"The shift is not a sign that the United States is abandoning its traditional allies in the Middle East, but it does suggest several important trends. One is a continued move -- begun in the aftermath of Sept. 11 -- toward seeing the Middle East as a source of direct threats to U.S. national security, since this lumping together makes much more sense as a way to understand and contain threats than as a way to maximize opportunities. A second is the heightened importance of energy security to U.S. strategic thinking, given the persistence -- if not escalation -- of security threats in the Gulf and the world's likely dependence on oil for decades more. A third is greater influence for the military, whose Central Command already encompasses the Middle East and reaches east to Pakistan and sees the problems of the area as interconnected.
For many years, that was how it stayed. The State Department's Near East and South Asia Bureau focused its attention overwhelmingly on the Arab-Israeli conflict, with a periodic shift to the Gulf when war or coups intervened. South Asia was starved for official attention -- a band of relatively poor, generally nonaligned, and certainly non-Arabic-speaking countries ...
Increasingly, though, many in the U.S. government have come to believe that dividing line is a false one. Religiously inspired radicalism in the Muslim world often takes its inspiration from the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, but it plans and trains in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Similarly, as a potentially nuclear Iran looms larger in the minds of U.S. strategists, it makes sense for policymakers to take greater account of Afghanistan -- where Iran has extensive interests -- and bordering Pakistan... In addition, the region between Kuwait and Afghanistan is where the action will likely be. If there is a war involving U.S. troops -- or heroic diplomacy to avert war -- it seems certain to happen there rather than somewhere westward. Pakistan is currently a nuclear-armed power, and Iran is feared to be an aspiring one, centering counter-proliferation efforts very much in that region.
Further west, the problems are more familiar. The Arab-Israeli conflict seems to be settling into a standoff between a strong Israel, a weak but unbowed Palestinian community, and Arab governments who feel loyalty to the Palestinian cause but only hostility toward Hamas. The bilateral relationship with Egypt is important but not central, Lebanon no longer fires the imagination of avid democratizers, and North Africa has provided neither sufficient threat nor reward to draw sustained attention. The problems are known, and yet they seem unlikely to go away.
It is too early to tell where the Obama Administration will put its greatest efforts, or where it will find its successes and failures. Much will be up to others, and to luck. But adopting the Bush Administration's conception of a "Broader Middle East" not only provides clues to the new administration's intentions; it has consequences as well. We are likely to see a far more militarized and security-driven U.S. approach to the region than many were predicting before the president took office just a few weeks ago."
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The national security interests of Israel (as defined by its rightwing elite, not Israelis concerned about their democracy and living peacefully as good neighbors within their legal borders) and the U.S. already are directly clashing.
The US faces a major security challenge in the Pakistani-Afghan region: namely, can it successfully extricate itself? The road out of the region goes through Iran. But that road is blocked by Israel, which sees Iran as the only challenger to Israel’s military domination of the Mideast. Israel wants the U.S. to sacrifice a deal with Iran in order to prevent Iran’s natural rise to a leading regional position.
The obvious rejoinder, that a U.S.-Iranian understanding would eliminate Iran’s “existential threat” to Israel and should thus be supported by Israel, fails because the “existential threat” of Iran is a myth. Iran does not have nuclear weapons and even if it were to acquire them, it would have no foreseeable hope of coming remotely close to being able to match the nuclear capability of Israel. Whatever one may think about the policies of the Iranian Islamic Republic, it has never shown an inclination toward suicide. On the contrary, it has carefully constrained its behavior with a close eye to realities. Iran helped the U.S. construct a regime for Afghanistan in 2001-2, has cooperated with an Iraqi regime installed under U.S. occupation, and has said that it would accept any Palestinian-Israeli agreement supported by the Palestinians.
The current leaders of all major Israeli parties see Iran as a threat not because it might someday acquire weapons that it might choose to employ in a suicidal attack but because Iran is the only regional country willing to challenge Israel’s military domination over the region: the challenge is not to Israel’s existence but to its regional superpower aspirations.
A U.S.-Iranian understanding would surely include Iranian agreement not to attack Israel but would presumably not include any Iranian agreement to accept subordination to Israel. Therefore, although Israeli moderates concerned about the preservation of Israeli democracy might find a U.S.-Iranian détente good news, the “Greater Israel” advocates who utterly dominate thinking among the rightwing, militarist clique that holds power (be it Kadima, Labor, or Likud, much less the even more extremist Yisrael Beiteinu) will not be impressed. On the contrary, for them, the intemperate rhetoric of Ahmadinejad (aided by more than a little intentional Western mistranslation) is an invaluable treasure. The last thing these pro-expansion politicians want to see is a U.S.-Iranian détente that would pave the way for a more rational, moderate, unemotional U.S. foreign policy and a Mideast with three major powers contending with Israel (NATO member Turkey, financial power Saudi Arabia, and a stable, confident, and actively involved but outspoken Iran). That scenario would undermine Israeli domination; lessen Israel’s psychological hold over the U.S.; and leave the Mideast political table resting solidly on several strong legs rather than balanced precariously on two.
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