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The Democrats are not the only winners of this week’s US midterm elections. So is Iran. The Democrats’ ride to control of both houses of the US Congress vindicated Iran’s strategy that aimed to disrupt global energy markets, drive up prices for consumers in the United States and elsewhere, and fuel inflation. The Democrats’ victory repudiated the war, which a majority of Americans oppose. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance conceded that the war was a major reason for the Republicans’ electoral losses. So was Mr. Trump’s imposition of tariffs, the cost of which is borne by American consumers. Even so, Iran’s success in compounding the affordability crisis in the United States could prove to be a double-edged sword.

James discusses with J.G. Michael on Parallax Views the fallout of the US midterm Congressional and Israeli elections for Iran, the Gulf and a rapidly changing Middle East.

With all votes counted, election results announced, and no block garnering enough votes to form a majority government, Israel is looking at an initial ten days of backroom horse trading.

This week’s Israeli election has opened the door to weeks, if not months, of backroom horse trading with neither Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition nor opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot’s block securing enough votes to garner majority backing in the Knesseth, the Israeli parliament. Sharpening fault lines in Israeli society, neither Mr. Netanyahu nor Mr. Eisenkot want to work with Palestinian Israeli parties whose unprecedented more than 15 seats in the 120-member assembly make them the obvious kingmakers. The refusal, which could fall by the wayside, as Messrs. Netanyahu and Eisenkot jockey to be tasked by President Isaac Herzog with the formation of a new government, spotlights deep-seated prejudice, bigotry, and discrimination of Palestinian Israelis, who account for 20 per cent of the population. James talks to BFM. 89.9 about what the election, touted as the most consequential in Israel, means and how much of a difference an Eisenkot government would make when it comes to policy towards the Palestinians, Gaza, Iran, Lebanon, and Syria.

It doesn’t matter which Middle Eastern conflict one looks at; escalation is the name of the game, despite stepped-up diplomatic efforts to avert renewed warfare and hopes that elections in Israel and the United States will open doors and help lower the temperature. That is true for the Iran and Yemen wars, Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria. Efforts to avert escalation like this week’s visit to Tehran by senior officials of the Mecca Agreement, the tripartite Saudi Turkish Pakistani mutual defence pact, or hopes that elections in Israel will bring a less provocative government to office are, at best, band-aids that may produce the immediate aversion of more death and destruction and temporary breathing space, but no sustainable solutions. The same is true of efforts to reduce the region's dependence on the Strait of Hormuz for oil, gas, and other exports.

James discusses on Radio Islam the expected escalation in the Iran and Yemen wars, why the United States will continue to be the backbone of Gulf security, why US Israeli relations are set to change, and the fate of Iranian Kurds.

Israel’s defence doctrine, adopted in the wake of Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on the Jewish state, embodies everything that would make overt collaboration with Saudi Arabia against Yemen’s Iranian-backed Ansarullah Houthi rebels all but impossible. This includes the doctrine’s rejection of Saudi Arabia’s demand that Israel agree to an irreversible pathway for the creation of an independent Palestinian state as a pre-condition for the establishment of diplomatic relations. Moreover, Saudi and Israeli strategies are diametric opposites. Saudi Arabia emphasises economic cooperation and regional stability as cornerstones of its policies, not permanent war, pre-emptive military strikes, and occupation as envisioned in Israel’s defence doctrine. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu last week offered to assist Saudi Arabia in Yemen in the hope that it would open the door to closer security ties to the kingdom and pave the way for Saudi recognition of Israel.

James discusses on Radio Islam this week’s Middle East developments, including religious ultra-nationalism’s growing influence in the Israeli military, what Israel can learn from NATO’s new strategy, how efforts to destabilise states or change regimes fuel the region’s multiple conflicts, and the Yemen war’s derailing of Saudi sports ambitions.

Increasingly, destabilisation, if not regime change, has emerged as the subtext of the Middle East's multiple conflicts. The notion that civil wars, ethnic insurgencies, sectarianism, and social unrest can, at least, weaken hostile adversaries, if not produce more friendly regimes, complicates prospects for negotiated solutions and, in some cases, thwarts diplomacy, heightens the risk of prolonged wars, and turns disputes into existential conflicts. Middle Eastern governments and external powers, like the United States, did not only recently discover destabilisation and regime change as a possible strategy. It's that notions of destabilisation and regime change have moved centre stage.

There is much Israel could learn from NATO’s newly enunciated defence strategy. It’s a lesson that could set Israel on a path that doesn’t consider war a permanent fixture of the Jewish state’s existence, doesn’t see ruptures with Israel’s Western allies as inevitable, and could open the door to repairing its shattered international standing and resolving multiple conflicts with the Palestinians, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. For now, that’s a prospect that neither Israel’s governing far-right nor its more centre-right opposition parties or a majority of its citizenry envision. On the contrary.

Iran is restoring one of its nuclear facilities, while at the same timing stepping up attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz – actions that should provoke a US response. They haven’t. The question is why. James discusses the Iranian moves and the lack of a US response on Radio Islam. The discussion with Yusuf, the show’s host, also touches on attempts by Qatar, one of the Gulf states hardest hit by the economic fallout of the Iran war, to restart exports of liquified natural gas. Finally, James looks at Turkey’s more assertive posture in the Horn of Africa because of the wars in Iran, Yemen, Sudan, and Ethiopia.

Former US State Department official Alan Eyre suggests the US and Iran may be looking to the Vietnam War for lessons. A fluent Farsi speaker who headed the Iran office of the US consulate in Dubai, Mr. Eyre quotes an American colonel telling his Vietnamese counterpart after the Vietnam War ended, “You never defeated us on the battlefield,” to which the Vietnamese responded, “That may be so, but it’s also irrelevant.” Mr. Eyre’s anecdote is particularly apt with the United States for more than a month failing to respond to stepped-up Iranian attacks on ships attempting to traverse the Strait of Hormuz under US protection.

Eight months into the war between Iran, Israel and the US, the Middle East's old order is being redrawn, while opportunities and pitfalls abound. Geraldine Doogue and Nick Bryant ask Middle East scholar James M. Dorsey how Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and the UAE are navigating a world where the US is no longer a guaranteed protector, why the Houthis remain a potent force in Yemen, and why Dorsey believes a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians may now be genuinely unworkable. Plus: new sectarian unrest in Bahrain, the shrinking autonomy of Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq, and what the UK's decision to send air refuelling support to Saudi Arabia signals about where the region is headed next. Guest: James M. Dorsey, scholar and author of the newsletter The Turbulent World To listen to the podcast or read the transcript, go to https://jamesmdorsey.substack.com/p/how-the-middle-east-geopolitical

The Iran and Yemen wars are fuelling competition in the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa with Turkey as a key player. Turkey has long recognised the importance of the region as central to its growing influence in Africa. Even so, the wars and competition have persuaded Turkey that relying on humanitarian diplomacy, development assistance and middle-power strength is no longer enough. As a result, Turkey has rejiggered its approach to take into account a multitude of conflicts across a swath of geography ranging from the Red Sea to the Gulf, the Eastern Mediterranean to Sudan, Libya, Ethiopia, Somali, Somaliland dispute and footprints of Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Creating a mutual defence arrangement with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan was a first step with Turkey expected to send troops to the kingdom in support of its offensive against Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Increased support for the Sudanese Armed Forces in the country’s civil war is another.

This week’s Middle East news offers little reason for optimism. The US withdrawal from Iraq has emboldened Iran and darkened prospects for the Iraqi government and autonomous Kurds in the north. The Israeli Palestinian conflict is becoming ever more intractable as the region hurtles towards an inevitable nuclear arms race. Fuelling the fires, Iran and the United States and Iran are locked into a dialogue of the deaf that threatens to provoke another round of all-out war. James tries to make sense of it all on Radio Islam.