Asked what the Arab and Muslim states would do if an Israeli–Iranian war broke out, John Kiriakou accepted the host”s characterisation of their posture as “wishy-washy” and then went through them one at a time.[1]
The Gulf
“The Saudis, regardless of their new relations with the Iranians, the Saudis hate the Iranians and they fear them. The Bahrainis fear them and hate them even more than the Saudis do. The Kuwaitis want to just be left alone. The Emiratis prefer strong business ties to Israel, but they”re willing to take a step back over the course of this conflict. The Qataris are pro-Hamas, period — they always have been. The Omanis are the diplomats of the peninsula, so they want everybody just to get along.” The transcript renders the fifth of these indistinctly; it is read here as the Qataris, that being the one member of the six-state enumeration otherwise unaccounted for.[1][2]
Jordan, Syria and Egypt
Jordan he describes as caught between geography and demography: “they worry about the Israelis because they share such a long border with Israel, but at the same time fully 50 per cent of Jordan”s population is Palestinian, and so they have to stand up for Palestinian rights and Palestinian human rights.” Of Syria: “it goes without saying, they are constantly wronged by the Israelis.”[3]
Egypt he judges most harshly, and explains rather than merely condemns. “What have the Egyptians done since October 7th? The Egyptians have done really nothing to help the Palestinians. They”ve sealed the border — because what”s the thing that the Egyptians want the least? They want an open border where Palestinians are going to stream across it and have to be placed in refugee camps in Sinai. That”s happened before. They don”t want it to happen again.”[3][4]
The common calculation
“The bottom line is that all of these Arab countries are taking this unfortunate wait-and-see attitude, thinking: what position can I take that is going to cause the least amount of damage to my own country? And then their thoughts of the Palestinians are secondary to that.”[5]