A new alliance is emerging to replace ISIS .. ISUS. ISRAEL SAUDI US alliance.
ISUS is a right wing alignment between Israel and the authoritarian Arab nations against Iran.
The US and European media are blind to this because Iran is demeaned as Shiite by the Arab states and by Israel. Iran is called the world’s number one terrorist state even though the Muslim terrorists that provoke fear come from Sunni states.
ISIS and el Quaeda are the brand names for those real terrorists but the propaganda obscures the fact that these movements were deeply rooted in the same states that now want to form ISUS. While el Qaeda and ISIS threatened ISUS, they were and still are fundamentalist movements based on the same Sunni ideology that dominate the Muslim brotherhood and bnig enemy … the family Saud. By ISIS and Saud standards, Iran’s form of Islamic Democracy is far too tolerant.
Meanwhile from the Arab man in the street point of view, el Qauda and ISIS were Arab movements to depose the wealthy, the foreign and the monarchs
The Arab leaders under ISUS really fear an ideology that threatens the military and hereditary rule of the Arab states. Saudi Arabia, the major source of ISIS ideology, and its allies share a view that Iran now presents more of a threat to THEIR rule than Israel,. Israel’s thriving economy and prosperous tech sector have become attractive models for other Middle East nations to try to replicate in part because Israeli secularism is irrelavant to the form of rule in Arab states. . No Jewish state can threaten the monarchy, military and sheer petrowealth rule of the Arab states.
The Arab states fear Iran for two reasons.
First, Iran is Persian. Within the Muslim world old fashioned nationalism and tribalism remain dominant. The Persians remember the bloody way the Arab caliphs imposed Islam, an Islam that Shiism sees as false. Shiism itself is centered on the belief that the Arab caliphs distorted the Quran to pursue Arab hegemony. The current regime over-through the Shah, a hereditary monarchy that itself violated Iskamic principles the Iranians rightly see as a form of Islamic democracy.
The second reason is that the Sunnis fear Iran is that the Persian state has the education, wealth and intent to undermine the military/monarchial system that rules everything from Syria to Egypt. Worse, Iran uses very modern, skillfull tactics to spread its message. The Mullahs have no need for traditional uniformed armies when they can sponsor insurgency as they have done in Lebanon and Yemen. The idea of a Muslim form of government that is stable is pretty impressive if you are living in the chaos left behind by the Sunni sponsored insurgency in Syria.
The anti Iran propoganda line from Trump, Riyadh and Israel is more than bot over the top. Iran is a young state, built on a sincere effort to define an Islamic form of democracy. That form, a theocracy with a form of parliament, my not meet Americas own fragile heritage of Jeffersonian democracy but the Islamic republic comes a lot closer to democracy then China, Singapore, or Russia. Even more so, the propaganda ignores the fact that the Islamic State has a successful multicultural model where Sunnis, Zoroastrians, Christians and Jews do exist .. not something you can say about most Sunni led states within the ISUS envelope!
So, why not realign? Under the Sunni caliphates that ruled the Islamic world before the Turks, the caliphs were advisers to a sultan .. a rules whose interests were secular. The Arab led caliphates provided plenty of flexibility for states within the hegemony to pursue individual interests. With The Donald as a sort of ineffective sultan, with unlimited oil money, with Israeli tech a .. why not rebuild an Arab caliphate using Saudi money, American military, and Israeli tech?
Then there is Europe. I do not see Europe buying into Sultan Don’s grans alliance. WWIII is now underay and it is a trade war with China as the odds on winner. A Chinese/EU realignment would more than balance any threat from Russia. Russia is a paper tiger. Even if they sent an army to Berlin, does nayione thjink they could rule? The Russo-American war fleets, missiles and nukes are a side show, The real show is the silk road, energy resources, and capital.
On a less grands scale Iran is a natural ally of China. Pakistan, India, and much of Africa and Latin America also fit well into that model.