Lumping all his enemies into a single sinister amalgam, Bibi went ballistic:
“After the Beirut-Damascus-Baghdad axis, Iran is conducting a pincer movement to the south to conquer the entire Middle East. The Iran-Lausanne-Yemen axis is very dangerous to humanity, and must be stopped.”
The "Iran-Lausanne-Yemen axis"? (...)
Bibi’s evocation of an "Iran-Lausanne-Yemen axis" sounds like something that might have come out of Riyadh. While the Saudis are careful to maintain their traditional anti-Israeli stance in theory, in practice the reality is that the two nations are on the same side. Both target Iran as the main danger to their national interests, and both are pressuring Washington to give up any thought of a deal with Tehran. Furthermore, this complementary relationship has taken on a military aspect in Syria, where the Israelis are now openly supporting Islamist rebels of the Al-Nusra Front – although so far they have only publicly acknowledged giving wounded Nusra fighters medical aidand releasing them across the border. Meanwhile, support to al-Qaeda affiliated fighters is pouring in from the Gulf states.
In the religious civil war tearing the Muslim world apart, the Israelis are clearly rooting for the Sunnis – led by the Kingdom. When it comes to the conflict in Yemen, Israel’s chief concern is alleged Iranian influence – the presence of al-Qaeda is never mentioned. Israel’s surrogates in this country have spent the last few years demanding US support for Islamist rebels in Syria, most of whom have ties to al-Qaeda.
Al-Qaeda, for its part, has never laid a glove on Israel. For all the ranting against "the Zionist-Crusader alliance," the heirs of Osama bin Laden have been remarkably pacific when it comes to attacking Israel proper. Bin Laden always advocated generally ignoring the "near enemy" – Israel and the Arab despotisms – in favor of attacking the "far enemy," the United States – a strategic orientation that suits the Israelis just fine.
And although Bibi and the Islamists would seem to be polar opposites, there is an odd congruity going on there: as long as medievalists such as al-Qaeda predominate in the Arab world the entire region will be stuck in the Dark Ages, backward and riven with religious conflict. The Islamists, on the other hand, need the Zionist bogeyman as a convenient ideological hate object, without which their appeal would be considerably lessened.
This weird symbiosis has given rise to what might be called the axis of Tel Aviv, Riyadh and al-Qaeda – an informal de facto alliance of converging interests. And it’s no accident that its main targets are not only Iran but also the United States.