The Obama Administration continues to fumble in the Middle East, especially when it comes to Iran and Israel.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was first out of the box, going public by saying that the US was going to deal with a nuclear Iran by arming its allies in the Gulf and putting a "defense umbrella" over the region....or to put it another way, Iran having nukes is something the US can live with, and the Obama Administration will cope by lavishing up to date US armaments on the very same countries like Saudi Arabia that are outspokenly anti-Semitic and don't even recognize Israel's existence!
Needless to say, that didn't win the Obama Administration any points in Jerusalem, where Israeli government spokesmen were less than happy about the Obama Administration's tacit acceptance of what Israel rightly considers a genocidal threat.
She tried to recoup on 'Meet The Press', saying that Iran's quest for nuclear weapons was "futile", and that the US was going to prevent Iran from getting them, and that Israel was a US ally, yadda yadda. Based on what the Obama Administration has done so far in this area,I doubt it was convincing, even to the Mullahs ....who quite correctly see Obama having no strategy except to beg to negotiate.
At the same time, Obama does have a strategy when it concerns Israel - continue to lean heavily on them. Obama's envoy Arab -American ex-Senator George Mitchell arrived over the weekend, SecDef Robert Gates is due in today and National Security Adviser James Jones and Mid East adviser Dennis Ross are due later in the week. They will all come with essentially the same message: stop breeding Jewish children, don't build anything in any part of Israel including Jerusalem that the Arabs want for themselves and don't take any steps to defend yourselves against Iran.
The official line has been to link any US 'action' against Iran with Israel knuckling under to the Arabs' demands on Jerusalem and the rest of Judea and Samaria.
Aside from being disgusting on the face of it for America to blackmail a long time loyal ally facing an existential threat in this fashion, the Israelis are unlikely to knuckle under for two very pragmatic reasons.
First, there's the question of exactly what type of action the Obama Administration has in mind.More ineffective sanctions that will be ignored by Russia and the EU, even if they happen by some wild twist of fate to get by a UN veto? Tell me, would you wager the lives of your loved ones on that bet?
The Obama Administration is far more likely to put sanctions on Israel than it is on Iran. And any military action to end Iran's nuclear threat will certainly not come from Barack Obama.
Second, there's the simple fact that Israel has absolutely no reason at this point to trust anything they're told by the US at all.
The US has already reneged on the deal made by President Bush with Ariel Sharon to get them to sign on to the Roadmap and pull out of Gaza, denying what President Bush committed to in his letter to Sharon and in a subsequent speech about the US honoring the right of Israel to claim Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria as part of any final settlement with the Palestinians.
According to Hillary Clinton, none of that ever happened..even though she voted the next day for a Senate resolution commending the President for the action! And she continues to toe the Obama line even when Bush Administration functionaries like Elliot Abrams, who actually was directly involved as deputy National Security Advisor confirmed the arrangement existed in the Washington Post.
The US also directly broke it's agreement with Israel on the Roadmap by endorsing the Saudi 'peace' ultimatum Obama is so thrilled about. According to the Roadmap, the US guaranteed Israeli PM Sharon that the US would only support the Road Map and no other plan, since it was in accordance with U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.
Imagine how it sounds to the Israelis when Obama or one of his functionaries exhorts them to "honor their commitments under the Roadmap!"
And finally, when Obama pledged almost a billion dollars to rebuild Gaza, both he and Hillary Clinton swore up and down that none of that money would end up going directly to Hamas.In fact, that's exactly where it's going....not to mention the hundreds of millions of dollars the US is funneling to Fatah to help them build an army under US general Keith Dayton, the American equivalent of Britain's Colonel John Glubb.
There's no reason whatsoever for Israel to trust anything coming from Obama, and in fact he's already done a fair amount of work in destroying the relationship between the two countries. Based on what I know about President Obama and his closest associates, this was likely his intention from the very beginning, regardless of American interests.
Since Israeli PM Netanyahu can already see that Obama is more than willing to break previous agreements in an attempt to 'deliver' Israel to his Arab friends, Netanyahu has very little to lose by simply defying him and going his own way. If someone's trying to force you to commit suicide, there's no great loss in distancing yourself from him.
Which means, ultimately, that the Israelis will do what they have to do and go their own way.And that America's friends and foes will have one more example of how Barack Obama does foreign policy, and react accordingly.
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