What's Really Going On Here?

In an interesting development last week Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Sharm Ash Shaykh, Egypt. It is interesting because either Prime Minister Netanyahu or President Mubarak apparently felt it was necessary to meet with the other before the two of them, as well as Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas, leave for their separate Washington summits with the Obama administration. With both sides' positions on the Palestinian/peace issue seemingly set in concrete, and post meeting reports confirm that, I am left wondering at the timing and motivation for the meeting.

With nothing new from either side on the peace agenda, obviously the real reason for the meeting was to discuss Iran. But which of the leaders called for the meeting and for what reason? Additionally, why did they have to be held before the Washington summits? Reports that Netanyahu wanted Egypt's assistance building an anti-Iranian Arab coalition are certainly credible and tend to indicate that he is the one who pressed for this get-together. But what's the urgency driving the scheduling of such a meeting before the summits with the Obama administration? There is none that I can see. While I have no doubt that such a topic was on the initial agenda, I just don't see it as the driving factor.

It is tempting to think that the Netanyahu-Mubarak talks were the initial high-level coordination for a future Israeli strike on Iran. Since the Saudis are now convinced that the United States under the Obama administration will confront Iran with only words, Netanyahu and the Israeli government could be seizing the opportunity to use Egypt as a mediator to secure Saudi overflight privileges. If that were the case then the timing for this meeting would make sense. The Israelis would want to get their own and the Egyptians' stories straight so that neither side slipped up and let the cat out of the bag in their Washington talks. This would indicate that Netanyahu was driving the schedule for the meeting. Again, this is credible but I think highly unlikely.

But what if it were Mubarak that pressed Netanyahu for a meeting at this time? What would make the Egyptian president insist on talking to the Israeli prime minister before he left for Washington? The only reason I can think of is that someone wants to send a message to Washington and Israel plays a very large part in the message being sent. It doesn't take much thought to realize the prime suspect to send such a message would be the Saudis.

With the Obama administration drafting speeches trying to build an international consensus to stop Iran from building nuclear weapons, the Saudis no longer have faith that the United States will guarantee their security. The specter of a nuclear armed Iran terrifies them and without the protection of the U.S. nuclear retaliatory capability they are probably feeling particularly vulnerable. Could they be exploring the possibility of Israel replacing the U. S. in this capacity?