Arab League to forge NATO-like military alliance of Sunni powers
The West has viewed the Arab League for decades as ineffective when it comes to galvanizing such military alliances. But analysts say an era may be opening in which Sunni powers align against Iran and engage in unprecedented horse-trading in the fight against the Islamic State.
“Egypt has promised to send troops into Yemen, but they would only do that if they were getting something in return,” said Joshua Landis, who heads the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma.
“They would do it because Saudi Arabia is currently underwriting the Egyptian government to a tune of at least $10 billion a year, but just as importantly because Cairo wants to get Riyadh to finance an Egyptian-led force to go in and fight the jihadists in Libya,” he said.
Mr. Landis cautioned that wider risks associated with a Saudi-driven military alliance are grave.
“The conservative forces in the region are trying to come up with an answer because America has refused to go and do all their dirty work for them,” he said. “We’ll see if they have any better results than the U.S. has had.”
Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Sudan, Algeria and perhaps other Sunni-majority nations are banding more closely together under Saudi Arabia’s fear of Iran — the region’s top Shiite power.
Leaders at the gathering Sunday in Sharm el-Sheikh spoke repeatedly of the threat posed to the region’s Arab identity by foreign or outside parties to stoke sectarian, ethnic or religious rivalries in Arab states — all thinly veiled references to Iran.
But Mr. Elaraby was unequivocal in singling out Iran for what he said was its intervention “in many nations.”
Yemen’s Houthi rebels swept in and captured the nation’s capital of Sanaa in September. Embattled Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, a close U.S. ally against a powerful local al Qaeda affiliate, first fled to the southern city of Aden before escaping the country last week as the rebels closed in.
via NorthEast Calling http://ift.tt/1Nwcszf
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