Ghost of a flea

I am all for regional superpowers, but let's be realistic about what that entails.

Regional superpowers can go the China/Russia route, which is "We'll do what we please, and you'll take it and like it," causing other states to ally together to balance against them.

Or they can go the Australia/Japan route and try to act together with like-minded peers. To be part of a strategic consensus and not be the regional tough guy that everyone else is trying to balance against.

So, first Israel needs to decide what sort of regional heavyweight it wants to be: the one that makes everyone nervous through aggressive and erratic promotion of its own interests, or the one that is self-interested but also cooperates with its neighbours, the go-to guy that everyone trusts.

In order to be trusted within the region, Israel would have to:

1. Act as one of the region's key security guarantors. That means building security alliances with Sunni states in the region. It seems to have evolved that sort of arrangement-in-practice with Egypt and Jordan, despite a formal absence of alliance paperwork. Would similar arrangements be politically possible with other Sunni states?

2. To be seen to act in concert with Israel will not be overly popular with the domestic audience in many Sunni states. To make it politically palatable there would inititally have to be some kind of quid pro quo. What might Israel have to cough up to placate regional partners, and would that price be too much for it to bear?

Although I personally see the end of the US-Israel security alliance as heralding the beginning of the end of Israel itself, it would be possible to exist outside that framework providing Israel has been at pains to become "the indispensable nation" in relation to its region. I don't think it occupies that spot now, but it could, in time.

The other thing to consider is, Iran wants to be the regional top dog itself, something the Saudis have some pretension to as well.

Iranian wants to export its non-top-selling brand of crazy, plus it likes to stick pins in Israel via proxies.

Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, wants no nukes but does want to continue exporting petrodollar-funded brand of crazy as it has been for the past several decades. If Iran's not top dog, Saudi will be. From a strategic perspective, whatever the Saudis want, you should consider and then do the exact opposite. They are wreaking greater damage on the world's security situation than Iran ever will.

Whose brand of crazy has done greater damage to world stability? My vote's on Saudi Arabia's relentless export of Wahhabism. Iranian nukes can be deterred by a regional antagonist having nukes and ABM systems. Saudi Wahhabism is deterred by not buying their gas, and the target population having a firm stake in Enlightenment values and an essential belief in universal equality.

What takes longer to develop and deploy? I'm no expert, but having a casual look at Afghanistan's recent Shia Personal Status law, I'd say Enlightenment values.

We have a few decades experience deterring nukes and living under that threat. We don't have much experience in rolling back radical Islamism with secular pluralism, and it appears to take a whole lot longer.

Iran's a threat we know how to contain; Saudi Arabia is a threat we don't have the bottle to face.