Senior Middle East analyst Yoni Ben Menachem appeared Friday on the “Israel This Morning” program hosted by Shira Kai Cohen to analyze recent developments in the Middle East. Ben Menachem presented a complex picture in which the United States, Iran, and Turkey are conducting an intricate relationship, with Israel potentially the biggest loser. His analysis suggests the region is at a strategic boiling point, where President Trump’s moves toward Ankara and Tehran directly impact Israeli national security.
2+Ben Menachem clarified that the central battle between the powers isn’t about Iran’s nuclear project as many initially believed: “We need to tell the truth here. The battle, the campaign between the United States and Iran is not about the nuclear issue. The Iranians managed to push that aside completely, nobody’s talking about the nuclear program. The entire struggle is over control of the Strait of Hormuz. And whoever wins this battle will decide the war.”
On Iranian strategy, he added: “What we’ll see in my assessment until November, until the midterm elections, is management of the war. There won’t be any decision, it’s a cat-and-mouse game. The Iranians will occasionally hit ships, the Americans will also respond in a non-escalatory way and there will be these exchanges of blows, exchanges of fire for a few days and again there will be behind-the-scenes efforts to move toward calm.”
2+Regarding Turkish involvement, Ben Menachem presented a disturbing scenario: “Turkey wants to establish a new Sunni axis here that will threaten Israel. They essentially want to reach a situation where Lebanon becomes a Turkish proxy, where Turkey will effectively have a border with the State of Israel on Lebanese territory, and that’s very dangerous. They want to crown us from the direction of Lebanon as well. There’s a major strategic danger here, and we must be vigilant.”
On Trump’s relationship with Erdoğan, he concluded: “Trump has his own interests. He’s somehow in love with Erdoğan, he thinks he’s a strong leader and he admires strong leaders. The second point is that he wants to turn Turkey into an execution contractor for American policy. And this will come at the expense of Israel’s security—we absolutely cannot agree to that under any circumstances.”
2+According to Ben Menachem, the shift in the American interest map is critical. The attempt to bring Syria into the sphere of influence of a “new Lebanon” under Turkish patronage poses a threat to Israeli strategic depth. The fact that the Washington administration is conducting dialogue with actors not necessarily aligned with Jerusalem’s interests requires decision-makers here to change their approach and make clear to the American administration that this is a strategic “red line.”