 Hello and welcome to NewsClick's show, Mapping Force Lines where we discuss major geopolitical issues around the world. Today we're going to be talking about the Mediterranean region and North Africa where a lot of developments have been taking place in the recent weeks. There was of course the hope of peace in Libya after the ceasefire was announced although now that hope seems to be receding. There has been tension. There's a UAE-Israel deal as well and recently news has come that the EU is threatening Turkey with sanctions over disputes with Greece and Cyprus. So to talk more about this we have with us Praveer Prakas, Praveer thank you so much for joining us. We have discussed this issue before but the Mediterranean region and the gas reserves seem to be emerging as one of the hot spots with almost all the geopolitics around the region revolving around it right now. So could you take us through actually who are the major players and what's the right happening right now? You know it's an interesting issue because we talk about mapping false lines. Really West Asia, North Africa has multiple false lines and what is becoming clear now that some of these multiple false lines are becoming more visible. Obvious false line has been the United States against Iran. Of course it is really the part of that and then we had slowly Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates joining the anti-Iran bandwagon or even their own contradiction. So that's been something which has been there with the larger contradiction between the Arab people and of course Israel takes the settler colonial power in that part of the world and the United States backing them completely. So this has been the visible false line but there is another false line which is now coming out and there is even a fourth false line which is emerging. The other false line which the United Arab Emirates Israel link up seem to also underline is that the monarchies and this is United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman. These are all the monarchies that are still there. Something should have been irrelevant by the 20th century let alone 21st century that these monarchies see not only Iran as a threat because that's also Islam, political Islam, but does not give room for monarchy. In fact they over through Iran. So that is also something which for instance they see Muslim Brotherhood that Muslim Brotherhood while being various other things has also shown that you can coexist with Islam and yet be anti-monarchy. Now this didn't come about in a day. Initially Saudi Arabia backed Islam, Muslim Brotherhood. Ikhwan was supported by Saudi money for a long time as well as the United States against what was seen to be nationalist Arab states like Nasir as well as for instance what we saw in Iraq and Syria. These were nationalist Arab states and they were seen as danger by both the United States as well as the monarchies. Hafiz Assad was as dangerous to them as Nasir was. This was the way they perceived it. So therefore that was the other underlying fault line which has also come open with Egypt that you have Islamic Brotherhood on one side, the monarchies on the other and Egypt as a military regime has aligned with the monarchies on the issue of Muslim Brotherhood but the Syria has not aligned with them. So you have a lot of criss-crossing if you will on these terms but Muslim Brotherhood is seen to be a threat by the monarchies because they thought they could use Islam in order to buttress Saudi Arabia's power over the region saying that I am the protector of the holy places therefore I represent Islam. So that has been challenged and here Turkey becomes important because let's not forget that essentially Eddogan represents Ikhwan. They represent Islamic Brotherhood and they therefore really belong to that current which contests in Islam and in this case Sunni Islam against the monarchies. So I think that there is this underlying monarchy versus political Islam threat which is also there and that the monarchies now think is a bigger threat and they're therefore willing to give up the Palestinian people by aligning with Israel because they feel that the United States does not have that kind of intervention possibility. This fault line that has emerged now is clearly because of the weakening of the United States as a local guarantor of everything for the monarchies and they are now looking at their own survival what are the local alignment they create so that they can survive both politically Islam and whatever republican forces that might be there republican not in the american sense but in the anti-monarchy sense. So this kind of nationalist republican sentiment popular sentiment which also the Palestinian people struggles really represents now comes up against the monarchy and the monarchy also sees Islamic brotherhood as a threat. So I think these are the currents which are there and Turkey versus Saudi Arabia United Arab Emirates is a fault line that is there within the region between political Islam and then monarchy so you know trying to also take control over the region using the monarchial privilege of controlling the holy places which is what Saudi Arabia is this the political guiding spirit of this is supposed to be MBZ the Prince of United Arab Emirates crown prince he's supposed to be the mastermind all of this but let's not get into who as an individual or is not driving it it's really monarchy versus politically Islam also appearing now as a fault line and that explains why Qatar on one side with Turkey is being opposed by United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia and Egypt is aligned with them and this is what you talked about in Libya this are the fault lines of course there are various European powers Russia on one side others on the other side all of that is there but the local battle is really Turkey versus United Arab Emirates versus Saudi Arabia and Qatar being with Turkey this is the local alignment that is there and Egypt being supported by Saudi Arabia as well as United Arab Emirates are not being supported by Qatar at all so this is the battle over Libya and when you talk about the Mediterranean region that's the other axis of the crisis of this particular realignment fault line whichever way you want to put it is over the gas in the region and that puts Greece France as well as Israel on one side along with Cyprus in fact they are using Cyprus location and therefore Israel to Cyprus that part of the Mediterranean whatever gas is there they think they can control it and they have also planned for a pipeline which will go under under C pipeline which will carry that gas to Europe and of course Turkey then sees that they are being frozen out of this completely and they have at least as an ally the Turkish the Turkish part of Cyprus which is of course Cyprus has been as you know bifurcated for quite some time and the that section has aligned with Turkey and with Libya GNA government which is recognized officially as the representative which all countries of the UN have recognized ground ground situation on the is maybe different after sim still to hold some military edge over GNA though with Turkey coming in that has shifted somewhere then you have this Libya and Turkey coming to an agreement which says look our economic 200 kilometers zone means that no pipeline can pass over this without our support so therefore they have essentially stimmed the pipeline project and now you what you said therefore the Francis threat the European unions the threats that they will provide put sanctions on Turkey and I don't know where this will grow because Greece is a part of European Union this is a part of NATO the strongest NATO power apart from the United States is actually Turkey so it's not going to be that simple either can the NATO act against Turkey well that is a question that was asked earlier as well can Greece fight Turkey alone no question they can't which France entered the fray on behalf of Greece and the pipeline question to be seen and I don't think there is an easy answer to this question so I think what it has brought up is a complete realignment of forces in the region and this is not Iran versus Sunni Islam it as you know this is what people outside wanted to portray Shia versus Sunni struggle it's never been a Shia versus Sunni struggle it has been oligarchies of different kinds in uh West Asia Iran being a political Islam state which believes in political Islam yes we have differences of all kinds with such a state but nevertheless it's certainly a more representative state than Saudi Arabia is so all the different monarchies are all the military dictatorship that Egypt has again become so I think this is the mix of things that are in the play at the moment but clearly this is something which is increasingly going to fracture on multiple lines it is not going to be a monolithic Arab versus Israel that we have already seen has fallen apart it is not going to be Sunnis versus Shias that has already fallen apart and it will also not be NATO on one side against others because even NATO Turkey and Greece are an opposite side so I think we have a situation which is very fluid at the moment and it is multiple players in the fray and it's very difficult to predict at the moment which way the current political kaleidoscope is will settle after the shake-up of the United Arab Emirates recognition of Israel so in this context it's actually interesting to see Turkey's trajectory itself because on the we have already seen Turkey's role in Syria where it is in some ways say defied the United States and European powers Turkey had a brief say relationship with Russia regarding military purchase and now we see that Turkey which is also a contender for entering the European Union is again in a space of conflict with the European Union itself and on the meanwhile it's also engaging with say certain sections of the Palestinians so it's having a very complicated game across the region. Yes Turkey has now again played the Palestinian card particularly after the United Arab Emirates have emerged clearly as relegation to the Palestinian cause. It's also true the Arab people by and large sense this is a betrayal they do see United Arab Emirates having betrayed the Arab cause and there is therefore going to be an upswell of opinion against countries which try to normalize relationship with Israel and we see Saudi Arabia has not followed suit they decided this is not the time to do it let the United Arab Emirates take the brunt of the criticism we will operate as we have done play ball but not make it open so that's the role that they have today they're playing and as we know United Arab Emirates has been in bed with Israel for quite some time so that we have discussed earlier as well so given that it's interesting to see what Turkey will do because Turkey as far as Palestine was concerned blue hot blue cold it did various things and it never went out on a limb on the question of Palestine if there is the because Navi Marmara case where it did give certain amount of support to what those both tried to do but nevertheless they have really never gone beyond any symbolic level they think this is an opportunity for them to occupy the high ground on West Asia particularly representing the larger Sunni masses because they also think politics in terms of religious politics so but there is a difference between religious politics as done directly by the quote unquote mosque politics what Saudi Arabia tries to do by trying to take control over the mosques in the region and what for instance Muslim Islamic Brotherhood represents which is more directly political Islam I did Muslim Islam as an identity and using that to conquer the politics of the country and of course the mosques also then fall prey to this kind of political Islam but nevertheless there are two different centers of power which I think also makes it much more difficult for others to understand that Turkey while being Islamic Brotherhood having Islamic identity politics at the core of what they're doing not secular politics at the same time is very different from Saudi Arabia and I think that difference is what people don't seem to see and having now playing the Palestinian card what Eddogan is trying to do is to say I'm the leader of West Asian Muslims at least the Sunni part of it I'm the leader of the Muslims they're not very happy with Iran for obvious reasons but their primary enemy in the case of United Arab Emirates it was also the feeling that UAE supported the coup against Eddogan the coup which was defeated which started really from the air force trying to attack Eddogan he's trying to bring his plane down and so on that and which was from an American controlled air base that's the reason they said the Americans are a part of the conspiracy but they have identified United Arab Emirates and specifically MVZ as a key mover of the coup for whatever reasons we won't get into and therefore there is a much more direct enmity between Eddogan and MVZ therefore they're positioning themselves as leaders and this is a long-term threat for the monarchy as you have said monarchy should have been dismantled by the 20th century that they still last it's because of enormous oil wealth that these countries have now that the oil prices have collapsed they've also lost a lot of their political clout right now will the oil prices revive probably not for next three to five years will they ever revive to the extent that they had earlier maybe never because it's true that renewables are coming much more into their own and it's possible that oil will never be that important again so given all of this I think the power of the these countries are going to weaken in the future and monarchies have no place in a modern world so I'm I'm fairly convinced this is a long-term secular trend that we are going to see decline of monarchial powers in the region political power of the monarchies and over a period of time they will either have to compromise with the people it becomes some kind of constitutional monarchy of different kinds but they will not be the completely autocratic monarchial powers that they are today by virtue of enormous amount of oil wealth and they have accumulated which which they can buy off their people thank you so much for talking to us that's all we have time for today keep watching you