Great maneuvers in the Middle East in the wake of a reshuffling of balances that have been underway for some years now. In these hours, the lion's share is made by Israel, back in the shop window after a shine dedicated to watchful and almost silent listening.
The first datum with which Tel Aviv must measure itself is the geopolitical growth and customs clearance of Iran, by now the absolute protagonist in all the critical quadrants of the region. The real shock to Israel came in the 2015: on the one hand the Vienna nuclear agreements; on the other, the prospect that the Shiite front in Syria would not collapse, thanks to the support of Russia and Iran.
According to a pragmatic approach, endemic in the philosophy of self-defense of the Jewish State, Tel Aviv began to look around, rewriting the entire list of good and bad on the blackboard, so as to open or close doors as appropriate.
But it is good to keep in mind an aspect that in the Middle East echoes like a litany: Arabs, Jews and Persians do not love each other.
This truth is influenced by exceptional notes that make the eternal Middle Eastern game extremely complex.
The first fact is that the Arabs are not all equal, but as predominantly Muslims they are cut from the diagonal Sunnism-Shiism. Not only that: if sectarian differences have fed divisions for centuries, the different ideological visions of the Second World War have done even more. The generic opposition between Nasserians-socialist-nationalists and pro-Western petro-monarchies was superimposed on religious questions, creating even more confusion.
Israel has made a living on these lacerations, keeping at bay the anti-Jewish extremisms that have arisen from time to time, by virtue of an undeniable military and technological superiority.
The second fact is that Iranians and Arabs, although characterized by an ancestral distrust, converge on a strategic point: the Israelis occupy Palestine and Jerusalem can never be only Jewish. Convergence has at times been so strong that the most persistent paladin of the Palestinian cause since the end of the year '70 onwards, has become really Iran. In the Israeli collective imagination, not surprisingly Hezbollah contends with Hamas the palm of public enemy number one.
Israel for its part tries to insert itself into the openings that open up from time to time, according to the rule "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". The polarization between Iran and Saudi Arabia has thus offered an opportunity for a change of course to the historic regional balances: Tel Aviv and Riad no longer consider themselves enemies "without ifs and buts". The statements in this regard by the respective foreign ministers Lieberman and Al Jubeir released in February at the Munich Security Conference border on mutual courtship. 
In reality the sordid ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia are an ancient thing and find a side in the secret contacts existing between the Jewish State and Sunni Islamic countries, even outside the Arab world. Just mention the exercise as an example Red Flag of the August 2016, where together with the ISAF, the aeronautics of the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan have ventured into joint training.
Of all the 22 Arab League countries, only Egypt and Jordan have official diplomatic relations with Israel. Unofficially, however, contacts, especially at intelligence levels, have continued for years, especially with Saudi Arabia and Qatar. the relations have intensified since the respective strategic objectives began to overlap.
The isolation of Iran is the first goal in order of importance shared by the two countries. For Israel and Saudi Arabia, the ayatollahs' anti-Jewish and anti-slander plots are a real question of survival.
Another determining factor is the need to replace Egypt in the role of respective privileged partner. Al Sisi is not Mubarak, nor is Sadat, and the role played by Cairo in Syria, Yemen and Libya is at least ambiguous for both Tel Aviv and Riyadh. The reopening of the embassies between Iran and Egypt is the further piece of a picture of ever-increasing mistrust.
As the godmother of all the Sunnis, Saudi Arabia also applies to oversee Arab-Israeli relations and extended relations between Muslims and Jews, finding a living room that is always available in both Washington and London. In other words, what seemed an authentic heresy up to ten years ago can now come out: Israelis and Saudis understand it and no longer need to hide it.
For Iran the warning is clear and the scarecrow stirred for decades by internal propaganda becomes reality. If in fact Israel and Saudi Arabia make a virtue of necessity, Tehran understands the antiphon fearing its greatest possible evil: Arabs and Jews become allies. It seems political, but in the Middle East, except perhaps peace, everything is possible.
The road to an official decoding of relations between Riyadh (and its Gulf dignitaries) and Tel Aviv is still long of course, but diplomacy is often based on concrete facts. Many of the Israeli moves are related to the stance that each country takes on Jewish settlements in the Territories. To paraphrase, Israel's sympathies fluctuate according to how it is posed on the Palestinian question and in particular on any UN resolution denouncing new settlements. Considering the Syrian war, for example, it is not difficult to understand the idyll between Riyadh and Tel Aviv. Gone are the days of the Lebanese civil war in which Syrians came into conflict with Arafat's PLO. Today there are thousands of Palestinians who have decided to support Hezbollah in the common cause pro Assad. On this stock, Saudi strong pressure for Israel to accept a lasting peace plan (with the return of the Golan and a slice of the West Bank, ed), seem more oriented to remove Iran's role as defender of Palestine (and of Islam ) that to sponsor the cause of the most ramshackle Arab brothers.
Added to this are the secret informal contacts between Israelis and Saudis reported by the Arab press, the rumors of the forthcoming opening of a Saudi diplomatic headquarters in Tel Aviv, the direct flights introduced between Arabia and Israel and the increasingly obscure US-mediated military collaboration . The talk and handshake between Israeli defense minister Moshe Ya'alon and Saudi prince Faisal al Saud at the Munich conference in February are emblematic in this sense.
Israel, also orphan of the privileged axis with Erdogan's Turkey, needs one less enemy and one more ally. The Saudis are waiting for nothing else. Iran knows it and through President Rouhani's mouth he began to accuse the Arabs of having embraced the Zionist cause. The ball now passes to Tehran.
(photo: IDF/ Web)
