With a hat tip to VFR, here’s the Jerusalem Post’s latest report on the Islamist renaissance that is coalescing in the wake of the ‘Arab Spring’.
Meanwhile, DEBKA reports that in Egypt, General Tantawi and the SCAF grow weary of their burden, and are negotiating an early handover of the reins of power to the Muslim Brotherhood (who reiterate that they are not bound by Egypt’s agreements with Israel). DEBKA also reports on a growing deployment of U.S. military resources to Israel:
Thousands of US troops began descending on Israel this week. Senior US military sources told DEBKAfile Friday, Jan. 6 that many would be staying up to the end of the year as part of the US-IDF deployment in readiness for a military engagement with Iran and its possible escalation into a regional conflict. They will be joined by a US aircraft carrier. The warplanes on its decks will fly missions with Israeli Air Force jets.
As a result of the political upheavals in the region, Israel’s security situation has deteriorated sharply in the past year, and the buildup of U.S. forces there is unlikely, in my opinion, to be reversed any time soon. This tightening encirclement of Israel by its mortal enemies, who are in political ascendancy on all sides, will lead to an increased Israeli dependency on the United States to guarantee its survival. This in turn will give the United States — whose current administration shows no particular fondness for Israel to begin with — increasing leverage with which to pressure Israel as regards its accommodation of Palestinian demands, which are themselves merely a proxy for the eliminationist sentiments of the regional Islamic community.
A commenter recently remarked, in response to my unvarying pessimism about how the ‘Arab Spring’ was likely to affect Western interests in the region:
In the end the “Arab Spring’ might turn out to be an unmitigated disaster but at the very least it allows for possibilities not imagined in many decades.
That’s certainly true. Likewise, if I were to put on a blindfold while driving, it would allow for possibilities not imagined by nearby motorists.