Israel’s America Trap, Part 4: Palestinian Statehood?

“The United States has provided both a sense of direction and a mechanism. That, at its best, is what the peace process has been about. At worst, it has been little more than a slogan used to mask the marking of time.” William B. Quandt

 

The United States has, for decades, been actively involved in an elusive because illusive peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The tenacity of our leaders deserves recognition, but what lies behind their serial failures? Between Israel and the Arabs there have been some notable successes, and the following is a partial chronology adapted from Wikipedia:

 

Camp David Accords (1978): signed by Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin on September 17, 1978, the Accords produced two agreements. One succeeded in laying the groundwork for Anwar Sadat’s historic appearance before the Israeli Knesset followed by a treaty of peace between the two states. The second accord between the governments was intended to lead to the same result between Israel and the Palestinians. After 33 years that has yet to occur.

 

 

“We who have fought against you, the Palestinians, we say to you today, in a loud and a clear voice, enough of blood and tears ... enough!” Yitzhak Rabin (Reuters)

 

The Oslo Accords (1993) produced the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements (DOP), which provided for Arafat returning to the West Bank, the establishment of the Palestinian Authority and self-rule, and made Rabin, Arafat and Peres Nobel laureates. Some sources suggest that with Rabin’s assassination peace, almost achieved, was also victim. But this optimism towards peace neglects both what preceded and followed the assassination, issues that will be discussed below.

         A light moment at Camp David: Barak playfully pushes Arafat into the Laurel cabin, 11 July, 2000 (Reuters)

 

Camp David (2000) was, judged by the purpose of the summit, a failure. Yet it laid out a ground plan for eventual success between willing parties.

 

According to news reports prior to the summit Yasser Arafat agreed to attend only reluctantly. Although the agreements mediated by President Clinton were described as the most both sides could realistically expect, Arafat walked away saying, according to a Saudi journalist, that to sign would result in his assassination.

 

It is notable, and a lesson to would be “intermediaries,” that in the end the only two successful treaties, those between Egypt (1979) and Israel and Jordan and Israel (1994) resulted from direct and secret negotiations between the principles. In both cases, according to reports, discussions were kept secret even from the Americans. The Sadat visit, for example, resulted from Egyptian and Israeli emissaries meeting secretly in Morocco to avoid President Carter’s insistence on a Geneva Conference targeting a comprehensive regional peace which Sadat and Begin both knew would end in failure (Eisenberg and Caplan, Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace, p. 42).

 

 

Basic Positions: Arab, Israel, Palestinian: In its simplest terms peace is unlikely because it means different things to the parties involved. For Israel, surrounded by hostile and threatening neighbors peace means firstly, “security.” In terms of geography that means the indefinite stationing of troops along the Rift Valley border with Jordan, and control of the airspace above any future Palestinian state. Both conditions have been repeatedly rejected out of hand by the Palestinians. For the Palestinians the single issue they seem unwilling to compromise on is the right of return of all Palestinians to their abandoned homes within Israel. At Camp David 2000, for example, Yasser Arafat reportedly told President Clinton that, “he wouldnever relinquish the Palestinian right of return.” And Mahmoud Abbas recently confirmed that, “the Palestinians will never renounce the right of return to their former homes in Israel.” Since such a condition would mean not just a potential fifth column, but a demographic time bomb eventually resulting in a “one-state solution,” the demand is a non-starter for Israel.

 

But the more fundamental issue is that Israel is viewed by most Arab states as an alien interloper, an extension of European imperialism, a 20^th century crusader outpost. Hamas and its patron Iran make no bones about this; but so do the Saudis and, occasionally, the Egyptian press also. And while Abbas’ Palestinian Authority maintains its posture as a “partner in peace,” maps in Palestinian school textbooks represent the territory between the river and the sea as “Palestine,” while representing Israelis in anti-Jewish terms. Not a training ground for mutual respect, acceptance of a future sovereign neighbor.

 

 

America’s Position: American efforts to bring the Palestinians and the Israelis together have been significant in number. Significant also is the regularity of their failure. All began with the optimistic and erroneous assumption that there is a rational core to the conflict which, if addressed with good will and determined mediation will result in peace and mutual trust. I suggest that the explanation for the failure of presidents since Eisenhower, despite their best efforts, is the direct result of overestimating the words of the adversaries without appreciating the evidence of their behavior. Abbas recently complained that the Arabs made a tragic mistake by rejecting the 1947 UN Partition Plan, yet he perpetuates the tragedy by almost identical demands, “Palestinian rights.” In 1947 the reference meant all the land for the Palestinians. In 2011the demand is the “right of return” of all “refugees” to their abandoned homes in Israel. Arafat had maintained this position since Oslo. Abbas repeated it recently. In practice the right of return would eventually result in a Palestinian one-state solution.

 

In terms of Arab thinking this is a reasonable and fair basis for “peace;” for Israel it represents national suicide. And so long as American foreign policy thinking persists in denying this fact it will continue to throw prestige, time and money at the wrong problem.  

.

 

Obama and Netanyahu at White House, 20 May, 2011 (Reuters)

 

Obama and the “settlements precondition”: At their first meeting in the White House in May, 2009 Obama proposed that Netanyahu cease building in settlements as a way to encourage Abbas back to the negotiations he abandoned the year before in response to Israel’s brief war in Gaza (encouraged and assisted with intelligence by Abbas!). The Israeli government acceded to the presidential request in November, 2009 with a 10-month moratorium. In announcing the moratorium Netanyahu added wistfully, "We have been told by many of our friends that once Israel takes the first meaningful steps toward peace, the Palestinians and Arab states would respond."Nine months and one week later, under intense pressure from Washington Abbas agreed to face-to-face talks on condition that Israel continue the moratorium indefinitely. The talks ended on that demand. But the principle of the Americanprecondition remained in place until December, 2010.

Abbas reminds that it was not he, but Obama who created the precondition: "At first, President Obama stated in Cairo that Israel must stop all construction activities in the settlements. Could we demand less than that?" In fact Abbas had previously negotiated with seven Israeli prime minister without such a precondition.

 

“U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledges that the Palestinians are creating a new precondition for talks to begin. Settlements, she says, have "always been an issue within the negotiations.… There's never been a precondition." In other words the secretary is saying that the administration accepts no responsibility in the matter. But according, to Elliott Abrams, a Middle East adviser to Bush, “One has to remember the Arabs had not ever insisted on such a precondition. This was something that was added by the administration and it proved to be disastrous.” How a disaster? Clearly the “precondition” failed to result in Abbas return to negotiations. But according to Palestinian officials, Abbas has lost faith in Mr. Obama… and after four face-to-face meetings and many regular telephone calls there is now little contact between them.”It also created tension between the administration and Israel. Tension with Israel, Abbas, almost entirely dependent on American good will and largesse ignoringObama: certainly the lesson was learned?

 

“On May 19, in a speech at the State Department on his Middle East policy, Obama called for peace negotiations on the basis of the 1967 borders with mutually agreed upon land swaps.” Saeb Erekat, chief negotiator for the Palestinians lost no time adopting this new Obama condition as another precondition for negotiations: "If Netanyahu agrees, we shall turn over a new leaf. If he doesn't, then there is no point talking about a peace process. We're saying it loud and clear."

 

In the meantime the newly independent Palestinian leader, proclaiming Obama’s “deadline” of September, 2011 for a Palestinian state, is taking his case directly to the United Nations. And Obama, having lost credibility and authority to persuade or coerce, can do little but try to persuade the Europeans not to vote in favor of Palestinian statehood.

 

 

A rational Middle East policy based on American interests would begin with the only reliable ally of the superpower in a region adrift, much the result of American missteps in Iraq (Bush), Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and throughout the region (Obama). Yet Israel has, over the past two years, been subjected to accusation and abuse by the White House resulting in an Israeli public highly mistrustful of Obama. And should the Palestinians achieve their UN recognition with little to show for the victory on the street; or should the Palestinian bid fail due to US-Israeli opposition, the conditions for yet another intifada may be ripe.

 

Last week, on 1 November, the media announced that Palestine was accepted as a member state in UNESCO, “scoring a symbolic victory in their battle for full membership of the United Nations.”  

Israel’s America Trap, Part 3: When “Democracy” trumps Realpolitik

Thursday Oct 27, 2011

American predictability is based on anticipated irrationality... a danger to her increasingly skeptical regional allies.

 

If the alternative to a repressive regime allied with and supportive of the US War on Terror is an Islamist regime likely more repressive and supportive of the enemy, why the enthusiasm in Washington for regime change?

 

American foreign policy has an evangelical soul. Nor is it content merely to evangelize, to bring the “good news” to those deemed less fortunate; it can also be activist in imposing regime change. It is within this context that American actions in Iraq, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and Libya should be viewed.

 

The Arab Middle East typically divides between monarchies and “republics,” all to some degree authoritarian. Since there is no tradition of a “democratic” opposition the only replacement parties are either military or Islamist. In Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) was forced underground by Mubarak following the assassination of Anwar Sadat. And today the Brotherhood’s most visible offspring are al-Qaeda and Hamas. Earlier this week an MB-inspired Islamist party in Tunisia, described by the New York Times as “moderate” although boasting a militant history, won the preliminary election in Tunisia; another MB-inspired party is likely to form the next government in Libya.

 

Although the Bush administration floated several rationales (sidestepping “oil”) to justify its invasion of Iraq the theme that always resurfaced was its desire to free the Iraqi people from the tyrant and bestow upon them democratic governance. Similarly when Obama identified with Cairo’s Tahrir protesters and ordered Mubarak out the intention was to replace the Egyptian tyrant with a liberal democracy. And how many Libyans died the result of the US-led allied intervention to protect them from their tyrant? And to what end, the likely successor regime a branch of the same Muslim Brotherhood?

 

The day following its grisly murder of Qadafi the leader of the National Transitional Council (NTC) Mustafa Jalil announced, "As a Muslim country, we have adopted theIslamic Sharia as the main source of law.” Does Obama really believe that Libya’s likely Brotherhood or al-Quaida successor regime will provide a more humane and liberal replacement Qadafi, that it will provide liberty and justice for all, for women? How will an Islamist Libya better confront Islamist terrorism than the deposed Qadafi regime, partner in America’s war against terror?

 

If America’s intervention in Egypt was motivated by “power to the people,” are the Egyptians and the US happy with the continuation of the military regime for which Mubarak was, after all, only the public face; would the Egyptian protesters have been better off with that other likely successor, the MB and Sharia law? In 1979 the US ousted its long-time ally the Shah of Iran in support of the student protesters of Tehran. Within four months the student leaders were murdered or imprisoned or, if lucky, had fled Iran.  

 

 

Reuters June 29, 2010: President Obama meets with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in the Oval Office.

 

If Bush chose to ignore regional leaders warning against deposing Sadam, Obama also chose to ignore the same regarding Mubarak: “It was no coincidence that the most outspoken proponents of Mr. Mubarak’s rule were Israel and Saudi Arabia who, with Egypt, formed the backbone of American dominance in the region.” During the crisis, US officials received “daily calls from Israel, Saudi Arabia and others who feared an Egypt without Mr. Mubarak would destabilize the entire region.” Whenever they got the chance, the Saudis told the United States to avoid undermining Mubarak.

 

Is it even possible that Obama’s advisors, from Biden and Clinton to his professional Middle East staff, failed to understand that Tahrir Square represented a disorganized and politically inchoate social protest, that the only organized and experienced alternative to the military were the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood? But the military, in power since Nasser overthrew the monarchy in 1952, was not likely to voluntarily leave the scene, as confirmed on 15 October, 2011: “Two members of the military councilthat took power after the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak said for the first time in interviews this week that they planned to retain full control of the Egyptian government even after the election of a new Parliament begins in November. The legislature will remain in a subordinate role similar to Mr. Mubarak’s former Parliament, they said, with the military council appointing the prime minister and cabinet.”

 

Saudi Arabia: “The Obama administration and its support for democratic change in the Middle East has been on a collision course with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other traditional monarchies of the Persian Gulf. The crunch finally came this week with a sharp break over how to deal with protest in Bahrain.” The Saudis share a border with Yemen to the south, a causeway to Bahrain off their coast to the east. Any Iranian involvement in these countries would be a concern to the Saudis, and an issue they would look to the United States to back them on. But “the administration of President Barack Obama has dismissed any link between the Shi'ite revolt in Bahrain and Iran…U.S. officials have been arguing that Bahrain’s Sunni monarchy must make political compromises to give more power to the Shiite majority there… This American enthusiasm for change has been anathema to the conservative regimes of the Gulf, and on Monday they backed Bahrain’s ruling Khalifa family with military force, marching about 2,000 troops up the causeway that links Bahrain to Saudi Arabia.”

 

Is the principal of yet another Iran-inspired, Shiite-dominated “democracy” on the doorstep of the Saudis worth the threat to the production and transport of oil, to America’s home port to the Fifth Fleet tasked with protecting the waterway and the Straights of Hormuz through which the oil must transit? Where is American proportionality, a sense of American priorities, material national interests over ideology?
 

Implications for the region and for Israel: Relations between states, and particularly within alliances, are based on known and predictable interests. American foreign policy since 2002 has been anything but predictable. A rational assessment by the Bush administration should have concluded that, as Israel, the Saudis and virtually all Arab regimes warned, the principle regional threat lay not in Iraq, but Iran. Who could have predicted that the US would defy its own self-interest and replace Sadam with an Iran-friendly Shi’ite government in Iraq? Similarly in Egypt eight years later: what rationale assessment of American regional interests could justify Obama deposing Mubarak, the lynchpin of American influence in the Arab world?

 

Was it rational policy that informed Obama’s decision to go nose-to-nose with the Saudis over Iranian interference in Bahrain, thereby alienating even further the region’s largest and most influential oil producer; that the president would lead an allied war against Qadafi, another supporter of US policy regarding al-Qaeda? American policy may, by now, be predictable, but that predictability is based on anticipated irrationality. America has become a danger to her increasingly more skeptical regional allies.

 

A decade of confused US policy has greatly emboldened Iran in its challenge to America and its regional allies. Minus a hesitant United States the only other state capable of confronting Iran is Israel. And while American abrogation of responsibility for the security of the region may, in the end, force Israel to act in its own interest, whatever the military outcome of the conflict Israel would face new existential challenges. Regardless whether the decision to attack originates in Washington or Jerusalem Iran would retaliate against US bases forcing an American response. And blame for “forcing” the US into the war would likely have very significant consequences for the so-called “special relationship.”

Israel’s America Trap, Part 2: Appeasing Iran

Friday Oct 21, 2011

Attacking Iran would be costly… so appeasement became the default policy of Bush and his successor.

 

Why have two successive administrations avoided confronting multiple Iranian provocations against American interests in the Middle East? Why has the US refused to deal directly with Iranian funded and sometimes officered attacks on American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, against Iran-supported terrorism, its nuclear weapons program. Surely America’s leaders recognize that even the appearance of weakness emboldens Iran and erodes Arab confidence in America’s ability and resolve to stand behind its defense commitments, to defend its regional interests and allies?   

 

Last week I discussed the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq, its growing “alliance” with Ahmadinejad to limit American casualties by limiting the scope of the war. This week I turn to Obama and how the Bush policy of dependence and appeasement continues to evolve under the new administration.  

 

Whoever ordered the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran its assurances “with confidence” that had Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003 allowed Bush to abandon his cosmetic threats against Iran and “surge” his way into an “honorable” exit and allow his successor to deal with the conseq1uences of his 2011 withdrawal date. In his favor Obama inherited the Iran/Iraq/Afghanistan quagmire from Bush. But his more reasoned and less confrontational approach backed by sanctions would prove as ineffective as his predecessors bluster in dissuading Ahmadinejad from his hegemonic ambitions.  

 

The problem with sanctions is that there is much evidence indicating they are usually ineffective. Certainly this was true for the North Korea nuclear program. And Iran is both more resourceful and has more wealth and natural resources than her far eastern predecessor. Obama’s failure was not in having tried the more reasoned approach but in not appreciating its failure. Iran and the Arabs and perhaps all other countries expected the president to eventually stop putting off his deadlines and act as promised. With each successive deadline deferred Ahmadinejad’s gravitas grew on the Arab street, and Arab leaders dependent on America’s promise of a defense shield, grew increasingly anxious.

 

“The problem is that Obama’s White House, like George W. Bush’s, fears that taking too active a role against Iran and its assets will put U.S. military personnel at risk of Iranian retaliation in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to some U.S. intelligence estimates, Shiite Iran is responsible for far more American deaths and injuries in America’s two Middle East combat theaters than al-Qaida or other Sunni factions… Washington’s policy of not confronting Iran about its openly aggressive behavior has created a situation in which our troops are now effectively being held hostage.”

 

Unable to disengage from Iraq “with face” Obama followed his predecessor’s policy of spending American lives and treasure in an obviously no-win war.

 

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at the White House meeting planning withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, 22 January, 2009. The secretary and his Joint Chiefs chairman had long opposed a military strike against Iran.. Reuters

 

If Iran saw the US as its gladiator against Sadam’s Iraq, it was apparent that the Bush administration needed little encouragement (table talk to that effect preceded his election to the presidency). The administration must have been eager regarding Iranian supplied intelligence, particularly as it was supported by that second source, Iran’s man in the White House Ahmed Chalabi. Doubts regarding Chalabi’s loyalties surfaced not long after the invasion began. But by then the Bush was confronting Iran-backed militias, Iraq teetering on civil war. Under the circumstance the White House apparently saw its best option as cutting a deal with the devil, the backer of the militias, Iran: if Bush could not retreat at least he could limit American losses by limiting the scope of the war.  

 

For Iran, America was the perfect foil. Bush had eliminated their feared adversary at little cost to Iran. And the longer the Americans could be bogged down in Iraq the more freedom Iran would have to pursue its ambitions in the Arab world, and the nuclear weapons that would provide teeth to their ambitions. As for America, boots were on the Iraqi ground, it was not possible to just leave. Attacking Iran would be costly, so Bush chose to cut his losses and pay the price of reducing the loss of American lives by limiting the scope of the war. Appeasement became the default policy of Bush and his successor.  

 

“If the only country able and willing to go after Iran’s nuclear program is Israel, the only one who is capable of stopping the Israelis, Tehran realizes, is the United States. And so Iran and the United States now find themselves in one of the Middle East’s oddest alliances, with the United States unwittingly [?] aiding Iran in its effort to get the bomb.”

 

The United States attacked Iraq for reasons known only to the Bush administration. Certainly the excuses advanced at the time, WMD; democracy for the Iraqis; protection of the Arab oil monarchies and Israel, etc. were, as discussed last week, fallacious. As to the war’s achievements:

 

In lives lost: Iraq, the country the US set out to “save from Sadam,” more than 150,000 dead, civilian and fighters, between 2003-11, and millions more refugees;

 

America, as of 28 May, 2010, 4,404 lives lost, and another 32,000 wounded (small compared to Vietnam over a comparable period);

 

Financial costs of this under-the-table funded war in dollars: according to the Department of Defense, at least $757.8 billion. But this figure does not begin to cover interest accumulating and owed on the borrowed funds, and money spent and anticipated for the care of our wounded, etc. Agreeing with an MIT study, The Washington Post recently put the real cost the war at around $4 trillion, and described the impact on the US economy:

“This was the first time in American history that the government cut taxes as it went to war. The result: a war completely funded by borrowing. U.S. debt soared… As a result of two costly wars funded by debt, our fiscal house was in dismal shape even before the financial crisis -- and those fiscal woes compounded the downturn… The global financial crisis was due, at least in part, to the war.”

And what has the United States achieved by “saving” the Iraqi people from their oppressive Baathist regime, by turning over the reigns of power to the formerly downtrodden Shiite masses? After eight years and four thousand America lives, four trillion dollars already spent or in the pipeline America transformed Iraq from firewall against, to vassal state of America’s principle regional enemy, Iran. And under Iranian influence that American-installed Shiite-ruled Iraqi government is showing their hapless benefactor to the exit.

 

In 2008 Bush signed an agreement with the Iraqi government to withdraw all troops by 2011. But to withdraw means Iraq is easy prey for an Iranian takeover, throwing open the entire region to the Iranian threat.  

 

JCS chairman Mike Mullen delivers a “deadline” for Iraq to permit a residual American force after withdrawal. Reuters

 

“An Obama administration proposal to keep a few thousand American troops here after the end of the year to train the Iraqi military is being scaled back, as the administration has concluded that the Iraqi Parliament would not give the troops legal protection.”

 

And if, as likely, the proposal fails the Times article continues, “they could still return next year [sic] to negotiations that would allow the return of some American personnel.” That is, after Iran is even more entrenched in the running of the “democratic” Republic of Iraq!

 

Perhaps more than anything else, the Bush-Obama policy of appeasement towards Iran best represents America’s failure at strategic foresight, its declining position in the world, its voluntary or not withdrawal into isolationism.

Israel’s America Trap: Collateral Damage, part 1

Wednesday Oct 12, 2011

“Listen to my advice for once," [Mubarak] recalled telling Cheney in English. "You have vital interests in the Gulf region, especially oil."                                       

On his recent visit to the Middle East ex-CIA chief and now Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta posed this question to Israel: “Is it enough to maintain a military edge if you’re isolating yourself in the diplomatic arena?” An interesting question and, if this is the case, appropriately posed by Israel’s partner in the “special relationship.” In an 5 October response Lee Smith writes, “it’s the United States—not Israel—that’s losing power in the region.” Nobody would argue that there has been a seismic shift in the Middle East. I will discuss several issues that created the conditions for that change below. But the implication of Panetta’s statement is that Israel, primarily by failing to make peace with the Palestinians, is responsible for what Panetta refers to as her isolation. I will document below that America, and not Israel, is the cause of that “seismic shift” in the region. And while it is self-evidently true that Israel would be far more secure today, if no less despised in the region, had she and the Palestinian leadership been able to negotiate the “two state solution,” in fact Israel is only one party to those discussions, the opposite party divided by two claimants to leadership, one of which opposes negotiations out of hand.

Due to material to be covered, I will divide this article in two parts, the first covering the war in Iraq and the US-Iran dialogue. The second part will look at the “Arab Spring,” and the Israel-Palestine issue.

Clockwise, starting at top left: a joint patrol in Samarra; the toppling of the Saddam Hussein statue in Firdos Square; an Iraqi Army soldier readies his rifle during an assault; a roadside bomb detonates in South Baghdad. (Wikipedia)

America invades Iraq: Lawrence Wilkerson, in 2002 a member of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff and later chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell recalled in an interview that, "the Israelis were telling us Iraq is not the enemy --Iran is the enemy. If you are going to destabilize the balance of power, do it against the main enemy." Wilkerson recalled that the message “was conveyed to the administration by a wide range of Israeli sources, including political figures, intelligence and private citizens.” Nor was Israel the only concerned bystander.Turkey’s prime minister, Bulent Ecevit, at a time when that country was still a strong ally of the United States and Israel and still under secular rule delivered the same message, as did the Saudis, Lebanon and Egypt.

Hosni Mubarak prophetically “told the American government that if you strike at the Iraqi people... we fear a state of disorder and chaos may prevail in the region." 

As Air Force 2 approached Riyadh on the first leg of a mission to convince the Saudis and Gulf Emirates that America invading Iraq was in their interest, Dick Cheney was informed that Crown Prince Abdullah had just told ABC News, ''I do not believe it is in the United States' interests, or the interest of the region, or the world's interest, to do so… And I don't believe it will achieve the desired result.” But neither the advice of the Saudis, the Israelis and the Turks individually or collectively could deter Bush once he made up his mind.

From the beginning the logic of those warnings by America’s allies in the region should also have been obvious to America’s policy-makers. For how could anybody with any background in the region have not foreseen the pivotal role of Iraq as deterrent to Iran? But the administration was bent on following its own inner voice. Emblematic of administration ignorance, Vice President Cheney told Meet the Press that he and Bush fully expected the American invaders to “be greeted as liberators.”

“It seems like only yesterday we were marching into Baghdad, waiting to be greeted with shouts of gratitude and appreciation for saving you from the evil dictator who ruled your totalitarian state with an iron fist. Well, the surge is over and we're gonna roll pretty soon, so I just wanted to mention that it's not too late to greet us as liberators if you get the chance.” GEN. RAY ODIERNO (APT SPOOF IN ONION)

America’s informal alliance with Iran: The Iranians had fought a decade-long war with Iraq and suffered a million casualties. The Islamic Republic was not anxious to try again. They needed a proxy to topple Sadam. America’s first Gulf war stopped at the gates of Baghdad because Bush, Sr. understood Sadam’s role as deterrent. “Iran knew it could not invade Iraq and win by itself.” Iran would have to encourage the Americans to do the job for them.

“Influential people in the White House, the Pentagon and Congress saw [Ahmed Chalabi] as an Iraqi George Washington.” The MIT-educated, secular Shiite Muslim, “was the Pentagon's and Vice President Dick Cheney's candidate to lead Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.” In fact Chalabi, close confidant and major source of intelligence regarding those phantom Iraqi WMD (weapons of mass destruction and rationale to invade), was an Iranian spy who both kept Teheran informed of US planning, and provided Bush what it wanted to hear in support of its intentions: “The CIA blames him for some of the bad intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.” And, “intelligence officials now believe that Iran used the hawks in the Pentagon and the White House to get rid of a hostile neighbor, and pave the way for a Shia-ruled Iraq.”

Rather than the welcome as liberators of the oppressed Shia majority of Iraq the “liberators” were met by a well organized community bent on fighting the infidels. While Ahmadinejad had been baiting the American invasion the Iranian Revolutionary Guard had been organizing and training their Shia co-religionists to fight the invasion. Iran funded, provided weapons and training and, as the insurrection progressed, even officers to lead the militias. It turned out that defeating the Iraqi army and deposing Sadam was the easy part.

Iran had deftly manipulated the superpower, and would deftly continue to do so with great profit. With the US military bogged down in Iraq the administration had little appetite for yet another Muslim adventure. Although they could never acknowledge it, Bush was now dependent on Iran as a moderating force needed to keep American casualties low. When in 2007 Bush introduced his “successful” Surge, its success was dependent on Iranian cooperation. Ahmadinejad ordered the Shia Mehdi Army, highly successful in fighting the Americans, to withdraw from the streets of Baghdad.

“The US plans to establish a diplomatic presence in Tehran for the first time in 30 years as part of a remarkable turnaround in policy by President George Bush.” Was it mere coincidence that the Mehdi Army abandoned the streets to the US, and that Bush provided Ahmadinejad that State Department Interest Section in downtown Teheran, reversing a thirty year US policy of diplomatically isolating the Islamic Republic? But if Bush bought Iranian assistance with that Interest Section it was unnecessary. Iran would have gladly provided Bush any assistance desired, no strings attached, to encourage the Americans to leave. That had been Iranian policy from the start.    

The Iranian Bomb: On its surface, based on the statements of Bush and Cheney, the US was committed to use force to stop Iran’s nuclear bomb project. But if that were really policy, why appoint a defense secretary who opposed that policy from the start; why appoint a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who saw eye-to-eye with the defense secretary? In fact American policy regarding the Iranian bomb had been bluster and inaction long before the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran provided cover by concluding, “with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.”

But Gates and Mullen needed no such fig leaf; they had long been on record opposing war with Iran. “In 2007, [Secretary of Defense Gates] told a private meeting of Congressmen that bombing Iran would "create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America… They will start a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and they will be less secure at the end than they are now." And chairman Mullen: “Iran getting a nuclear weapon would be incredibly destabilizing. Attacking them would also create the same kind of outcome.” What do such statements mean in context of the president who hired them? What does it say about the intentions of Bush’s successor: President Obama asked both to remain?

New York Times, 10 July, 2011: Panetta Says Iranian Arms in Iraq Are a ‘Concern’

“…Mr. Panetta is the third top American official to raise an alarm about Iranian influence in Iraq in recent days. The American ambassador to Iraq, James F. Jeffrey, said last week that the United States had “forensic” evidence that weapons and weapons parts from Iran were being used by Shiite militias against American troops. His remarks were echoed two days later in Washington by Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff… Iran’s motive, American officials say, is to claim credit for driving American forces out of Iraq at a time when those forces are more than halfway out the door… In April, Robert M. Gates, Mr. Panetta’s predecessor as defense secretary, all but begged the Iraqis to ask for troops to stay… On Sunday, Mr. Panetta echoed Mr. Gates.”

Obama’s Middle East Learning Curve: Any Progress?

Almost exactly two years since Obama and Netanyahu first met at the White House the two reunite amid dramatically changed conditions in the Middle East, but with an apparently identical agenda. For Netanyahu the pressing strategic issue for the region was and continues the Iranian drive for regional hegemony backed by a nuclear weapon; for the president the issue was and continues Palestine and the “peace process”.

According to Reuters, not known as sympathetic or even impartial where Israel is concerned (those doctored photographs taken aboard the blockade-running Turkish ship, Mavi Marmara), Obama used the 2009 visit to publicly announce a major departure from previous American policy by urging “Netanyahu to freeze Jewish settlement building” as a precondition to kick-start the stalled “peace talks.”

Netanyahu was forced to accede to the Obama “pre-condition” and for ten months all settlement building was halted. Abbas failed to take the bait and waited until two weeks before the moratorium was to end to give in to administration pressure and agree to enter talks. But, the Palestinian, insisted, he would only talk so long as the moratorium was extended! The Obama pre-condition represented to the Palestinian that the president was on their side, would present an American plan and save the Palestinians from responsibility for compromise on such issues as borders, settlements, refugees and, ultimately, the existence of a state of the Jews in Palestine.   

Not only did Obama create conditions which painted Israel as obstructionist, thereby losing credibility for the president on the Israel street (any mediator must, at the minimum, at least appear impartial), but lost also was faith in the president (who failed to deliver Israel) on the Palestinian street. Even Abbas, whose Ramleh regime is entirely dependent on the continued largesse feeding the West Bank “miracle” under the stewardship of the US-trained Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, was dismissive of the president. In a Newsweek interview that appeared on 24 April, 2011 the Palestinian lambasted the president: “It was Obama who suggested a full settlement freeze,” Abbas explained. “I said OK, I accept. We both went up the tree. After that, he came down with a ladder and he removed the ladder and said to me, jump. Three times he did it.” The rest is recent history. Abbas is hoping the United Nations will provide that which the president could not or, hopefully, would not: statehood on the cheap. On 27 April Abbas spurned American financial and diplomatic aid by entering into a power-sharing agreement with its Islamist enemy and Iranian proxy, Hamas. And today it was announced that the architect of that Palestinian economic miracle, Salam Fayyad, is out as prime minister in the new “coalition.”

And American prestige and influence between the parties is at an all-time low.

And as for Iran, at their 2009 meeting, as reported by Reuters, Obama “sought to reassure Israelis wary about his overtures to Iran that he would not wait indefinitely for diplomatic progress toward curbing Tehran's nuclear ambitions.” Which, in the end, wait the president did, and did, and did. And the result is that Iranian stature in the region grew with each presidential hesitation. And while there is no way to assess whether or not the Stuxnet action against Iran’s nuclear program is an American, an Israeli, or a cooperative effort of the two; while it is impossible to determine whether the apparently successful cyber-attack was a single foray, or the leading edge of an all-out hi-tech offensive; on the Arab street American lack of resolve in the public contest between the Iranian lion and the American eagle, Iran is the unquestioned victor.

In 2011 it is impossible for even the most partisan defender of Bush to assert that his war on Sadam Hussein achieved anything beyond providing Iran a front line on the borders of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates, with Syria and with Jordan. Bush’s principal adversary in Iraq was always Iran, and Ahmadinejad won. Obama failed to accept Netanyahu’s 2009 warnings (Israel and the Saudis had advised Bush in 2002 that Iran, not Iraq was the principal regional threat!) that the Iranian nuclear threat was the regional strategic imperative. And today, having managed perhaps the impossible by losing the confidence of virtually the entire Arab world by his “well intended” interventions in Egypt and Libya the United States is on the verge of losing the Middle East, lock, stock and barrel. As a result its regional failures America’s position as “leader of the Free World” is also fast coming to an end. Certainly the wild and apparently thoughtless adventurism of Bush propelled the United States down this path. Unfortunately his successor, the exact opposite of Bush, turned out to be an overly cautious amateur.

For the Saudis Obama support for the ouster of Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was the final straw. For the Palestinians Obama’s failure to “deliver” Israel for a peace on Palestinian terms achieved the same. For Israel… Well Israel has little choice in today’s world but to remain dedicated to the “special relationship.” So while Netanyahu can depend on the president continuing to apply pressure for yet more concessions towards the new Hamas-Fateh alliance; while Obama can be counted on to continue to provide hollow assurances regarding his resolve to contain the Iranian threat (assurances already long dismissed by the Saudis!) Israel has nowhere else to turn. Certainly not to an increasingly hostile and unsympathetic Europe with its resurgence of antisemitism both among the citizenry and within the governments.  

For better or worse, as go America’s fortunes, so go Israel’s. But maybe, just maybe President Obama will surprise all, demonstrate that he does have the capacity to learn, to change. And maybe, just maybe today’s meeting between the two leaders will demonstrate that the president has grown beyond his apparently well-intended, but globally disastrous naïve idealism and achieved a grasp of realpolitik, pragmatism as the path to achieve his, and all our dreams for peace and justice for all.