the Zionist regime to bomb the people of Lebanon.”

“It is unprecedented in history for a Muslim country to take such measures, and this indicates the immaturity of the individuals, who have come to power in those countries,” sneered Rouhani. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 32, is clearly the “immature” leader he had in mind.

The JPost also mentions how the “moderates” of Iran have been spending the windfall Obama’s nuclear deal dropped in their laps, including $60-70 million for Hamas in the Gaza Strip, hundreds of millions for militias in Syria and Iraq, funding for the Houthi insurgents in Yemen, and $800 million for Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Funding for Hezbollah is said to have dramatically increased from $200 million in previous years, which would seem to contradict what Gen. Eisenkot said about financial shortfalls for the terrorist group, although it is possible they have been obliged to spend much of that money on foreign operations, so he is correct that their Lebanese operations will soon come up short.

In his Elaph interview, Eisenkot described the Russians as amoral and self-interested but skillful at playing the politics of the Middle East. Last week, he secretly flew to Brussels for a meeting with the head of the U.S. Army’s European Command, General Curtis Scaparrotti, to discuss Iranian and Russian strategy in Syria.

The Russians have suddenly begun saying they never guaranteed a quick withdrawal from Syria after the fall of ISIS, or even after the effective conclusion of the Syrian civil war, which suggests they have mercenary interests in Syria that dovetail with Iran’s desire for a “permanent air, land, and sea military presence,” which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently stated Israel will never accept.

The Saudis, of course, can see what is going on in Syria as clearly as the Israelis can and have a strong mutual interest in keeping the Iranians from completing that “double crescent” project across the Middle East.

A report by the Security Studies Group (SSG) points out that former president Barack Obama allowed Iran to regain access to the world oil markets, which made the oil glut worse and accelerated the economic crisis Crown Prince bin Salman has been attempting to deal with by reconfiguring Saudi Arabia’s economy and society to make it less dependent on (and indulgent of) oil wealth.

Furthermore, Iran’s provision of advanced weapons to its Houthi allies in Yemen gives it a credible means of threatening Saudi Arabia’s oil shipping routes in both the Straits of Hormuz and the Bab el Mandeb Strait. Iran is very close to being able to grab the entire Asian oil market for itself, while the Saudi intervention in Yemen has kept it so heavily focused on the south that Iran’s northern crescent of influence is nearly complete.

In SSG’s analysis, some of Saudi Arabia’s possible counter-moves would be undesirable from an American policy perspective, such as fomenting a Sunni uprising in Iraq. The one thing the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Israel can absolutely agree upon as a joint goal is “destroying or degrading Hezbollah.” Unfortunately, the U.S. cannot directly participate in such an operation because American military advisers in Iraq are effectively hostages to the Iran-backed militias that could turn on them at any moment, and pulling them out would surrender “a major lever for contesting Iranian control of Iraq.”

Saudi-Israeli cooperation is as logical as it would be controversial. It wasn’t really conceivable until Saudi Arabia began to change.

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