Prisoners of Geography

by Tim Marshall

  In comparison, Gaza was easier for the Israelis to give up (although it was still difficult). Whether the people living there have gained much by the Israeli departure, however, is open to debate.

  Gaza is by far the worse off of the two current Palestinian ‘entities’. It is only 25 miles long and 7.5 miles wide. Crammed into this space are 1.8 million people. It is in effect a ‘city state’, albeit a horribly impoverished one. Due to the conflict with Israel its citizens are penned in on three sides by a security barrier created by Israel and Egypt, and by the sea to their west. They can only build to within a certain distance of the border with Israel because the Israelis are trying to limit the ability of rocket fire from Gaza to reach deep into Israel. The last decade has seen an asymmetric arms race gain pace, with militants in Gaza seeking rockets that can fire further, and Israel developing its anti-missile defence system.

  Because of its urban density Gaza makes good fighting ground for its defenders but it is a nightmare for its civilians, who have little or no shelter from war and no link to the West Bank, although the distance between the two is only 25 miles at its narrowest point. Until a peace deal is agreed there is nowhere for the Gazans to go, and little for them to do at home.

  The West Bank is almost seven times the size of Gaza but is landlocked. Much of it comprises a mountain ridge which runs north to south. From a military perspective, this gives whoever commands the high ground control of the coastal plain on the western side of the ridge, and of the Jordan Rift Valley to its east. Leaving to one side the ideology of Jewish settlers, who claim the biblical right to live in what they call Judea and Samaria, from a military perspective the Israeli view is that a non-Israeli force cannot be allowed to control these heights, as heavy weapons could be fired onto the coastal plain where 70 per cent of Israel’s population lives. The plain also includes its most important road systems, many of its successful high-tech companies, the international airport and most of its heavy industry.

  This is one reason for the demand for ‘security’ by the Israeli side and its insistence that, even if there is an independent Palestinian state, that state cannot have an army with heavy weapons on the ridge, and that Israel must also maintain control of the border with Jordan. Because Israel is so small it has no real ‘strategic depth’, nowhere to fall back to if its defences are breached, and so militarily it concentrates on trying to ensure no one can get near it. Furthermore, the distance from the West Bank border to Tel Aviv is about 10 miles at its narrowest; from the West Bank ridge, any half decent military could cut Israel in two. Likewise, in the case of the West Bank Israel prevents any group from becoming powerful enough to threaten its existence.

  Under current conditions Israel faces threats to its security and to the lives of its citizens by terrorist attacks and rocket fire from its immediate neighbours, but not a threat to its very existence. Egypt, to the south-west, is not a threat. There is a peace treaty that currently suits both sides, and the partially demilitarised Sinai Peninsula acts as a buffer between them. East of this, across the Red Sea at Aqaba in Jordan, the desert also protects Israel, as does its peace treaty with Amman. To the north there is a potential menace from Lebanon but it is a relatively small one, in the form of cross-border raids and/or limited shelling. However, if and when Hezbollah in Lebanon use their larger and longer-range rockets to reach deep into Israel, the response will be massive.

  The more serious potential threat comes from Lebanon’s bigger neighbour Syria. Historically, Damascus wants and needs direct access to the coast. It has always regarded Lebanon as part of Syria (as indeed it was) and remains bitter about its troops having been forced to leave in 2005. If that route to the sea is blocked, the alternative is to cross the Golan Heights and descend to the hilly region around the Sea of Galilee en route to the Mediterranean. But the Heights were seized by Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967, and it would take an enormous onslaught by a Syrian army to break through to the coastal plain leading to the major Israeli population centres. This cannot be discounted at some future point, but in the medium term it remains extremely unlikely, and – as long as the Syrian civil war continues – impossible.

  That leaves the question of Iran – a more serious consideration as it raises the issue of nuclear weapons.

  Iran is a non-Arabic, majority Farsi-speaking giant. It is bigger than France, Germany and the UK combined, but while the populations of those countries amount to 200 million people, Iran has only 78 million. With limited habitable space, most live in the mountains; the great deserts and salt plains of the interior of Iran are no place for human habitation. Just driving through them can subdue the human spirit, and living in them is a struggle few undertake.

  There are two huge mountain ranges in Iran: the Zagros and the Elburz. The Zagros runs from the north, 900 miles down along Iran’s borders with Turkey and Iraq, ending almost at the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf. In the southern half of the range there is a plain to the west where the Shatt al-Arab divides Iran and Iraq. This is also where the major Iranian oilfields are, the others being in the north and centre. Together they are thought to comprise the world’s third-largest reserves. Despite this Iran remains relatively poor due to mismanagement, corruption, mountainous topography that hinders transport connections and economic sanctions which have, in part, prevented certain sections of industry from modernising.

  The Elburz range also begins in the north, but along the border with Armenia. It runs the whole length of the Caspian Sea’s south shore and on to the border with Turkmenistan before descending as it reaches Afghanistan. This is the mountain range you can see from the capital, Tehran, towering above the city to its north. It provides spectacular views, and also a better-kept secret than the Iranian nuclear project: the skiing conditions are excellent for several months each year.

  Iran is defended by this geography, with mountains on three sides, swampland and water on the fourth. The Mongols were the last force to make any progress through the territory in 1219–21 and since then attackers have ground themselves into dust trying to make headway across the mountains. By the time of the Second Gulf War in 2003 even the USA, the greatest fighting force the world has seen, thought better than to take a right turn once it had entered Iraq from the south, knowing that even with its superior firepower Iran was not a country to invade. In fact, the US military had a catchphrase at the time: ‘We do deserts, not mountains.’

  In 1980, when the Iran–Iraq War broke out, the Iraqis used six divisions to cross the Shatt al-Arab in an attempt to annex the Iranian province of Khuzestan. They never even made it off the swamp-ridden plains, let alone entered the foothills of the Zagros. The war dragged on for eight years, taking at least a million lives.

  The mountainous terrain of Iran means that it is difficult to create an interconnected economy, and that it has many minority groups each with keenly defined characteristics. Khuzestan, for example, is ethnically majority Arab, and elsewhere there are Kurds, Azeri, Turkmen and Georgians, among others. At most 60 per cent of the country speaks Farsi, the language of the dominant Persian majority. As a result of this diversity, Iran has traditionally centralised power and used force and a fearsome intelligence network to maintain internal stability. Tehran knows that no one is about to invade Iran, but also that hostile powers can use its minorities to try and stir dissent and thus endanger its Islamic revolution.

  Iran also has a nuclear industry which many countries, particularly Israel, believe is being used to prepare for the construction of nuclear weapons, increasing tensions in the region. The Israelis feel threatened by the prospect of Iranian nuclear weapons. It is not just Iran’s potential to rival their own arsenal and wipe out Israel with just one bomb: if Iran were to get the bomb, then the Arab countries would probably panic and attempt to get theirs as well. The Saudis, for example, fear that the ayatollahs want to dominate the region, bring all the Shia Arabs under their guidance, and even have designs on controlling the holy cities of Mecca and Medin
a. A nuclear-armed Iran would be the regional superpower par excellence, and to counter this danger the Saudis would probably try to buy nuclear weapons from Pakistan (with whom they have close ties). Egypt and Turkey might follow suit.

  This means that the threat of an Israeli air strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities is a constant presence, but there are many restraining factors. One is that in a straight line it is 1,000 miles from Israel to Iran. The Israeli air force would need to cross two sovereign borders, those of Jordan and Iraq; the latter would certainly tell Iran that the attack was coming. Another is that any other route requires refuelling capabilities which may be beyond Israel, and which (if flying the northern route) also overfly sovereign territory. A final reason is that Iran holds what might be a trump card – the ability to close the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf through which passes each day, depending on sales, about 20 per cent of the world’s oil needs. At its narrowest point the Strait, which is regarded as the most strategic in the world, is only 21 miles across. The industrialised world fears the effect of Hormuz being closed possibly for months on end, with ensuing spiralling prices. This is one reason why so many countries pressure Israel not to act.

  In the 2000s the Iranians feared encirclement by the Americans. The US navy was in the Gulf, and American troops were in Iraq and Afghanistan. With the military drawdowns in both countries Iranian fears have now faded, and Iran is left in the dominant position with a direct line to its allies in Shia-dominated Iraq. The south of Iraq is also a bridge for Iran to its Alawite allies in Damascus, and then to its Shia allies in the form of Hezbollah in Lebanon on the Mediterranean coast.

  In the sixth to the fourth centuries BCE the Persian Empire stretched all the way from Egypt to India. Modern-day Iran has no such imperial designs, but it does seek to expand its influence, and the obvious direction is across the flatlands to its west – the Arab world and its Shia minorities. It has made ground in Iraq since the US invasion delivered a Shia-majority government. This has alarmed Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia and helped fuel the Middle East’s version of the Cold War with the Saudi–Iranian relationship at its core. Saudi Arabia may be bigger than Iran, it may be many times richer than Iran due to its well-developed oil and gas industries, but its population is much smaller (28 million Saudis as opposed to 78 million Iranians) and militarily it is not confident about its ability to take on its Persian neighbour if this cold war ever turns hot and their forces confront each other directly. Each side has ambitions to be the dominant power in the region, and each regards itself as the champion of its respective version of Islam. When Iraq was under the heel of Saddam, a powerful buffer separated Saudi Arabia and Iran; with that buffer gone, the two countries now glare at each other across the Gulf. The American-led deal on Iran’s nuclear facilities, which was concluded in the summer of 2015, has in no way reassured the Gulf States that the threat to them from Iran has diminished. Western media reporting concentrated on the Israeli reaction to the deal, but the Arab media across the entire region was wholly against it, with some newspapers comparing it to the Munich Agreement of 1938. One leading Saudi columnist called for the kingdom to begin building a bomb to be ready for when Iran does the same.

  This was the background to the shocking events of early 2016, when Saudi Arabia (a majority Sunni country) executed forty-seven prisoners in a single day, among them the country’s most senior Shia sheikh, Nimr al Nimr. This was a calculated move by the ruling Sunni royal family to show the world, including America, that nuclear deal or no nuclear deal, the Saudis were going to face down Iran. Demonstrations broke out across the Shia Muslim world, the Saudi embassy in Tehran was duly ransacked and set on fire, diplomatic relations were broken between the two countries, and the scene was set for the continuation of the bitter Sunni/Shia civil war.

  West of Iran is a country that is both European and Asian. Turkey lies on the borders of the Arab lands but is not Arabic, and although most of its land mass is part of the wider Middle East region, it tries to distance itself from the conflicts taking place there.

  The Turks have never been truly recognised as part of Europe by their neighbours to the north and north-west. If Turkey is European, then Europe’s borders are on the far side of the vast Anatolian Plain, meaning they stop at Syria, Iraq and Iran. This is a concept few people accept. If it is not part of Europe, then where is it? Its greatest city, Istanbul, was European City of Culture 2010, it competes in the Eurovision Song Contest and the UEFA European Championship, it applied for membership of what is now the European Union in the 1970s; and yet less than 5 per cent of its territory is in Europe. Most geographers regard the small area of Turkey which is west of the Bosporus as being in Europe, and the rest of the country, south and south-east of the Bosporus, as being in the Middle East (in its widest sense).

  That is one reason why Turkey has never been accepted into the EU. Other factors are its record on human rights, especially when it comes to the Kurds, and its economy. Its population is 75 million and European countries fear that, given the disparity in living standards, EU membership would result in a mass influx of labour. What may also be a factor, albeit unspoken within the EU, is that Turkey is a majority Muslim country (98 per cent). The EU is neither a secular nor a Christian organisation, but there has been a difficult debate about ‘values’. For each argument for Turkey’s EU membership there is an argument against, and in the past decade the prospects for Turkey joining have diminished. This has led the country to reflect on what other choices there may be.

  In the 1920s, for one man at least, there was no choice. His name was Mustafa Kemal and he was the only Turkish general to emerge from the First World War with an enhanced reputation. After the victorious powers carved up Turkey he rose to become president on a platform of resisting the terms imposed by the Allies, but at the same time modernising Turkey and making it part of Europe. Western legal codes and the Gregorian calendar were introduced and Islamic public institutions banned. The wearing of the fez was forbidden, the Latin alphabet replaced Arabic script, and he even granted the vote to women (two years ahead of Spain and fifteen years ahead of France). In 1934, when Turks embraced legally binding surnames, Kemal was given the name ‘Atatürk’ – ‘Father of the Turks’. He died in 1938 but subsequent Turkish leaders continued working to bring Turkey into the West European fold, and those that didn’t found themselves on the wrong end of coups d’état by a military determined to complete Atatürk’s legacy.

  By the late 1980s, however, the continued rejection by Europe and the stubborn refusal of many ordinary Turks to become less religious resulted in a generation of politicians who began to think the unthinkable – that perhaps Turkey needed a Plan B. President Turgut Özal, a religious man, came to office in 1989 and began the change. He encouraged Turks again to see Turkey as the great land bridge between Europe, Asia and the Middle East, and a country which could again be a great power in all three regions. The current President, Recep Tayyib Erdoğan, has similar ambitions, perhaps even greater ones, but has faced similar hurdles in achieving them. These are in part geographical.

  Politically, the Arab countries remain suspicious that Erdoğan wants to recreate the Ottoman Empire economically and they resist close ties. The Iranians see Turkey as their most powerful military and economic competitor in their own backyard. Relations, never warm, have cooled due to them being on opposite sides in support for factions involved in the Syrian civil war. Turkey’s strong support for the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt was a policy that backfired when the Egyptian military staged its second coup and took power. Relations between Cairo and Ankara are now icy.

  Worse still are relations between Ankara and Moscow. The Turks and Russians have been at odds for 500 years but over the past century have mostly learned to rub along without too much friction. The Syrian civil war has changed that, with Russia backing President Assad and Turkey working hard to help overthrow the Assad regime and replace it with a Sunni Muslim-led government. Things came to a hea
d in late 2015 after the Russians intervened in Syria militarily. Turkey shot down a Russian SU 24 jet fighter, which it claimed had strayed into its airspace. A bitter war of words followed, there was even the vague threat of it turning into a shooting match, but both sides settled for vitriol and economic sanctions. This fierce row was not just about Syria and the Russian jet – it was about Turkey and Russia vying for influence in the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, and among the Turkic peoples in countries such as Turkmenistan. They both know that as Turkey continues to grow, it will seek to rival Russia in the ‘Stans’ and neither is minded to back down on issues of sovereignty and ‘honour’.

  The Turkish elite have learnt that scoring Islamist points by picking fights with Israel results in Israel co-operating with Cyprus and Greece to create a trilateral energy alliance to exploit the gas fields off their respective coasts. The Egyptian government’s dim view of Turkey is contributing to Cairo’s interest in being a major customer for this new energy source. Meanwhile Turkey, which could have benefited from Israeli energy, remains largely reliant on its old foe Russia for its energy needs whilst simultaneously working with Russia to develop new pipelines to deliver energy to EU countries.

  The Americans, alarmed at the new cold war between Turkey and Israel, two of its allies, are working to bring them together again. The USA wants a better relationship between them so as to strengthen NATO’s position in the eastern Mediterranean. In NATO terms, Turkey is a key country because it controls the entrance to and exit from the Black Sea through the narrow gap of the Bosporus Strait. If it closes the Strait, which is less than a mile across at its narrowest point, the Russian Black Sea Fleet cannot break out into the Mediterranean and then the Atlantic. Even getting through the Bosporus only takes you into the Sea of Marmara; you still have to navigate through the Dardanelles Straits to get to the Aegean Sea en route to the Mediterranean.