Robert Gates: Signaling American disengagement from the Persian Gulf?

It may just come to that.

Robert Gates, the Bush Administation's handpicked candidate to succeed Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defence made a number of interesting statements today during his Senate confirmation hearings that could indicate which way the wind is blowing.

Gates was clear that, if confirmed to succeed Donald Rumsfeld, he would be open to all recommendations for a new direction on Iraq, including those to be presented tomorrow by the Iraq Study Group whom Gates used to be a member of, chaired by the Saudis' own man in Washington James Baker.

"All options are on the table," Gates said Bush had told him.

When asked by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) "Do you believe that we are currently winning in Iraq?" Gates replied simply, "No, sir."

But he also said the coalition was not losing - "at this point."

Cornered later, Gates clarified that his comment about not winning carried no rebuke to American troops. "Our military wins the battles that we fight," Gates said. "Where we're having our challenges, frankly, are in the areas of stabilization and political developments."

Gates said that Bush "understands that there needs to be a change in our approach in Iraq, that what we are doing now is not working satisfactorily."

No kidding.

In another interesting bit, Gates, when asked if Iraq ws the central front in the war on terror said `it's one of the fronts.' Which would seem to indicate that Iraq's importance is being downgraded.

On Iran and Syria, Gates made some startling admissions that seemed to signal a major change in the US approach to Assad and the mullahs. Urging caution and a preference for diplomacy, Gates said armed conflict with Iran could have "quite dramatic" consequences "because as we have seen in Iraq, once war is unleashed in it becomes unpredictable," and that an attack on Syria would "immensely complicate our relations with virtually every country in the region." He said that Iran could respond to a US attack by closing off the Persian Gulf to oil exports and "unleashing a significant wave of terror" in the Middle East, Europe and the United States itself...He went out of his way to say that an attack on Iran was a last resort.

In response to a question about Iran's threat to destroy Israel, Gates said,"If Iran obtains nuclear weapons no one can promise it would not use them against Israel," but that he felt Iran was only developing nukes as a `deterent'.

Translated this statement pretty much confirms to me that the Bush Administration is considering simply living with a nuclear armed Iran, that the Bush administration will renege on its long-held pledge to stop Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, and that Israel is more or less on its own when it comes to dealing with a nuclear Iran.

Unfortunately for Gates and those who think like him, it won't just stop with Israel.

To say on the one hand that a country like Iran is capable of unleashing a `significant wave of terror' in Europe and America and then to imply that you have no problem with a country with those capabilities developing nuclear weapons because they're `just a deterent' is beyond folly.