When the war began, Washington’s calculation was that it would last about two to four weeks to topple the regime in Iran. Now the war is entering its seventh week and the regime in Iran still prevails, despite spectacular elimination of its top military and government leaders.

Since January 2020, following drone attacks in Baghdad that killed IRGC Commander Qassem Soleimani, the enmity against Israel and America has deepened and spread uncontrollably to widen the war zone that stretches across all Arab countries hosting US military, diplomatic, and economic assets.

No longer is it a war between Israel and Iran or the US and Iran. It is now a war between Arab countries and Iran as well. More dangerously, it has triggered Iran’s so-called allies—China, Russia, and North Korea—to reap economic and strategic advantage from the expanding conflict.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, and even Oman prefer to see a weakened Iran resulting from continued US and Israeli bombardment, while other Arab countries are nervously hoping that eventualities of the war would not make them Iranian missile and drone targets—the reason they remain undecided amid declining trust in US security umbrella, given Iran’s attacks on the US bases.

If the regime in Iran can be decapitated, the Arabs would need bigger US security umbrella for their future survival, fearing rebuilding of Iran’s military might. But if the US and Israel ever fail to do so, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other such US allies would need a kind of nuclear counterbalance of their own to create a dynamic equilibrium that would somehow remain fragile in the future.

Such security fragility is caused by the distributive attention that the US has, having to mend fences with its reluctant NATO allies over President Donald Trump’s ambition on Greenland and their refusal to join America’s war in the Strait of Hormuz for........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)