The D.C. smart media set is frantically passing around Jonathan Broder’s column, “Trump’s ‘New Middle East’ is a Mirage” to explain why the UAE and Bahrain deal doesn’t matter. Broder’s whiny column is designed to be read for the headline, not the content, because the content is laughable.

Broder’s thesis is that the whole thing is a mirage because “other Arab regimes aren’t jumping at what amounts to a U.S.-backed alliance of Israel and moderate Gulf and Arab states.”

Which other Arab regimes? Morocco and Qatar.

No seriously.

“For starters, Morocco and Qatar have both flatly stated they will not normalize relations with Israel before Jerusalem and the Palestinians resolve their long-standing conflict.” 

And then Broder concludes, “He’ll probably have to wait on Morocco and Qatar.”

No kidding.

Qatar is Hamas’ big non-Iranian backer. It’s got an alliance with Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, and has hosted a Brotherhood cleric who called for another Holocaust.  And Morocco’s Prime Minister, courtesy of Obama’s Arab Spring, is from a Muslim Brotherhood party. That’s another way of saying Qatar.

Nobody’s counting on Qatar to join a peace deal that’s built around an anti-Qatari and anti-Iranian and anti-Brotherhood coalition. 

That’s like wondering why the USSR wouldn’t join NATO. It’s a dumb straw man and fairly typical of the Qatari slant of much of the media.

The real question is whether Kuwait and the Saudis will sign an official deal with Israel. Considering Bahrain’s relationship to the Saudis, that seems likely.