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Transnational Security
Cooperation in
the Mediterranean
Edited by Robert Mason
Transnational Security Cooperation
in the Mediterranean
Robert Mason
Editor
Transnational Security
Cooperation
in the Mediterranean
Editor
Robert Mason
Middle East Studies Center
The American University in Cairo
Cairo, Egypt
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
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Preface
v
vi PREFACE
1 Introduction 1
Robert Mason
Evolutions in the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) 4
EU Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) 6
Conceptual Considerations for Transnational Security
Cooperation in the Mediterranean 7
Structure of the Volume 13
References 14
vii
viii CONTENTS
Index 265
Notes on Contributors
xi
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
(Rowman and Littlefield, 2017), Egypt and the Gulf: A Renewed Regional
Policy Alliance (Gerlach Press, 2016), Muslim Minority—State Relations:
Violence, Integration and Policy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), Interna-
tional Politics of the Arab Spring: Popular Unrest and Foreign Policy
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and Foreign Policy in Iran and Saudi Arabia:
Economics and Diplomacy in the Middle East (I.B. Tauris, 2014). On
Twitter @Dr_Robert_Mason.
Arne Niemann is a Professor of International Politics and a Jean Monnet
Chair of European Integration Studies at the University of Mainz. He
is author of Explaining Decisions in the European Union (Cambridge
University Press 2006) and has published widely on EU topics, including
EU migration policy, in several journals, including the Journal of Common
Market Studies, the Journal of European Public Policy and International
Migration Review. Arne Niemann previously coedited seven special issues,
including “EU Refugee Policies and Politics in Times of Crisis: Theoret-
ical and Empirical Perspectives” (Journal of Common Market Studies 2018,
together with Natascha Zaun).
Annelies Pauwels is a Researcher who specializes in counterterrorism
and radicalization. She has conducted research at prominent EU and
UN research institutes. Her research at the European Union Institute for
Security Studies (EUISS) in Paris covered the external dimension of EU
Justice and Home Affairs. Prior to that she conducted research on crime
prevention and criminal justice at the UN Office on Drugs and Crime
(UNODC) and the UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Insti-
tute (UNICRI). Annelies holds an LLM in International Criminal Law
and an M.A. in Intercultural Mediation with a specialization in Arabic
and Russian.
Maxim A. Suchkov is Editor of Al-Monitor’s Russia-Mideast coverage
and a Senior Research Fellow at the MGIMO-University. Dr. Suchkov
is also an expert of the Russian International Affairs Council and Asso-
ciate Research Fellow at the Italian Institute for International and Polit-
ical Studies (ISPI). Previously, he was a Fulbright Visiting Fellow at
Georgetown University’s Center for Eurasian, Russian and East Euro-
pean Studies and Visiting Fellow at New York University. On Twitter:
@Max_A_Suchkov.
Ismail Numan Telci completed his B.A. from Istanbul University, M.A.
in European Studies at Hochschule Bremen, Germany, and a Ph.D. in
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Introduction
Robert Mason
R. Mason (B)
Middle East Studies Center, The American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt
e-mail: robert.mason@aucegypt.edu
make the USA an actor and force for escalation in this dynamic. Israel
remains alert to the threat posed by a nuclear-armed Iran but also to
patterns of asymmetric warfare from its southern flank in Gaza and
increasingly, from its northern flank in Lebanon, manifest in Hezbollah
which is supported by weapons transfers from Iran. We see many exam-
ples where broadly conceived national security policies include repressive
tendencies against civil society and the retrenchment of the elite into
“bunker states.” While this trend has been evident throughout the region,
it has been most recently apparent in Turkey after the failed military
coup in 2016. The consequences again, are not favorable to transnational
security cooperation.
Finally, the EU leadership itself was in flux in 2019. The new
EU Commission president has been announced as Germany’s Defense
Minister, Ursula von der Leyen. Charles Michel, formerly Prime Minister
of Belgium, will take over as the new Head of the European Council, and
Josep Borrell, a Spanish politician, will be the new Head of External Rela-
tions. Christine Lagarde, former managing director of the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington, DC, was announced as the new
president of the European Central Bank (ECB) in September 2019.
being the “Founder of Modern Egypt”, but the economic system based
on expanding trade relations with Europe was already growing based on
Egypt’s strategic location between the Ottoman Empire, Syria, and the
Red Sea. The disparity in volume between commodities from Egypt such
as rice, flax and wool, and finished goods from Europe such as medium
quality cloth, coupled with the Mamluk’s purchase of European arms
to bolster their efforts to control Egypt, made Europe a major trading
partner (al-Sayyid-Marsot 1984). Not only did this make Egypt subject
to European trade pressures and economic directives but also led to the
reintroduction of exceptional taxes which were once used as a means to
fund the civil wars between the Ojakat and Mamluks for control of the
country.
Although Morocco was defeated by France at the Battle of Isly in 1844
and by Spain at Tetuan in 1860, the support of Great Britain gave it
some independence. Immigration from France, Italy and Spain to Algeria
meant that around one sixth of the total population by 1900 were expa-
triates until the Algerian Revolution, led by the National Liberation Front
(FLN), in 1954. A French protectorate was imposed on Tunisia in 1881–
1883 after the British withdrew their objections on French expansion in
North Africa at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. The Morocco protec-
torate was established in 1912 which the French divided with Spain. Spain
took control of the Rif Mountains in the North and the borderlands with
the Sahara in the south. Libya was invaded by Italy in 1911 but resistance
was put up by the Sennusiya Muslim Sufi sect who delayed Italian control
of the whole country until 1931.
Only after the Second World War were national liberation movements
able to get a foothold, supported by the Arab League, but sometimes at
a heavy cost from a protracted civil war as in the case of Algeria. Colo-
nialism has thus sowed another layer of mistrust and antipathy across the
Mediterranean, often within living memory. From this to effective and
efficient EU relations with the Southern Neighborhood seems quite a
leap, especially considering that the EU’s institutional history dates back
only to 1950.
The EU’s security response (e.g., from conditionality to taking the
path of least resistance in cooperation agreements) and in follow-through
(e.g., state-building after NATO intervention in Libya) has been insuffi-
cient to meet security challenges. Constructivism, that is the significance
of historical and social aspects in international relations, would gener-
ally appear to hold here. Realism is also significant given the regional
1 INTRODUCTION 11
References
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of Muhammad Ali. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 1–23.
BBC News. (2019). Iran Nuclear Deal: Macron and Rouhani Agree to Look
at Conditions for Talks. 6 July. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-
east-48897621 [accessed 19 March 2020].
Behr, T. (2014). The European Neighbourhood Policy: Going Full Circle? In
R. Mason (ed.) The International Politics of the Arab Spring: Popular Unrest
and Foreign Policy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan: 61–83.
Biscop, S. (2003). EU Interests and Mediterranean Security. In Euro-
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European Neighbourhood Policy and Dynamics of International and External
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Handbook of Political Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 730–748.
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European Commission. (2011). A Partnership for Democracy and Shared Pros-
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earch/iscp/pdf/policy/com_2011_200_en.pdf.
Gambash, G. (2017). Servincing the Mediterranean Empire: Non-State Actors
and Maritime Logistics in Antiquity. In Watkins, J. Non-State Actors in the
Mediterranean. Mediterranean Studies 25(1): 9–32.
Gstöhl, S. (2017). Theoretical Approaches to the European Neighbourhood
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bourhood Policy. Abingdon: Routledge: 3–23.
Hahn, J. (2017). Foreward. In Gstöhl, S. and Schunz, S. (eds.) Theorizing the
European Neighbourhood Policy. Abingdon: Routledge: xv–xx.
Heijl, N. (2007). Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Euro-Mediterranean
Security Revisited. Mediterranean Politics 12(1): 1–16.
Hobbes, T. (1660). The Leviathan or the Matter, Forme and Power of a
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c2–232a-11e0-b6a3-00144feab49a.
Lawson, F. (2009). International Relations Theory and the Middle East. In
Fawcett, L. (ed.) International Relations of the Middle East. Oxford: Oxford
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16 R. MASON
Wickham, C. (2007). Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediter-
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CHAPTER 2
Martin Beck
Introduction
It is now common wisdom that significant parts of the Southern Mediter-
ranean experienced turmoil after the Arab uprisings. This assertion may
hold particularly true of the Levant, where a brutal civil war has been
ongoing in Syria since 2011 and a new sort of militant Islamist actor—
the Islamic State—temporarily controlled Syrian and Iraqi territories as
big as the territory of the UK (Beck et al. 2015). Moreover, conflicts that
existed long before the Arab uprisings have recently witnessed increased
violence, particularly in the form of striking down Gazan resistance against
Israeli occupation (Osborne 2018). Yet, as the virtual breakdown of the
central state in Libya as a result of the NATO intervention to bring down
M. Beck (B)
University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
e-mail: mbeck@sdu.dk
the rule of Muammar Gaddafi shows (Western and Goldstein 2011), the
turmoil does not stop short of the borders of the Levant but reaches out
to other areas of the Southern Mediterranean.
Although there are no “classic” immediate threats to European secu-
rity, developments on the southern shore of the Mediterranean are to
be considered relevant for the study of European security. Due to the
omission of the overlying global East–West conflict, regional affairs and
conflicts gained much closer attention and studies of regional security
complexes rose in significance (Buzan and Wæver 2003; Hurrell 2007).
In the light of the increased relevance of regional security complexes and
their interlinkages, the European Union (EU) is not inclined to turn a
blind eye to a war in its “backyard,” even less so as American engagement
in the ongoing Syrian civil war has been much lower than previously,
when Iraq had been the security hotspot of the Levant. Although most
of the 5.6 million Syrians who fled the country stayed in the Levan-
tine countries of Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan, UNHCR (2018) shows a
significant number of Syrians made it to territories of the EU. The count
of Syrians submitting initial applications for asylum to countries of the
EU (plus Norway and Switzerland) increased significantly in 2015 and
exceeded the level of 750,000 in May 2016 (Migration Policy Center
2016). The refugee influx from Syria has become a major object of
extreme politicization—or securitization—policies in Europe. Last but
not least, the turmoil in the Levant touches upon security interests of
Israel, which is considered by the political elites of the EU as an inte-
gral member of the “civilized Western world” whose security must be
guaranteed.
In order to identify the European perception on major security threats
from the Southern Mediterranean in the 2010s and their linkages with
one another, section two of this paper sketches a historical analysis whose
pivot is the year 1979: After the Israeli–Egyptian peace treaty brokered
by the USA in Camp David, security threats posed by actors from the
Southern Mediterranean to the West in general and Europe in particular
were lower than at any point before and after in contemporary history.
By what features was this situation characterized in which—contrary to
present times—security threats from the Levant appeared vastly absent?
While attempting to answer this question, we refer to the “long” year
of 1979, i.e., other structural features of significance beyond the Israeli–
Egyptian peace treaty stretched out to the time before 1979 and the
decade to follow.
2 SECURITY THREATS FROM THE SOUTHERN MEDITERRANEAN … 21
threats posed by Levantine actors to the West. Thus, the question arises
as to what features characterized this situation in contrast to the 2010s.
First, in the 1950s, while other world areas such as Europe and major
parts of Asia had long become hotspots of the Cold War, the Arab
Mediterranean remained largely outside of the East–West conflict. At
the same time, the USA created a Western stronghold in the region
with Turkey becoming a member of NATO in 1952. In the 1960s and
1970s, however, the Southern Mediterranean, in particular Egypt and the
Levant, became increasingly caught in the maelstrom of the global Cold
War. In this period, Israel and the leading Arab republics—Egypt and
Syria—took the roles of proxies of the two superpowers. Therefore, the
peace treaty concluded between Israel and Egypt in Camp David in 1979
ended the Cold War in the Middle East ten years before its termination
on a global scale. The then two most powerful Middle Eastern actors in
terms of military capabilities—Israel and Egypt—terminated a war-prone
constellation with the potential of a global spillover, as had become crucial
in the October War 1973 (Rabinovich 2012). The end of the Cold War
in the Southern Mediterranean in 1979 notwithstanding, the Europeans
could rely on a pronounced readiness of the USA to invest in Western
security interests in the whole of the Middle East until the end of the
East–West conflict and beyond under the conditions of unipolarity after
1989.
Second, the Egyptian–Israeli peace treaty of 1979 also marked a year
in which the security complex of the Levant was de-linked from North
Africa after Egypt had linked the security complexes of North Africa
and the Levant for more than two decades. From a European perspec-
tive, de-linking the security complexes in the Southern Mediterranean
from one another became particularly beneficial after the end of the
East–West confrontation in the 1990s and the early twenty-first century.
Thus, Camp David 1979 contributed to a long-term reduction of threats
from the Southern Mediterranean toward Europe in the sense that the
EU enjoyed a reduction in complexity in its security relations with the
Southern Mediterranean.
Third, after having achieved a compelling victory in the June War of
1967, Israel also managed to win peace in 1979: The Egyptian attempt
to replace Israel as the major Western ally failed (Telhami 1990). Thus,
occasional criticism of the Israeli occupation policy in Palestine notwith-
standing, the West, under the leadership of the USA and with the support
of the big three powers in Europe (France, Germany, and the UK), chose
2 SECURITY THREATS FROM THE SOUTHERN MEDITERRANEAN … 23
Israel as its only steadfast Middle Eastern ally: The alliance with Israel was
constructed as being based on shared values such as democracy (Barnett
1991). The unconditional European support for Israel and the expressed
value-based obligation to provide it was, however, of low practical rele-
vance, because Israel enjoyed firm military support in the framework of
the US–Israeli “special relationship.” This was a formula that had been
introduced by Jimmy Carter in 1977 and frequently reiterated by his
successors as presidents of the USA (Reich 1996). Thus, the European
commitment to Israel’s security back then was rather unproblematic.
Fourth, in the year 1979, the Arab Mediterranean countries were
governed by authoritarian regimes which, albeit being rather weak in
terms of promoting socioeconomic development, controlled strong coer-
cive capabilities vis-à-vis their societies. Irrespective of never being tired
of paying lip service to promoting democratization in the Middle East,
the EU prioritized stability in the region: Stabilizing the Middle East,
however, actually required the EU not to promote democratization, as
such a process would have destabilized the authoritarian regimes. Thus,
in the frame of different policy initiatives, the most famous of which is the
“Barcelona Process,” the EU established close ties with the authoritarian
regimes of the Southern Mediterranean, inter alia through the appli-
cation of “association agreements”—region-wide, with the exception of
Syria and Libya. Stability-oriented political elites of the EU benefited from
this policy in the form of a rather low migration rate from the Southern
to the Northern Mediterranean. The only significant exception—forced
Palestinian migration primarily from Lebanon to Europe in the 1980s—
was mainly absorbed by the at that time refugee-welcoming Danish and
Swedish societies and thus appeared to be a kind of limited collateral
damage of European support for Israel and their allies in the Lebanese
Civil War (cf. Dorai 2003).
Fifth, although Europe witnessed terrorist attacks from the Southern
Mediterranean in the 1970s and thereafter, they did not appear as a major
threat from the Middle East to Europe. The Munich Massacre (1972)
and the hijacking of the Achille Lauro (1985) by Palestinian terror enti-
ties were without any doubt spectacular. However, the degree to which
they threatened the state order in Europe and provoked massive coun-
termeasures by the affected states paled against European armed groups
such as the Red Army Faction in Germany, the Basque separatist group
ETA in Spain, and the Irish Republican Army in the UK. Moreover,
contrary to some of the European militant groups, at that time those from
24 M. BECK
was chosen as the major military target in the Middle East: In an exten-
sive campaign, the regime of Saddam Hussain was toppled and replaced
by an occupational regime. Moreover, the Administration of George
W. Bush heavily supported Israel in marginalizing the PLO headed by
Yasser Arafat until 2004, thereby converting the Palestinian organization
under Chairman Mahmud Abbas into a junior partner of Israeli-occupied
Palestine (cf. Purkiss and Nafi 2015).
After the Arab uprisings, the USA, albeit still being capable of acting
as a hegemonic power in the Middle East, appeared to be more selec-
tive in doing so. The Administration headed by Barack Obama welcomed
the “Arab Spring” and through the NATO intervention in Libya 2011,
which was actively supported by France, the UK, and other members of
the EU, even leveraged the downfall of Gaddafi’s regime. Obama also
significantly extended drone warfare in the Middle East, including Syria
(Miller 2015). However, the USA did not take appropriate measures to
prevent the counterrevolution in Egypt; US allies Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates (UAE) had full leeway to support Field Marshal
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s usurpation of power in Egypt in July 2013, which
terminated (for the time being) the democratization process in Egypt
(Hassan 2015; Cher-Leparrain 2017). The most prominent case of the
recent relative aloofness of the USA in the Southern Mediterranean is
its limited engagement in the Syrian civil war, which made it possible
for other external and regional actors—such as Russia and Hezbollah,
respectively—to interfere with high impact.
The recent relative aloofness of the USA has major repercussions for
Europe, as the Southern Mediterranean security complex which had been
shaped by American hegemony for decades is about to be transformed
into a highly complex multipolar system. Some of the new players that
recently gained significance in the Southern Mediterranean have rather
fierce relations with the EU, in particular Russia and even more so
Hezbollah. Moreover, Iran, whose relative power had increased as a wind-
fall gain of the American war against Iraq in 2003, managed to boost its
influence in Iraq and in Syria, thereby creating what has been labeled a
“Shia corridor” to the Mediterranean: As Hezbollah is a genuine alliance
partner to Iran, it may be argued that Tehran has de facto become a
regional power in the Southern Mediterranean (Chulov 2017).
The increased regional role of Saudi Arabia may at first glance appear
less problematic from a European point of view because the regime in
Riyadh is a European ally. Yet, the offensive regional policies of the Gulf
26 M. BECK
the military means to walk over Hezbollah, the Arab League’s move is
remarkable in the light of the fact that Hezbollah (still) enjoys the repu-
tation among many segments of Arab societies of being the most effective
and uncorrupted Arab force positioned against Israel.
Ideologically, the Arab League went much further than the EU in its
condemnation of Hezbollah and joined forces with the USA and its allies
Canada and Australia, as well as Israel, whose Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu accordingly praised the Arab League’s decision (Staff, Times of
Israel 2016). The Saudi-initiated Arab League declaration of Hezbollah
as a terrorist group is insofar a stunning novelty in the history of the
organization’s declaratory policy, as it had never before launched a policy
move that to such a high extent courted US-American and Israeli inter-
ests and at the same time contradicted the political attitudes of many
politicized social groups in the Arab world.
When on May 9, 2018 Trump announced the USA’s withdrawal from
the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—colloquially known as the Iran
nuclear deal—this provoked a political outcry in large parts of the world,
particularly also among Western allies of the USA. At the same time,
Trump’s move was vehemently applauded in unison by the governments
of Israel and Saudi Arabia. From a Realist standpoint, it may be claimed
that such an alliance, based on the principle that the enemy of my enemy
is my friend, makes sense. However, any Saudi–Israeli collusion appears
remarkable when a Social Constructivist perspective is applied according
to which the idea of politicized sectarianism shapes regional relations in
the Middle East beyond mere instrumentalization of completely nonide-
ological power-oriented elites (cf. Gause 2014; Calculli and Legrenzi
2016).
states and societies, Israel has been embraced as being one of them in
terms of political culture and sociocultural affinity. Second, the Euro-
peans have always pointed out that Jewish Israel is a legitimate state in
the Levant and that its security must be maintained. Due to the high US
military engagement in the frame of its special relationship with Israel, the
European security engagement with Israel has become of rather symbolic
value. Nevertheless, the ties are strong, as Israel is framed in the light
of collective commemoration of the Holocaust as indispensable for the
global task of providing the Jewish people with a safe haven protecting it
from militant anti-Semitism.
Until 1989, when regional conflicts were interpreted mainly through
the Realist prism of the global Cold War, Europeans were not alert to
Israel’s security because, as has been outlined above, Israel had won
both war (1967) and peace (1979). There were incidents of anti-Israeli
terrorism such as the attack against the Israeli Olympic team in Munich
1972, yet Israeli territory remained unaffected. The PLO proved to be
incapable of setting foot into Israel within its borders of 1949.
Moreover, although Europe started to build some pressure on Israel
by demanding in its 1980 Venice Declaration that the PLO be integrated
on the diplomatic level, normative pressure to change the occupational
regime over Palestine was still limited: With reference to its Charter, the
PLO was presented by Israel as a terrorist organization with whom to
share power in Palestine was not a reasonable demand. Thus, by 1979
Israel was not under effective pressure to bow to European “normative
power” (cf. Manners 2002).
Several recent developments have made European–Israeli relations
much more problematic for the Europeans. One is marked by Trump’s
decision to move the American embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to
Jerusalem in May 2018. This action was as such not much more than a
symbolic act that officially acknowledged facts on the ground. However,
Netanyahu’s ostentatious appraisal of this move makes it difficult for the
EU to maintain the balancing act between its realpolitik of de facto
acknowledging what breaches international law and makes attempts to
reach an accommodation with the PLO appear to be an impossible
mission—Israel’s reign over East Jerusalem and its claim that the city as
a whole is its eternal capital on the one hand and its declaratory policy
of promoting “peace” in the Levant on the other. The issue of Jerusalem
only highlights the structural crisis of the European-sponsored concept
of solving the Israeli–Palestinian conflict by promoting a Palestinian state
30 M. BECK
to live in peaceful coexistence with Israel. At the latest since the failure
of the Oslo negotiations in 2000, the EU has vehemently attempted to
convince Israel of freezing the Zionist settlement of East Jerusalem and
the West Bank, whose acceleration has nevertheless been ongoing since
the Oslo process.
The issue from a European perspective is that it becomes increas-
ingly implausible to uphold the normative idea of the Palestinian right
to self-determination in the face of an Israeli policy of creating facts on
the ground that inhibits its implementation. At the same time, the only
actual way out—to put effective pressure on Israel—is not an option for
the EU, as it is both powerless (in the wake of unconditional American
support for Israel) and unwilling to confront Israel (as the Jewish state is
constructed as an integral member of the Western community of values).
In the light of these constraints, the EU does not have any viable alter-
natives other than to continue walking a rather absurd tightrope. Beck
(2017) outlines these options as carrying on with promulgating norma-
tively inspired policies and coming out with “peace” initiatives whose
failure is predetermined.
What is often overlooked in the wake of Trump’s withdrawal from
the Iran nuclear deal is the more fundamental problematique of the
Iran nuclear deal itself, which had been bargained in 2015 with Iran by
global actors of which the EU had been one of the most significant. The
deal failed in two ways to appropriately politicize Middle Eastern nuclear
weaponry. First, it was based on the scenario that Iran, being a military
nuclear power, would be an extraordinary threat to security in the Middle
East and beyond. Thus, the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu vehemently opposed the deal reflected not a conflict over ends
but just means—this is how to prevent Iran from becoming a military
nuclear power. In other words, the Western approach implied the securiti-
zation of Iran potentially becoming a military nuclear power. Rather than
de-securitizing—or re-politicizing—the alleged Iranian military nuclear
program, the Iran nuclear deal upheld the image of Iran going nuclear
as a horror scenario. At the same time, Israel’s actual nuclear weaponry
was not politicized, for instance, no initiative was taken to implement the
idea of a Middle East Nuclear Weapon Free Zone (MENWFZ) (cf. Bahgat
2015). The fact that the EU and its most powerful members contributed
to the securitization of potential Iranian nuclear weaponry and refrained
from politicizing the Israeli potential for the same reflects unconditional
2 SECURITY THREATS FROM THE SOUTHERN MEDITERRANEAN … 31
European support for Israel inhibits a rational foreign policy toward the
Middle East (Beck 2018).
Finally, owing to the weakened regime of Bashar al-Assad in the wake
of the uprisings in Syria, opportunities emerged for local and external
actors such as Hezbollah and Iran to deploy military units on Syrian
territory. Concerned by the scenario that Hezbollah and Iran might use
their presence in Syria to establish a front line with Israel, Israel has
launched hundreds of air strikes since 2017—by its own account two
hundred by September 2018—on Syrian territory (World Israel News).
When in early 2018 an escalation of the conflict loomed, the Interna-
tional Crisis Group demanded from all actors that they exercise restraint
and contribute to de-escalation in order to “prevent Syria from becoming
a theatre for Hizbollah-Israel and Iran-Israel wars” (ICG 2018). In their
foreign policies, instead of supporting such a reasonable approach that
had prospects of de-escalation, European actors were more inclined to
take sides with Israel, as demanded by the German Institute for Interna-
tional and Security Affairs (SWP), which called for action to be taken on
the diplomatic level to “pressure Iran to scale-down its military presence”
in Syria (Murciano 2018).