Thread by @pdanahar

A long thread to join some dots:

The WhatsApp hack, ‘sabotaged’ oil tankers, the push in the US to proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood & ‘plans’ to deploy US troops to the Gulf are all strands of the same story. At its heart is the struggle between Israel, Saudi Arabia & Iran

The Israeli army is unique in that it forms the backbone of many industrial enterprises in the country. That’s because the bonds formed during national service last a lifetime there. They are the singular most important time in a young Israeli’s life.

It’s the ultimate ‘old boy’s network’, though this one is made up of ‘old boys and girls’. The Israeli army takes in every youngster, assesses their greatest strength and parks them where they can do the most national good.

The computer nerds who would otherwise be locked in their mum’s basement are forced out into the light and into doing their national service in cyber warfare. When they leave, they take the skills and the connections they made with them and form companies like the NSO Group.

The NSO Group makes hacking tools to sell to governments to fight crime and terrorism. BUT and it is a big but, they’ll only get an export license from the Israeli government if it deems that the sale does not harm the national interest.

That meant in the past no sale to either Iran or the Arab Gulf states. Back then the Gulf states stood with the Palestinians against Israel. Post the Arab Spring the Gulf states (apart from Qatar) have all but abandoned the Palestinian cause to side with Israel against Iran.

This slow shift was accelerated by the election of Donald Trump and the appointment of so many anti-Iran hawks to his administration, like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the National Security Advisor John Bolton.

There’s much speculation that the Israel government would, to build relations with their new friends in the Gulf, have allowed the NSO group to sell their software to Gulf states. What suggests that?

Well it’s perhaps not a coincidence that among those reportedly targeted by the WhatsApp hacking software were lawyers investigating human rights abuses in Gulf states, a Saudi dissident and a Qatari citizen.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has made his reason for being (& his only political legacy) his effort to contain Iran, which he projects as Israel’s only existential threat. The Saudis see two existential threats. One from without: Iran, & one from within: the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Saudis are scared of Iran because of its military might. They are scared of the Muslim Brotherhood because they offer Political Islam as an alternative to the Dynastic rule of the Royal family.

The Trump administration is made up of people who hate the Iranian regime and everything it stands for. So, this new ‘Axis of Egos’ are all doing each other favours to position themselves collectively to fully unite against Iran.

Lots of trades are taking place. Some involve arms sales, some involve the price of oil and gas, some involve political trades like the one that some in the White House are doing for the Saudis by trying to designate the Brotherhood as a terrorist group.

It appears that any strand of intelligence that can be spun into a reason to ratchet up the pressure on Iran is being used. This atmosphere is all very familiar to those of us who were around to witness the build up towards the war in Iraq.

But back then US President George W Bush was driven partly by an ideological belief it was his destiny to bring democracy to the Middle East & that involved taking out Saddam Hussein. The present White House occupant has far fewer ideological bones in his body, perhaps none.

The signature of the Donald Trump presidency is transactional politics built around business need. President Trump’s foreign policy doctrine is ‘America First’.

He’s unlikely to sign up to another war in the Middle East, certainly not this side of the 2020 election, unless he is seriously provoked. That would require being able to pin some very bad action on Tehran.

The best way to do that is to gather intelligence. The best way to do that is for all your allies to be spying on as many people in the region as you can. One of the best ways to do that, is to hack into the trojan horse we all voluntarily carry with us, our smart phones.

That WAS a long thread sorry!

:-)