High-Level U.S. Visit to Israel, China’s COVID-Clouded New Year, Greece-Turkey Tensions, and More

MCMAHON:
In the coming week, the U.S. National Security Advisor visits Israel, hundreds of millions of Chinese travel for the Lunar New Year during a COVID surge. And, tensions between Greece and Turkey draw new concerns. It's January 19th, 2023 in time for The World Next Week. I'm Bob McMahon.

COOK:
And I'm Steven Cook filling in for Jim Lindsay.

MCMAHON:
Steven is the Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for the Middle East and Africa studies at CFR. Steven, thanks again for joining us on the show.

COOK:
Thanks, Bob. It's always a great pleasure.

MCMAHON:
Steven. Let's begin with Israel. In the days ahead, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan is going to visit Israel and speak to the newly returned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to focus on it looks to be a discussion about Iran among main regional challenges. Steven, give us a sense of why this visit could be significant.

COOK:
Well, it's the first high level American visit to Israel since Benjamin Netanyahu returned to the prime ministry. There have been a couple of high level Israeli visits, including Ron Dermer, who was the ambassador to the United States during Netanyahu's previous turn at the prime ministry, who's now a minister advisor for strategic affairs, to set the table for Jake Sullivan's visit as well as the possibility that the Secretary of State Antony Blinken will also visit in the coming weeks.

The primary topic is going to be Iran. Both the National Security Advisor and the Secretary of State have indicated that the Iranians essentially blew an opportunity to rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action known as the Iran nuclear deal, and Sullivan in particular has said that the United States and Israel both see the challenge of Iran's nuclear development in the same way, but has warned that the Iranians have made significant progress recently.

For their part, the Israelis have long said they won't be bound by any agreement. Now that it doesn't seem to be any agreement, they are saying that the world must stand against Iran's nuclear program and have more than hinted at the idea of a strike, and the question is, is the National Security Advisor there to talk them down from a strike or to plan for some type of military action?

Now, let me point out that there's ongoing institutionalized security relationships between the United States and Israel. The commander of CENTCOM was recently in Israel, so there are ongoing discussions about this. The betting has always been that the Israelis don't have the capability to do it on their own and would need the United States. Seems unlikely, at least at this point, that the Biden administration is going to go after the Iranians just yet, just because Israelis are saying it's time. There'll need to be a bigger reason for them to do it because it raises all kinds of implications for the US position in the Gulf and getting entangled in yet another regional conflict. I think the Biden administration and Sullivan is likely to counsel the Israelis to tread carefully on this issue. 

Then of course, other issues on the agenda with the National Security Advisor as well, as I said, Secretary Blinken may be going out there as well, will be the relationship between the Israeli government and the Palestinians and the new Israeli government is very different from the one that preceded it, which was a broader coalition. This is a very narrow right-wing coalition with ministers from parties that are avowedly racist and there's really no other way to put it. The Minister of Public Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has gotten a lot of attention, who was a follower of Rabbi Meir Kahane who was thrown out of the Knesset for his racist views.

This holds up the potential for there to be real problems between the United States and Israel. President Biden has not wanted this to be a major issue on the agenda. He hasn't wanted that to take up a lot of his time, but these issues, Iran, Palestinians and the nature of the Israeli government may start taking up more of his time going forward.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, those are two very sizable issues to deal with, Steven. I was wondering on the latter for the moment, just a couple of days ago, Israel had pretty large demonstrations of people concerned about government moves to institute what they're calling judicial reforms, which would in essence wipe away a check and balance. It seems to be a check and balance that's in place in Israel, and raising questions about the integrity of Israel's democracy. Do you think that's overblown or is that something that we need to keep an eye on?

COOK:
I think it's something certainly that the United States needs to keep an eye on. This was a demonstration that initially, they said, called for 5,000 people to demonstrate, 80,000 people turned out. There were demonstrations in Tel Aviv. There were demonstrations in Jerusalem and some other cities as well, so 80,000, population that's 7, 8 million people is not that big, but I think that there are real concerns about the moves, particularly the reforms that are being proposed that Prime Minister Netanyahu has avowed to push through that would allow the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, basically to overturn decisions of the Israeli Supreme Court, which as you quite readily point out, would undermine a check and balance in the Israeli system.

That's important to recognize. Israel doesn't really have a constitution and has a number of basic laws that nevertheless set out checks and balances in its parliamentary system. What Netanyahu is doing, and the suspicion is that he's doing these kinds of judicial reforms because he himself is on trial in bribery and corruption cases and this would shield him from these cases, that he's doing this out of his own interest, but it would have a devastating impact on Israeli democracy.

It's also important, as I mentioned before, that the parties that is in coalition with his Likud party are parties that are religious nationalists, religious Zionist, people represent settler interests, avowed racist people who have publicly called for transferring the Arab populations. It is going to be a challenge going forward. Prime Minister Netanyahu has said that much of this is overblown, but given who he's sitting in coalition with, I think outside analysts and the U.S. government is, as Israel's prime patron in the world, should be paying attention to it and should be uncomfortable with some of the things that are being talked about in Jerusalem.

MCMAHON:
This continues a bit of a theme we've been having on this podcast, which is democracies under stress. Netanyahu did return to government because he won fair and square in an election in which there were clear divisions, but with a pretty clear margin of victory that allowed him to build this coalition, Steven, so I guess we're going to look at Israelis trying to sort out something that reflects their own divisions.

COOK:
That's right, and I think that there's some speculation that Netanyahu who is someone who has nine political lives and is a shrewd politician, there's some speculation that he's sitting in coalition with these parties so he can affect the judicial changes that will, as I said, shield him from prosecution, but once that is done, look for ways to dump his coalition partners in search of a unity government with others.

That would be the best case scenario and it's hard to tell whether this is speculation really based in reality or this is just the hope of some Israeli analysts and that that's been picked up here in Washington, DC is a real possibility, but in the meantime, this is a very different Israeli government and it's not entirely clear that Netanyahu's partners have any commitment whatsoever to democratic norms and practices that have been an important part of the Israeli story over the almost seventy-five years of its existence.

MCMAHON:
So well, high level US visits to Israel are usually always closely watched. This one I think will be especially closely watched.

COOK:
That's beyond a doubt, this one is going to be particularly closely watched, but Bob, let's move on to China. This weekend marks the start of the Lunar New Year, which is celebrated in China and other places in Asia and throughout China, many people returned to their hometowns for the festivities. Millions, tens of millions of people are on the move. I remember pre-COVID video of these enormous train stations throughout China and airports ferrying people back to their hometowns and villages, but this year, it's happening during a COVID surge. 

China ended its zero-COVID policy and there's been an enormous spike in COVID cases. Has the government in Beijing prepared for this? I realize it's hard to figure out what's going on in China sometimes, but this seems like it's a recipe for some real suffering.

MCMAHON:
Well, it's a moment of real emotional ferment I guess you could say, or expected ferment in China because of what you just sketched out, Steven. Just an amazing about-face on the government's zero-COVID policy at the cusp of the Lunar New Year, which has been suppressed for a good three years now. It's hard for non-Chinese and non-Asians to appreciate what Lunar New Year is about. Some have called it a combination like what the US would have, a combination of Thanksgiving and Christmas bundled into one. 

It's a big event in which many Chinese return home and Chinese context, it's returning from cities to rural areas. There is this scenario of great deal of concern about the infected city residents crowding onto trains and public transport, coming back to rural areas where you have many elderly people who've never been vaccinated and a real disaster taking place.

It's so concerning that, to your question, Steven, President Xi Jinping has come out with statement expressing concern about epidemic control in rural areas. He's calling on local authorities to improve medical care, to protect health to the greatest extent possible. That's not the messaging we've heard during COVID, which is locking down and excessive testing and everything else. It's more like ramping up the ability to treat COVID infections while also trying to keep a sense of separation where possible. It just seems really hard. 

We should note on top of it, I mentioned the vaccination issue. It's not like China is flooding the zone with vaccines right now. There has been a reticence. Even if China had the best of market vaccines like the mRNA vaccines, which it does not have any great supply of, it is not making it a big push on those, and so, that's another issue that's going to raise concern.

We should note the estimates of how many people have been infected in China are staggering no matter what you've seen. Our colleague Yanzhong Huang just taped the podcast with our sister podcast, The President's Inbox, and Jim Lindsay talking about his estimates of about a half of China's population being infected. It's a population of 1.3 billion. That's a lot of people.

COOK:
That's lot of people. You have similar statistics or more in the United States, but the population is one-third of what the population is in China. It's interesting going back to this question of the politics of COVID. This seems like it's an implicit admission that the Chinese don't have effective vaccines after they came out with a number of vaccines and touted them as just as good as the mRNA vaccines, the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccines, and they have been, as you pointed out, reluctant to acquire mRNA vaccines. It's staggering to me that they have been so reluctant and that now, COVID is just ripping through the Chinese population. What's the explanation for that?

MCMAHON:
Well, it's one of the mysteries as the government's about-face first of all, which followed, we should note, very strong protests, protests that the country hadn't seen in almost two decades against zero-COVID policies which had just become so onerous that the people were fed up, but those lockdowns and those policies were informed by the fact that they do not have a very effective vaccine. They have a vaccine that by many accounts limits the severity of COVID and its sub-variants, but is not anywhere near the prevention that we've seen from the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccines that are more common in the United States, and then also, the ability of outside of cities and large cities of the Chinese healthcare system to deal with large numbers. 

It's been bad enough in the West, especially in the United States. We've all seen, and in some cities are seeing now again with a new variant emerging, highly overstressed healthcare facilities and really major burdens on healthcare providers and so forth. China is by various magnitudes much less prepared to deal with that. Again, especially in rural areas where you tend to have older populations. China is an older country demographically. On top of this, there's other information coming out about China, like the recent population report that China's population went down for the first time in six decades. You have some people in China on social media referring to themselves as part of the last generation because there's just such great pessimism out there right now.

It's back to my initial comments even about what this holiday means to China, both an unleashing of the desire to travel and be home and celebrate this very big holiday, but also this concern, this angst, about what the country's able to do to deal with it and what the government's able to do to show that it's on the rudder and it's taking care of business because that's been one of their great claims to fame, whether it was the zero-COVID or the promise of economic growth year after year. Those things are both under a lot of stress right now.

COOK:
It'll be fascinating to see going forward what the zero-COVID policy and these really harsh lockdowns in places like Shanghai have done to people. I can't imagine that the government's warnings, "Be careful when you go back to your hometown and village and city," are being heeded because people have been locked up under these incredible conditions for so long. The impact on Chinese society is something that is going to be playing out over a period of time.

But it's also very interesting to see how the stories about China have really shifted in our discussion. Not long ago, we were talking about China being this rising power, and in many ways, it is, but a lot of the commentary in recent days, especially with this demographic report and the end of zero-COVID and what's that doing to the country, are raising questions about this idea that China is really going to be this competitor to the United States globally.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, and we should note China sent its top economic official Liu He to Davos this week, the World Economic Forum, where China has tried to show up in major presence in past years to basically say, "Well, the peak of infections has passed, and not to worry. China will be back," but China's credibility is becoming a big issue because of its notable or noteworthy lack of transparency, especially on COVID reporting.

COOK:
Well, we're going to see with the new Congress. There's going to be a more investigation into the origin of COVID.

MCMAHON:
Into the origin as well as the ongoing... Even in the World Health Organization, which has been the source of ire from some congressional Republicans in the U.S., has been pressing China to be more forthcoming with information because not only because it's the right thing to do to provide its data, but also, it gives global health experts a sense of the patterns of transmission and whether or not there's any subvariants we should be concerned about, which a number of countries with far smaller health infrastructure than China have been doing this and reporting to WHO, and so, it's going to be incumbent on China to step up. As you say, Steven, it's going to be a real test for this country. 

Steven, I want to take us back to the Mediterranean where, as ever, there are tensions playing out. In this case, Greek-Turkish tensions remain high as disputes over territory as well as human rights persist. Greece and Turkey have come close to war three times in the past fifty years, so it makes outside observers extremely concerned about the potential for any dust up or outright conflict over their current tension. Can you tell us a bit about what's going on right now, what we should be looking for?

COOK:
Yeah, this has been a constant conversation over the course of the last six months about the tensions in the Aegean over territory that Turks have engaged in routine incursions in what Greeks consider to be their airspace, that Turks considered to be international airspace. There have been tensions over refugees trying to make their way from Turkey into the EU, Turkish smugglers and the Greeks pushing them back.

It's a big problem and it is a continuing problem, and it's interesting this week and next, because the Turkish foreign minister is in Washington due for talks with Secretary Blinken and obviously, this question of tension in Aegean is going to be high on the agenda, especially since the Biden administration has now proposed selling the Greeks the joint strike fighter, the F-35, a plane that the Turks were removed from because it purchased a Russian air defense system and has compensation to sell Turks F-16s and upgrade kits for a variety of other F-16s, for new F-16s and upgrade kits, for more of them on the condition that the Turks accept Sweden and Finland into NATO.

So it's a very difficult situation against the backdrop of Turkish general elections coming in May and Greek general elections coming in July. Back to your original question, is this going to boil over into conflict? My own sense is that the heightened rhetoric... The Turks really have engaged in this rhetoric, warning that the Greeks are arming these islands in violation of international treaties and that the Greeks want war, and then that forces the Greeks to respond that a lot of this on the Turkish side is really electoral game playing. 

That President Erdoğan is in the unusual position, he's relatively politically weak going into polls. In head-to-head races with a number of other leading politicians, he loses. The Justice and Development Party is weak, but still the most popular party, so he's been pushing every button and pulling every possible lever to garner support, and Turkish nationalism is one of those things, and the Aegean and the Greeks are an obvious place to push these buttons and pull these levers.

As I said, the Greeks respond to this with their own heightened rhetoric because they're also setting up for elections and there thee prime minister and the foreign ministers are in competition over leadership of the party. That's to say that there's a lot of politicking that's going on around the Aegean, but that miscalculations, heightened rhetoric, politicians painting themselves into a corner where they can't not respond, accidents could lead to conflict and the United States has been pretty low key on this issue in playing referee in the Aegean, but the topic of talks with the Turkish foreign minister is clearly going to be about a number of important issues, F-16, Sweden, Finland and the Aegean.

The United States diplomacy has long been to ensure unity within NATO and Greek-Turkish relations are a real problem for unity in NATO and now is not the time with a land war in Europe, and NATO fully engaged on this issue and Greece playing an important role and Turkey playing an important but different kind of role in that conflict. It's a gray area between Ukraine and Russia, which has some benefit, other problems associated with it.

This is something that is going to be an important issue for the United States, not just in these meetings but going forward, and there's a lot of talk in Washington about how to punish the Turks. The Turks used to have a lot of friends in Washington. Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has said, "We're not giving F-16s, no way, no how to the Turks," unless they do a certain number of things that the Turks have already said that they're not going to do like they couldn't use them in the Aegean, and the Turks say, "You can't tell us how to use our weaponry," and so, it's a big problem and I think that this tension that we're seeing is going to persist through the electoral season in Turkey as well as in Greece.

MCMAHON:
There's so many elements there and some of it is, as you said, Steven, the standard disputes between these two countries over territory and long-standing disputes in nationalism, but then you throw in the Ukraine dynamic where, as you say, there's a premium on NATO unity, and these are two NATO members. Unlike any other NATO relationships, these are the most antagonistic within NATO, but also, Turkey is in a very important position and as you wrote recently in Foreign Policy, people make the mistake when they try to consider Turkey part of the east or the west. Turkey is Turkey and it's going to do what's important for Turkey. From what you've seen so far in eleven months of war between Russia and Ukraine, is there any trends we can tease out from when the way Turkey's responded to that?

COOK:
Well, I think the trend will remain that Turkey will rhetorically support Ukrainian independence and sovereignty, will sell weaponry to the Ukrainians, but also work very hard to maintain a relationship with Russia. The Turks have really seen Russia as an economic partner during a very difficult economic period for Turkey, mostly due to President Erdoğan's economic mismanagement, Turkey has looked to cheap energy from Russia to provide a cushion for the Turkish economy. 

Of course, as Western businesses have pulled out of Russia, Turkish businesses have moved in and Russian oligarchs have parked their money there. Russian tourists have come to Turkey's Mediterranean coast. It's an important economic relationship that the Turks don't want to upset, and so, I think that's going to be the trend going forward as long as this conflict continues and probably beyond.

What I think is important to recognize is that this is giving fits to people in Washington and in Europe. There are some benefits to the relationship between Turkey and Russia. President Erdoğan and President Putin have established a working relationship. They've had major differences in places like Syria, Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh, but have nevertheless found ways to work together and because they have that relationship, Turkey was instrumental in this grain deal that gets Russian and Ukrainian agricultural products to the world market. We don't have, on top of a land war in Europe, inflation, continuation of the pandemic... We don't have food insecurity in major countries like Egypt, a country of 110 million people that imports most of its grain from Russia and Ukraine. That would be a terrible thing. It would be terrible for European security, as you can imagine, Egyptians trying to make their way across the Mediterranean for safety and security.

That has been good, but overall, what I meant... Westerners want to say that Turkey's either east or west and the Turks say, "We want to be Turkey," and the trend is going to be is that the Turks are going to seek an independent foreign policy. They don't want to be an asset in another Cold War and they don't want to necessarily be an instrument of Russian foreign policy. They want to pursue their goals as they see fit in pursuit of what they believe to be is Turkey's rightful place as a power in its own right in the Mediterranean, in Europe, in Central Asia, in the caucuses in the Middle East and in the Muslim world.

MCMAHON:
Has the echoes of the old Cold War Non-Alignment Movement, Steven, if I'm not mistaken, but that's a separate discussion.

COOK:
That is a separate discussion. Yes. Anyway, Bob, I think it's time to pivot to our audience figure of the week, which listeners can vote on every Tuesday and Wednesday at cfr.org's Instagram story This week, Bob, our audience selected, "Iran Executes Former Minister Alireza Akbari." Tell us more.

MCMAHON:
Well, Mr. Akbari is a British-Iranian national who was once Iran's deputy defense minister and he was given a death sentence on charges of spying for Britain. The UK has responded by saying those charges are politically motivated and had been repeatedly calling for his release and imposed sanctions right after his execution on Iran's prosecutor general.

It also drew a condemnation throughout the West, including the United States, and drew a light on the fact of what you referred to earlier, Steven, about the frozen nature of the nuclear deal and further creating huge questions and clouds around any sort of dealing with Iran as well as putting a light on the fact that the Iranian regime is doubling down on its harsh response to the protests that started in September.

These protests, by the way, are still taking place. They're much more muted by many accounts. Information coming out of Iran is hard to come by of course, but there's not the widespread steady protest that we had seen really through the fall, which were extraordinary. It's a question of whether we're going to start seeing further high profile executions and demonstrations of really brutality to quash this uprising by the supreme leader in particular who's been singled out by name by the protestors. It just creates another sense of concern about what might be the next chapter for Iran really and doubling down on its repressive nature.

COOK:
Yeah, I think it's going to be interesting to see how the Iranians apply pressure on the population. They have been executing people in an effort to re-instill the fear factor in Iranian society and best that anybody can tell, that hasn't worked. The country continues to be roiled by demonstrations demanding an end to the regime.

This is something that we saw in the Arab uprisings, just to bring it back home to one of the things that I know best, is that when leaders have sought to increase the amount of force that they're using against the population, you've only galvanize more people to come out in the streets and say, "This is unacceptable. The regime must go."

I think there's expectations of real change in Iran and change has already happened, but I think people also lose sight of the fact that these kinds of demonstrations and protests wax and wane, that there have been large demonstrations and protests against the Iranian regime even before this most recent episode.

So there's no telling how this is all going to go except for the fact that there does not seem to be any give on the part of the regime, and so, we can likely expect more executions, more force, more bloodshed and more people, quite frankly, in the streets. I think it's extremely hazardous to predict revolution or the outcome of revolutions, and it makes a difference for the United States in the way in which it relates to Iran and the region more generally. It would be, I think, the administration saying, as we discussed before, that the JCPOA is basically dead.

I think that makes sense. This is an incredibly repressive regime that no one knows whether it's going to be around for very much longer. We certainly wouldn't want to give it a lifeline of sanctions relief, which has been an argument that the Israelis and their Gulf partners have been making ever since 2015. So Iran, once again, there's always this discussion of we can pivot from the Middle East. It's not that important. Iran, Israel, these are things that are going to take up the time of President Biden in the second half of his first term.

MCMAHON:
Your reference to sanctions is important. It's hard to imagine that sanctions getting any more comprehensive than they already are, at least the U.S.-led ones, the Treasury Department sanctions and so forth. Iran has, for all of its authoritarian might and quashing protests, it's a shaky economy. It's a country in which a lot of basic functions are getting shakier by many accounts, and it would like to have a more stable, robust source of income and an ability to do more things.

But that's not going to happen anytime soon, certainly from the approach that had been taken after the JCPOA was launched. The question then is what are the levers for trying to control and freeze Iran's nuclear program? The IAEA, the UN's nuclear watchdog, is noting increasing the ratcheting up of uranium enrichment capability. That's again, back to your original discussion, Steven, what are the approaches short of military action that can be done to contain Iran?

COOK:
Well, I think the fact that the Iranians are making progress even under these adverse conditions would underline the argument that some of us, including myself, have been making, which is that the Iranians view this as existential and whether it's a diplomatic agreement or not, the Iranians are going to seek to develop their program, and if we don't want to undertake military action against Iran and all the risks that that entails, to my mind, there's a better, perhaps more effective way of doing it. It means recognizing that the Iranians are likely to be a nuclear capable state, which I think in private, lots of people in the Middle East would agree with, and that is to deter and contain the Iranians. That seems to me that's the best that we can do under these circumstances.

MCMAHON:
It's sobering to note that a country with far less developed, far more repressive than Iran, North Korea, has been able to ramp up its nuclear program and is avowedly pointing to its nuclear capabilities as part of its state defense strategy and projection strategy going forward.

COOK:
There's no doubt that the folks in Tehran have taken note of what the North Koreans had done, and that's our look at the world next week. Here's some other stories to keep an eye on. Trinidad and Tobago hold its presidential election. U.S. second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, visits Poland and Germany as part of his ongoing effort to combat anti-Semitism and to support Holocaust remembrance. And, the International Automotive Show, Asia's largest trade show for automotive electronics takes place in Tokyo. That actually sounds like a lot of fun.

MCMAHON:
We like to watch those trade shows for trends going ahead, so let's keep an eye on that one.

COOK:
I'm not even a car guy, and that sounds like fun.

MCMAHON:
Well, please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and leave us a review while you're at it. We appreciate the feedback. The materials mentioned in this episode, as well as a transcript of our conversation are listed on the podcast page for The World Next Week on cfr.org. Please note that opinions expressed on The World Next Week are solely those of the hosts or our guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. 

Today's program was produced by Ester Fang with Senior Podcast Producer Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks to Christina Bouri and Molly McAnany for their assistance. Our theme music is provided by Miguel Herrero and licensed under Creative Commons.

COOK:
This is Steven Cook saying so long.

MCMAHON:
And this is Bob McMahon saying, Steven, thanks for joining us as always, and take care everyone.