In ~5 years, and don’t hold any of this against me:

• Israel will have its 1st base in the Gulf
• Turkey will control a zone from northern Iraq to northern Syria
• Turkey will expand Libya presence
• Egypt & Sudan will form something along the lines of a “Nile Confederation”
A military base in the Arab side of the Persian Gulf.
The normalization with tiny countries in the Gulf may indeed seem to be non-events. But, in that bubble, I think this process will produce interesting changes in the future. Normalization will have a snowball effect that’ll drag with it both Saudi Arabia & Qatar as party to it.
If Trump wins, just to give one example, the normalization will revive the UAE *attempts* to build/relocate the main U.S. base in the Gulf & cooperation with Israel will develop much further. It’ll be a matter of time before Qatar finds it imperative to *re*-normalize with Israel
Saudi Arabia has already allowed its airspace to be used by Israel planes. Not too far in the future, it’ll develop into land movements & (secret) cooperation, directly or via the UAE. Saudi will have the same quiet relations with Israel as those previously had by the UAE/Bahrain
At this point, the Saudis can’t afford to publicly normalize with Israel, but the Bahrain deal (after initial declarations to the contrary) was a Saudi gesture. So, soon, Israel will be surrounded by friendly nations (Egypt, Jordan, the GCC, maybe Sudan) except Syria/Lebanon/Iraq

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More from @hxhassan

6 Aug
A groundbreaking detail buried deep in the lawsuit filed by former Saudi intelligence chief against the crown prince MBS in US courts:

MBS *encouraged* Vladmir Putin's military intervention in Syria in September 2015, which enraged then CIA chief John Brennan.
Truly amazing, those meetings happened at least two months before Russia's September 2015 intervention in Syria. At the time the US acted surprised by Moscow's decision to deploy forces to Syria, while Riyadh was supposedly helping the Syrian opposition:

Another crazy detail is that MBS was convinced that Aljabri was responsible for the CIA conclusion that MBS was directly responsible for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
Read 9 tweets
9 Jul
One thing I’ll always be proud of is that we provided Husham with the platform & resources to publish his work almost weekly. We had big plans, ideas for longterm projects & to publish more regularly. Others only used him for quotes, and ignored his published work.
He had so much to produce, he truly deserved a whole team dedicated to his work. You can find his work here cgpolicy.org/articles/isis-…
Apart from the consistent scoop-based work @CGPdc published, the first major project he had submitted will be the first of its kind on Iraq. Watch this space.
Read 7 tweets
29 Jun
Details I obtained about the jihadist infighting in northwestern Syria, and about Ansar al-Islam's leadership and members (that ancient pre-ISIS Iraqi jihadi group.)

I checked with a few knowledgeable sources in Syria, about the general story I'm going to only sum up.

#thread
All sides of this infighting have made claims & counter-claims, so I won't get to those -- there is a summary of that in this earlier thread, if you want to catch up:

More interesting details about what really triggered this & how things stand today:
For chronology, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) learned that a group of al-Qaeda factions & allies were planning to form a coalition.

And here is the big one...

... the plan was for these groups to establish their control over the city of Idlib!
Read 24 tweets
25 Jun
Two very important statements issued by al-Qaeda and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in northern Syria. Both offer insights into the nature of the fighting between the two in the north, and a little about their "relationship".

Summary and commentary in this #thread.
Starting with the latest, just now. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra) issues a response to al-Qaeda, denying they initiated the fighting against the formal franchise of al-Qaeda known as Hurras ad-Din.

HTS's statement is issued by Abu Abdullah al-Shami.
Al-Shami says his group HTS and al-Qaeda's franchise had signed an agreement (after a period of fighting that followed the HTS breaking away from al-Qaeda) that regulated al-Qaeda franchise's work in the north. Those regulations include:
Read 13 tweets
24 Jun
Big news -- almost certainly true, but somehow not yet announced by the United States:

A prominent ISIS leader (so prominent he was strongly suspected be the yet unconfirmed new ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi) has been killed by a US drone in northern Syria.

#thread
Abu Saad al-Shamali al-Shami Faiz Ukal al-Nuaymi al-Qurayshi, was killed in a drone strike earlier this week. He was traveling under a false name and ID for "Ahmed El Darwish" in areas controlled by the Turkish-backed rebels.

A gruesome video & picture exist but not for sharing.
Abu Saad, a Syrian, is a KEY ISIS operative in Syria. He is said to have been jailed in the notorious prison of Sednaya before the Syrian uprising. He is also known for extreme views, even within ISIS, but was VERY close to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He was put in charge of Raqqa.
Read 18 tweets
20 Jun
Big development.

In an escalation, Egyptian president Sisi says Cairo is now prepared to intervene directly in Libya. He says an Egyptian intervention has become legal under international law to protect its borders, secure Libya & protect civilians there

This statement follows persistent efforts in past weeks by the UAE to stop the advances of the Turkish-backed UN-recognized government in Libya, after the military fiasco of its ally Haftar.
Using the same line that Russia and the UAE in past weeks, Egypt’s Sisi says that the red line for them would be if the Turkish-backed Libyan forces attempt to capture Sirte and Jafra. The Cairo Declaration seems to stop these advances through a ceasefire:
Read 9 tweets

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