Ben Sheen: Hello and thank for joining us. My name's Ben Sheen. I'm a managing editor here at Stratfor, and with me today is Middle East analyst Jacob Shapiro to talk about the current situation in the Middle East in the wake of an historic agreement between Iran and the United States. So Jacob, clearly the Iran deal has changed things in the Middle East. What are we actually seeing? What countries, do you think, are concerned about the new rapprochement with Iran and the United States?

Jacob Shapiro: Well, Ben, obviously every country in the Middle East is going to have something at stake in what's going on here. But for Stratfor's purposes, we're looking at three main countries that can actually block Iranian ambitions: so that's Turkey, that's Saudi Arabia, and that's Egypt. And particularly we've seen some moves from Saudi Arabia on the periphery to try and accomplish that goal.

Ben: Now clearly Saudi Arabia has traditionally been an opponent of Iran. How do you think their thinking has changed without having the U.S. to sort of act as a counterbalance against Iranian ambitions in the region?

Jacob: Well I think the first thing to note is that while the United States and Iran have become closer as a result of the Iran-U.S. nuclear accord, it doesn't mean that the U.S. is going to back Iran exclusively; it doesn't mean that Iran is even a U.S. ally. The relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia is still going to hold, there's still going to be a great deal of cooperation there and a great deal of mutual interest. That said, the Saudis won't be able to depend on the old United States, the one that would come in — we've seen in both the first Iraq War and the second Iraq War, we've seen the United States take actual boots-on-the-ground type action. So Saudi Arabia will have to push back against Iran in its own way; it won't be able to depend on the United States to back up all of its moves. So, Saudi Arabia's overall strategy is to build a broad-based Arab Sunni coalition to push back against Iran. First of all, they want to unite as many different Sunni Arab entities as they can against Iran, and they also want to position themselves as the leader of that group. They want to show the West and other great powers that they are the country that can lead this group against Iran, against ISIS and against other regional threats. And if they can do that, other powers will look to Saudi Arabia first — maybe — in order to get what they need done.

Ben: That's clearly an ambitious game plan, and they have these long-term goals they're moving towards. But Saudi Arabia actually has a lot on its plate at the moment, doesn't it?

Jacob: Saudi Arabia has a lot on its plate. They're supporting strikes against the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, they are funding Sunni Arab tribes in Iraq — Iraq is one of the main places for competition between Iran and between Saudi Arabia — they are also backing numerous rebel groups in Syria, both to strike against the Assad regime — the Assad regime historically has ties with Iran — but also to strike against ISIS, the Islamic State. Saudi Arabia has been able to keep a hold on the Islamic State threats that it's found within its own borders, but the Islamic State ideology is still very much opposed to Saudi Arabia and very much wants to make a dent there as well. So these are all things that Saudi Arabia has to deal with on a daily basis.

Ben: And recently didn't we see the leader of Hamas come from the Palestinian territories over to Riyadh for a meeting?

Jacob: Yes. So, Khaled Meshaal, he's actually based in Doha now, but he is the political leader of Hamas. And yes, he made a rare visit to Saudi Arabia and met with King Salman. Now, all the public statements were about that this was — that he was on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, and he happened to run into King Salman. That's not quite how we see it. Obviously we think that Hamas was discussing with Saudi Arabia the possibility for Saudi Arabia providing financial assistance — Hamas is in dire need of financial assistance in general, just because of the limitations of where it is located in Gaza. We also have sources that have told us that they talked about combatting ISIS, and even some reports that Hamas was trying to convince Saudi Arabia to talk to Iran on a more diplomatic level. I don't see that happening quite yet. But those were all things that we think were talked about between Hamas and Saudi Arabia in that visit.

Ben: It's interesting because as well that sets Saudi Arabia at odds with Iran, because Saudi has been a previous Hamas benefactor, and then when they eased off in sort of the post-9/11 world, you saw Tehran start to sort of exploit opportunities there. So again these conflicts, they run deep throughout the whole region.

Jacob: Right, and it's a long convoluted history. And even going back to Hamas' founding, back in the late eighties, the Saudis were one of the main backers for Hamas — Iran also backed Hamas back then. It was a much less — much less when compared to what Saudi Arabia was doing, but that support was there. In the '90s and in the early 2000s, Saudi was by far the main benefactor for Hamas. And then you saw a switch in 2006, and this is when Hamas went from being just a militant organization to actually trying to be a respected member of the Palestinian Authority. And the West and Israel and a lot of other powers weren't okay with that. They think of Hamas as a terrorist group, and they weren't going to interact with Hamas that way. That was when Iran was able to insert itself. And at the time Saudi Arabia was pretty comfortable, I would say, within the region, so perhaps — I'm not exactly clear, and I don't think Stratfor is particularly clear on why that funding stopped necessarily — but there was an opening for Iran. And Iran began funding and began supporting Hamas in a lot more ways. That basically remained the case until 2012, when Khaled Meshaal, the head of Hamas that we talked about earlier, he was based in Damascus. And he came out very much against what Assad was doing in Damascus, in part because Assad was cracking down on Sunni Arabs in the region. This very much upset the Assad regime and very much upset Iran, which supported the Assad regime and at the time was also supporting Hamas. So Iran pulled that support, and since 2012 Hamas has been sort of scrambling to get money and to get benefactors in order to make ends meet. So what we see here is sort of like you said, this pendulum swining back and forth: Hamas sort of trapped within Middle Eastern dynamics, trapped by its own geography, not able to do a lot for itself, and different powers able to insert themselves as they will. And right now it looks like, for Saudi Arabia's purposes, it makes sense to get more involved with Hamas.

Ben: Well clearly as we see Iran start to re-emerge in the world scene, we're going to see more of these conflicts start to emerge in the Middle East.

Jacob: Absolutely.

Ben: Jacob, thank you so much for joining me today.

Jacob: Thank you, Ben.