Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Obama Meets Netanyahu - Ther is More at Stake than Settlements in East Jerusalem

Sydney M. Williams

Thought of the Day
“Obama meets Netanyahu – There is More at Stake than Settlements in East Jerusalem”
March 23, 2010

Despite his appeal to the Muslim world, exemplified in his speech at Cairo University last June 4, and his coveting of the United Nations, President Obama has been rebuffed by the Iranian government and stonewalled by the U.N. Iran persists in being the single most dangerous country in the most dangerous part of the world. Alan Dershowitz has termed Iran the “world’s first suicide nation – a nation whose leaders have not only expressed but, during the Iran-Iraq war, demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice millions of their own people to an apocalyptic mission of destruction.”

There are, at present, nine nuclear powers. Five have either signed or ratified the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty – United States, Russia, U.K., France and China. Three countries are declared nuclear powers, but have not signed the NPT – India, Pakistan and North Korea. The ninth, Israel, is an undeclared nuclear power. The entrance of Iran, a possibility that appears increasingly likely, could well lead to an arms race among other Middle East countries.

Indicative that tensions are mounting, Lloyds of London has raised insurance rates on ships leaving and entering Iran. Yesterday, in preparation for President Obama’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Iran a “menace to the region and to their own people.” She also called for UN sanctions that would “bite.” Nine months ago, she spoke of “crippling” sanctions. So far the U.N. is yet to act. In part, their failure to act is because of the inability to get the Chinese on board. Despite Iran’s vast oil sources – its production, at 4.2 million barrels a day, is second only to Saudi Arabia – the country must import gasoline. China gets oil from Iran and, in turn, sells them gasoline.

The Iranian government seems to have recalled, and benefitted from, the childhood saying: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me.”

The Middle East has always had tensions and, as George Friedman writes in a piece out this morning: “The United States seeks to maintain regional balances of power in order to avoid the emergence of larger powers that can threaten U.S. interests.” He goes on: “The American goal in each balance is not so much stability as it is the mutual neutralization of local powers by other local powers.” A nuclear Iran risks that balance.

The threat of a nuclear Iran grows greater every day. The flap caused by the Israeli government when they announced further settlements in East Jerusalem while Vice President Biden was in the country – certainly non-PC – and made worse by the overreaction on the part of the Administration, should be set straight with the closed-door meeting today between Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu. The consequences of a further rift are too significant.

Israel’s concern regarding Iran and the bomb are justified. Alan Dershowitz writes in today’s Wall Street Journal, that Hashemi Rafsanjani, “a former president of Iran, boasted in 2004 that an Iranian attack would kill as many as five million Jews.” With a population of seven and a half million, that suggests total annihilation. It is little wonder that the Israelis view a nuclear armed Iran as a menacing threat.

The situation places the President in an unenviable position. Dershowitz claims the situation is analogous to the decision by the victors of World War I, in the early 1930s, to permit Germany to rearm. Should Iran get the bomb on his watch, President Obama’s legacy would be badly damaged, despite the fact that the program began years before he took office. The Bush administration knew full well that Iran was working on nuclear weapons and yet took no action.

The fatalist in me senses that it may not be possible to reverse the course Iran is on. In terms of sanctions, the United States has decided to defer to the U.N., an increasingly toothless organization, and Israel cannot respond without, at least covert, approval from the U.S. The balance of power will change. If Mr. Dershowitz is correct in his assessment, tensions will elevate and would “inevitably unleash the laws of unintended consequences.” Containment would have to become policy.

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