Guest Blog: America's contribution to a Middle East nuclear arms race

President Obama's long-promised plan for peace in the Middle East is due in October. The only question is: how is pursuing the mirage of a distant and unlikely peace between Israel and the Palestinians more pressing than Iran's nuclear program, and the likelihood of a Middle East nuclear arms race should the Islamic Republic get the bomb? 
 
In an article appearing in the 25 August online edition of the Guardian, "Barack Obama on brink of deal for Middle East peace talks", a single sentence goes to the heart of the Obama administration's policy:

Key to bringing Israel on board [to talking with Abbas] is a promise by the US to adopt a much tougher line with Iran... "

As if Iran was only Israel's problem, and Israel was driving US policy.

What of the "existential threat" to American interests in the Gulf, the need to protect the Sunni Arab oil producers threatened by Iran, or those US forces based in Iraq and Afghanistan that the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen said would be vulnerable should the US attack Iran?

It appears that US policy, from Bush to Obama, is: If an attack has to be, let Israel do it - and let Israel suffer the consequences. But if Israel doesn't bite, if the US is forced to accept responsibility and take action, then make Israel the excuse for that action, and for whatever follows.

This would not be the first time US presidents have attempted to shift the blame to Israel for an American adventure gone awry. The Reagan administration tried to make the world believe Israel was somehow responsible for the "Irangate" debacle (in fact, Reagan requested that Israel, the Saudis and the Gulf Emirates assist that US misadventure). And when the war in Iraq began to appear endless, White House aides tried to shift blame to Israel - even though Israel had in fact warned Bush not to invade.
 
And what is the president offering in the current confrontation with Iran? "Sanctions able to 'cripple' the Iranian economy."

In other words, Obama is falling back on that tried and failed Bush policy: tough talk backed up by... tough talk.
 
Long before the Bush White House criticized candidate Obama for his willingness to talk with Iran, President Bush was already deeply engaged with Ahmadinejad. Facing an election against the backdrop of an apparently endless and increasingly unpopular war, and a Democrat candidate promising to end the war and withdraw US forces, the administration needed at least the appearance of a success to be able to proclaim victory and begin the withdrawal.

"The Surge" provided the appearance of strength; Bush's new partner in peace, Ahmadinejad, encouraged al-Sadr to call off his Baghdad-based Mahdi Army to provide that appearance. Coincidentally, soon after the Mahdi Army backed off, the State Department just happened to open an "interest section" in Teheran, effectively bringing to an end America's 30-year policy of isolating the Islamic revolution diplomatically.
 
Soon after Obama took the oath of office he was confronted with the closing of the US lifeline to its troops in Afghanistan. Kyrgyzstan, with some encouragement from Russia, put the US on notice that it would close its airspace to US transports. So Obama turned to Ahmadinejad for permission to replace the central Asian route with a Middle Eastern one, via Iranian airspace.

If one casualty of Bush's invasion of Iraq was the demise of the longstanding US defense umbrella for the oil-rich Arab Middle East, and Obama's apparent cozying up to anti-Arab Iran heightened Arab suspicions even more.
 
On her recent visit to Thailand, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton all but made official this strategic shift in US policy. In a news conference in Bangkok she proposed a "defense umbrella" over the region as a counter to Iran.

"So we will still hold the door open [to negotiations], but we also have made it clear that we'll take... crippling actions, working to upgrade the defense of our partners in the region," she said. While upgrading "our partners in the region" falls somewhat short of the blanket regional defense shield Bush destroyed, if Mrs. Clinton was hinting by "umbrella" at "nuclear umbrella," then as one Arab security expert put it, assurance by the US of retaliation was "cold comfort for a tiny, wealthy state such as the United Arab Emirates," which would disappear in moments under an Iranian nuclear attack.

No, the reassurance the Middle East is looking for is an American commitment to end the Iranian nuclear threat and destroy Iran's ability to develop the bomb, not a post-nuclear-Iran "defense umbrella."
 
Arab suspicions regarding America's intentions in the Middle East go back to the earliest days following Britain's withdrawal from the region. But US policy over the past eight years has turned suspicion to conviction.

Before deciding to invade Iraq, President Bush was advised by Saudi and Israeli intelligence, and by his own CIA (see the Tennant memoir), not to do so. In that memoir, it is stated that Arab leaders today expressing skepticism over Obama's Iran policy "are the same Sunni Arab leaders who warned Bush not to invade Iraq, because that would remove the main obstacle holding back Iran from spreading its Shi'ite revolution beyond its borders."

In plain-speak, America paved the way for Iran's hegemonic and nuclear ambitions.
 
But Bush's gifts to the Ahmadinejad and the ayatollahs don't end there - he replaced Iraq's Iran-hostile Sunni regime with an Iran-friendly government headed by co-religionist Shi'ites.

So today, thanks to regime change in Iraq, the Sunni Arab oil producers Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates now share a border with a Shi'ite Iraq not only susceptible to, but a potential satellite of Shi'ite Iran. 
 
With this as background it is no surprise that Ms. Clinton's Bangkok news conference alarmed the Gulf Arabs, that Obama's appeal to the Saudis for concessions to launch his new regional peace offensive was publicly and unceremoniously dismissed, even though it is public knowledge the Saudis are already cooperating with Israel over Iran.
 
And what of the new Obama peace initiative? Its main deficiency is that it puts the cart of a Levantine peace before the horse of a Middle East nuclear arms race. With the Iranian threat clearly the most pressing preoccupation of the region, Mr. Obama is offering US "diplomatic cover and a military umbrella" in confronting Iran, in exchange for concessions from the Arab states and Israel to promote his new road map for Israel-Palestinian peace talks.

Nearly all experts, both in and out of the Obama administration, understand there is no possibility of successful negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in the near future. The Palestinians are divided politically and geographically and are not even able to negotiate among themselves. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas recently stated that he had "written off reconciliation with the Hamas and reunification of the Gaza Strip and West Bank as a feasible goal."

So who would even represent "Palestine" at Obama's peace talks? Or is Mr. Obama content to push for peace between Israel and a non-representative Fatah entity?
 
Speculation holds administration policy toward the Israel-Palestinian peace process in a Machiavellian light; as the president using "progress" on that issue as a plum to encourage the Arabs, and particularly the Saudis, to join with Israel in a US-led grand coalition to confront the Iranian threat.

Even if this were the case, if the president understands that the Palestinians, despite recent hype from Cairo, are unlikely to reconcile for peace with Israel, doubt still remains regarding the nature of the president's proposed "coalition."

But feasibility of significant progress towards peace aside, even Dennis Ross, a key player in the Obama White House for Iranian affairs, discounts a connection between Levantine peace and containing Iranian ambitions in the Middle East.

Beyond rhetoric, Iran's real interest is to project Shi'ism among the Sunni Arab states, not the straw dog slogan of "liberation of Palestine from the Zionists." 
 
This obvious weakness aside, an Obama initiative encouraging reciprocal concessions between Israel and the Arabs could yield important regional results. Bush policies may not have created the Iranian juggernaut, but they definitely paved the way for Ahmadinejad to attain his present international stature. If President Obama seeks to re-establish American credibility and influence lost during the Bush years, he should not continue the failed policies of his predecessor.

The Saudis and Egyptians are already cooperating with Israel over the Iranian threat. Reports of Saudi permission for the IAF to use their airspace in support of an Israeli attack on Iran; public coverage in the Egyptian press of an Israeli submarine and other warships transiting the Suez Canal - these are clear evidence that cooperation between Arabs and Israel regarding the Iranian threat already exists.

Mr. Obama's initiative should support and expand that effort, promote a regional alliance such as the one Bush the elder put together in the run-up to Operation Desert Storm. A reconstituted Coalition of the Willing, consisting of the US, NATO, Arab and Israeli forces might have a chance of encouraging the Iranians to back down.

For years, under Bush and now under Obama, the US has waffled on Iran. Recent events go far to reinforce this view: President Chavez promises to replace any fuel distillates, considered the teeth of an effective sanctions program, victim to sanctions. Russia and China are opposing severe sanctions, and may well join Chavez in defying a sanctions program with teeth.

Chavez is even proposing partnering with Iran in the development of its nuclear program. And finally, the United States has decided to enter direct negotiations with Iran beginning October 1 - past Obama's "hard" deadline for a meaningful Iranian response.

Iranian leaders, from Ahmadinejad to Khameini, have often repeated this past week that their offer of negotiations will NOT include discussion of Iran's nuclear program.

"All options are on the table," sounds impressive, but if the final "option" turns out merely to be "sanctions" then Obama's "coalition" will turn out to have been yet one more encouragement to Iranian militancy. Ahmadinejad will have played a credulous US as deftly as did Hitler the British, and the result will be a far more dangerous world.

Then, should diplomacy fail, the United States, not Israel, should take action, and lead Mr. Obama's coalition to end the threat by military action.
 
If the United States would be seen as leader, then its president must act like one.