RSS Feed MenuThe Middle East policy of the Obama administration is governed by one grand unifying idea, expressed for example in NSA Adviser Jim Jones’ April 21 speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
One of the ways that Iran exerts influence in the Middle East is by exploiting the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict. Iran uses the conflict to keep others in the region on the defensive and to try to limit its own isolation. Ending this conflict, achieving peace between Israelis and Palestinians and establishing a sovereign Palestinian state would therefore take such an evocative issue away from Iran, Hizballah, and Hamas. It would allow our partners in the region to focus on building their states and institutions. And peace between Israel and Syria, if it is possible, could have a transformative effect on the region. Since taking office, President Obama has pursued a two-state solution—a secure, Jewish state of Israel living side by side in peace and security with a viable and independent Palestinian state. This is in the United States’ interest. It is in Israel’s interest. It is in the Palestinians’ interest. It is in the interest of the Arab countries, and, indeed, the world. Advancing this peace would also help prevent Iran from cynically shifting attention away from its failures to meet its obligations.
Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett debunk this illusion on their blogspot:
The Obama administration continues to buy into a Bush-era delusion: that concern about a rising Iranian threat could unite Israel and moderate Arab states in a grand alliance under Washington’s leadership. In reality, the prospect of strategic cooperation with Israel is profoundly unpopular with Arab publics. Even moderate Arab regimes cannot sustain such cooperation.
That seems exactly right, even if the other conclusions they draw seem either wrong or unacceptable, specifically:
The relationship between Iran and Arab-Israeli peacemaking runs in exactly the opposite direction from that described by General Jones: today, one of the reasons that the United States needs a better and more productive relationship with the Islamic Republic is that it will be impossible to achieve Arab-Israeli peace without U.S.-Iranian rapprochement.
I think events have refuted the Leveretts’ thesis that such a rapprochement is available at any price worth paying. But regardless of that piece of the puzzle they are surely right: The Obama idea that the U.S. can build a coalition against Iran by muscling Israel is not only wrong, but dangerous. The Obama administration has wasted 18 unrecoverable months muscling Israel, and it is now further from, not closer to, both Israeli-Palestinian peace and an effective Iran policy. This may be the administration’s single biggest policy failure, certainly its biggest foreign policy failure. Can we have some relearning please before it is too late?
chicago_guy // Apr 23, 2010 at 7:53 am
“…a passionate attachment of one Nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite Nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest, in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter, without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite Nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the Nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained; and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. ”
- G. Washington.
Please let us know when you come up with a foreign-policy position on Israel that is in-line with the wisdom of the first President. Until then, excuse me if, as a non-Jew and non-Rapture-awaiting-Evangelical, I don’t find Israel’s identity to be an excuse for them to act like rich kids who believe they’re entitled to whatever they want in their part of the world.
TerryF98 // Apr 23, 2010 at 7:57 am
Solutions please to the Iran problem. I am fed up with constant criticism with no alternatives offered.
Please lay out a distinct PLAN to deal with the problem. Or STFU.
sinz54 // Apr 23, 2010 at 9:55 am
TerryF98: Please lay out a distinct PLAN to deal with the problem.
Here’s my plan:
Blockade.
The U.S. Navy blockades Iran’s sea ports. Nothing gets in or out without being intercepted and boarded. The Navy’s long range capabilities enable the Navy to do this while staying just over the 12 mile limit from Iran’s border.
Then the U.S. can say to Iran: Accept international inspection of all your sites (including the secret ones our satellites have discovered)–or else you can live without international trade.
If the Iranians want war with the U.S., it will be they who fire the first shot at our warships. Our response will be restrained: Sink the Iranian boats which opened fire–but don’t escalate. The blockade will go on.
Oskar // Apr 23, 2010 at 10:09 am
chicago_guy, thank you for bringing up Washington’s Farewell Address. Whatever Frum’s spats with the right over healthcare or Palin he remains a neocon chickenhawk.
TerryF98 // Apr 23, 2010 at 10:17 am
SinZ.
Ok thanks for at least something more than constant carping. However, what would Russia, China and many other interested parties do after we impose this unilateral blockade?
We don’t rule this world as stand alone dictators, however much you would like that to be the case.
Stefano // Apr 23, 2010 at 10:20 am
David:
“The Obama administration has wasted 18 unrecoverable months muscling Israel, and it is now further from, not closer to, both Israeli-Palestinian peace and an effective Iran policy. This may be the administration’s single biggest policy failure, certainly its biggest foreign policy failure. Can we have some relearning please before it is too late?”
Uh, David, the Bush administration was unable to achieve peace in the Middle East during it’s eight years in the WH, nor was it able to come up with an effective Iran policy – unless invasion counts as one. Don’t you think it is a little early to start criticizing the Obama admin so early in the game?
CAPryde // Apr 23, 2010 at 10:54 am
“The Obama administration has wasted 18 unrecoverable months muscling Israel, and it is now further from, not closer to, both Israeli-Palestinian peace and an effective Iran policy.”
I’m confused. How is this any different from the outcome achieved by administrations who toadied up to Israel? Last I checked, no one has achieved much with regard to Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian question in the thirty years since the Islamic Revolution. And “success” prior to that revolution was defined as “Our coup may have replaced a democratically elected government with a repressive dictator, but at least he’s a quasi-friendly dictator. Most of the time. When he isn’t busy screwing our oil companies.”
It’s hard to get that exercised about the Obama administration not changing a five-decade-long status quo.
caribgirl // Apr 23, 2010 at 11:04 am
sinz54, what happens to oil prices in your plan? How much are you willing to pay at the pump while this blockade is in place? Iran is one of the largest exporters of oil in the world and any military action or scent of one against them will cause worries about supply and drive prices through the roof. Realistically, the US has to keep working the Russia/China angle because everything else leads to a dead end eventually. We can’t afford another invasion, military strikes will drive up oil prices and hurt an already weakened economy, embargoes, blockades, or sanctions unilaterally or just with the Europeans at best buy some time.
balconesfault // Apr 23, 2010 at 11:19 am
Blockade?
You’re proposing to blockade Iranian oil exports to China?
That’s some crazy stuff you’re ingesting over there, man.
Our ships fire on one Chinese tanker, and you know how much support America will have in the ensuing global conflict?
Meanwhile, in 18 months Obama hasn’t already solved the Middle East. That’s as much news as the Yankees signing an expensive free agent.
balconesfault // Apr 23, 2010 at 11:22 am
Actually – looking at the title of this article – perhaps it should be taken as a massive compliment to the Obama Administration.
If Obama’s “Biggest Foreign Policy Failure” is not solving the Arab-Israeli conflict in 18 months … given the fact that there have been no new major outbreaks in the conflict over that time period, I’d say this is a pretty damn ringing endorsement of the job Obama and Hillary and Gates are doing!
Rabiner // Apr 23, 2010 at 12:13 pm
A blockade is considered an act of war. Just throwing that out there.
forkboy1965 // Apr 23, 2010 at 12:48 pm
I’ve often wondered why it is the U.S. hasn’t worked harder to encourage the Palestinians to look at the balance of the Arab Middle East as their true enemy.
It seems to me the Palestinians are nothing more than pawns for the rest of the Arab world to use against Israel. Pawns to be used as a thorn in the side of Israel. Give them weapons. Stir them up (not that they don’t have legitimate reasons to feel or be hostile, but much is generated from without the territories).
I genuinely believe the Palestinians and Israelis could get along much better in every meaning of the word if they simply realized how they are being used by an Arab Middle East that really doesn’t seem to care about them at all.
someotherdude // Apr 23, 2010 at 3:31 pm
Have a Blessed Charles Krauthammer Day
by Henry on April 22, 2010
The calendar has once again rolled around to the date on which we commemorate Charles Krauthammer’s pronouncement that:
Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We’ve had five weeks. Come back to me in five months. If we haven’t found any, we will have a credibility problem.
– Charles Krauthammer (April 22, 2003)
From:
http://crookedtimber.org/2010/04/22/have-a-blessed-charles-krauthammer-day/#comments
balconesfault // Apr 23, 2010 at 4:06 pm
Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We’ve had five weeks. Come back to me in five months. If we haven’t found any, we will have a credibility problem.
Well, the Cheney forever faction has convinced themselves that the accumulated findings of forgotten shells containing chemicals way past their shelf life distributed throughout various poorly inventory controlled depots and bunkers across Iraq add up in sum to a functional existing WMD arsenal at the time of our invasion. So you’re only preaching to the choir if you’re going down that road, otherdude.
SpartacusIsNotDead // Apr 23, 2010 at 4:13 pm
Someotherdude, I had never seen that quote from Krauthammer before. That’s incredible!
Archivist // Apr 23, 2010 at 6:34 pm
balconesfault …. exactly!
Archivist // Apr 23, 2010 at 6:47 pm
Darn, no edit function … balconsfault, I meant ‘exactly’ to your first post, about the headline. (duh@me)