Not the Linkage They Had in Mind
Jennifer Rubin - 05.06.2009 - 6:34 PM
Hillary Clinton and the rest of the Obama administration keep telling Israeli officials that they won’t have support in dealing with Iran unless they get moving on the non-existent peace process. The latest bit of evidence comes today that the opposite is true. The Arab nations are exactly aligned with Israel on this one: the Obama engagement policy makes them very nervous.
The AP reports:
Washington’s efforts to start a dialogue with Iran have sent ripples of alarm through the capitals of America’s closest Arab allies, who accuse Tehran of playing a destabilizing role in the Middle East. The concerns being raised by Arab leaders sound strikingly like those coming from the mouths of Israeli officials. “We hope that any dialogue between countries will not come at our expense,” said a statement Tuesday by the six oil-rich nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council, who have long relied on US protection in the region.
But it gets better. It seems the Arab states now are more amenable to working with Israel because of the Iranian threat:
The London-based Palestinian daily, Al-Quds Al-Arabi even said the Arab moderates governments were actively working on building an alliance with Israel to counter Iranian influence in the region.
The Wednesday report, citing Palestinian officials, said Egyptian and Jordanian diplomats were working to amend the 2002 Arab peace initiative to make it more acceptable to Israel.
Since the Obama administration is all about listening, maybe they should listen to the emerging consensus in the Middle East. The problem, everyone seems to agree, is not Israel but Iran. And they can talk for a while, but the patience of all those who would fall, as Shimon Peres said, under the “dark cloud” of Iran’s nuclear threat, is limited.
commentarymagazine.com |
