The Iranian priority

Ethan Bronner analyzes Israel’s foreign policy orientation in Israel Faces a Hard Sell in Bid to Shift Policy. The analysis begs two questions. The first is to what degree is there a difference between Israel and the Untied States? In other words, are Bronner’s assumptions accurate or is he magnifying the differences that exist between the two administrations?

The second question is, if Bronner’s assumptions hold, are the Americans being naive? Bronner lays out the potential sources of conflict.

Advisers to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are drafting policy suggestions aimed at forming a framework that he plans to present to President Obama at their first summit meeting, in Washington on May 18. In addition, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman left Sunday for Europe on his first official visit, and on Tuesday, President Shimon Peres is to meet with Mr. Obama in Washington.

Such an ambitious effort to reformulate the conflict will be, by all accounts, tough to sell for two reasons.

First, even though the standard approaches have not yielded success, no alternative has emerged.

Second, the Obama administration has repeatedly backed the two-state solution, as have the Europeans. In other ways, too, this White House has seemed to be closer in outlook to Europe than the past administration was.

Now his first observation is a really huge elephant that isn’t addressed in the whole article. If the standard approach to the peace process has not yielded success so far, why have no alternatives been explored? And why is Netanyahu’s approach apparently being dismissed even if ti doesn’t have a 15 year old record of failure like the standard approach.

I’d argue that Netanyahu did try a different approach during his first tenure as Prime Minister. While he clearly made quite a few mistakes, while he served as PM two trends emerged. The first is that the Palestinians did better financially.

Increasing Numbers

The number of Palestinians working in Israel is steadily growing. Lawfully employed Palestinians in Israel today number about 60,000, of whom some 13,000 work in industrial zones and in the settlements. All told, more than 100,000 Palestinians are estimated to be employed in Israel approaching the record number employed in 1992.

Working Together

Israel and the Palestinian Authority cooperate closely in locating employment opportunities and in creating jobs for Palestinians. For example, a number of successful job fairs which have provided employment, mainly in the field of construction, have taken place. Israel and the Palestinian Authority also cooperate in creating employment opportunities in the industrial zones at Erez and Karni. About 3,500 workers are employed today at Erez, while the plans for Karni call for the creation of tens of thousands of jobs.

(What happened to Erez?

Although the opening of the crossings is essential to the Gazan economy, Palestinian terror networks have frequently attacked the Erez Crossing. “On average, there are between two to four attempted Palestinian terrorist attacks on the Erez compound each month,” according to an IDF security officer at the checkpoint.

In the last four years, Palestinian terror networks have targeted the Erez Crossing with almost 500 mortar shells. In May 2008, a Palestinian bomber from Gaza blew up an explosives-laden truck on the Palestinian side of the Erez Crossing, causing an estimated $3.5 million in damages to the Israeli checkpoint.

In other words one of the institutions of co-existence was closed by incessant terror attacks.)

Alongside the improved economic situation for the Palestinians was a drop in terror. As I observed before:

So under Netanyahu, Palestinians had more prosperity and Israel had more security. Yet because Netanyahu insisted that Arafat abide the agreements he signed, he was undercut by the Clinton administration and pilloried in the press. By 1999, Israelis felt secure enough to elect the more accommodating Ehud Barak as their Prime Minister and by the end of 2000 they were shown how uncommitted to peace the Palestinians were.

Or put a different way, Netanyahu got an alternative to work while he was Prime Minister the first time, but the Americans (and Europe etc.) and the media ignored the results.

For Bronner to write that nothing else has been tried is not accurate. It’s been tried and ignored.

Netanyahu’s job (and now Michael Oren’s job) will be to make that point to the administration. Whether the administration will buy it or not, is a different matter.

The question is whether this is a difference of emphasis or of substance.

Bronner makes some hay about Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

Israel’s own diplomats view his arrival as their chief with circumspection, especially because his predecessor, Tzipi Livni, was admired by her colleagues in Europe. Whenever she went to Paris, for example, she saw not only the foreign minister but also President Nicolas Sarkozy. So far, Mr. Sarkozy has not agreed to see Mr. Lieberman this week.

“I tell people who worry about Lieberman that I worry too,” a senior Israeli diplomat said, requesting anonymity to speak freely of his boss. “But after I stop worrying I tell myself, you have to be fair, you have to give this guy a chance to express himself as the foreign minister of Israel, not just as a candidate.”

(Ehud Barak is apparently a bit more generous.)

But then he gets down to the nitty gritty:

Increasingly, the Arab world — especially Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan — seems worried about Iran as well. American officials who have recently visited those countries said that their leaders spoke about Iran in ways that were almost identical to what they heard from officials in Jerusalem. Therefore, the opportunity for a regional alliance against Iranian influence is great.

But, they say, for Arab leaders to work alongside Israel on this, even quietly, requires demonstrable Israeli movement on ending its occupation of the West Bank by freezing or reducing settlements and handing over more power to the Palestinians.

So is the Arab view presented here accurate? In other words do the “moderate” Arab countries fear Iran conditionally or unconditionally? Need Israel placate them regarding the Palestinians in order to get cooperation to oppose Iran? Or would Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan – despite their rhetoric to the contrary, paying lip service to the Palestinian cause – join in the Western effort against Iran regardless?

Clearly there are those in the administration who see Israeli concessions as the paramount concern. Last week David Ignatius wrote a flattering profile of NSC director Gen. James Jones.

Jones is an activist on the Palestinian issue, which he lists as a top priority for the new administration. He wants the United States to offer a guiding hand in peace negotiations — submitting its own ideas to help break any logjams between the Israelis and Palestinians. “The United States is at its best when it’s directly involved,” Jones says. He cites U.S. diplomatic efforts in the Balkans. “We didn’t tell the parties to go off and work this out. If we want to get momentum, we have to be involved directly.”

This stance may antagonize the new Israeli government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, as may the prospect of U.S. diplomatic engagement with Iran. Ideally, the administration would like to explore a new security architecture for the Persian Gulf that recognizes Tehran’s rising power but also sets limits. But officials caution that such broad talks won’t happen quickly, given the mixed signals from Iran.

So given Jones’s antagonism towards Israel, if he is influential in the administration, the differences with the Netanyahu government

The other question is whether the apparent emphasis of the Obama administration on Israel in order to enable an effective counter to Iran, or whether the Israeli approach as described by Bronner is correct:

He, like the entire Israeli leadership, argues that since Iran sponsors Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, both of which reject Israel’s existence and seek its destruction, the key to the Palestinian solution is to defang Iran and stop it from acquiring the means to build a nuclear weapon.

Amir Taheri summarizes the Iranian view of things:

Khomeinist propaganda is trying to portray Iran as a rising “superpower” in the making while the United States is presented as the “sunset” power. The message is simple: The Americans are going, and we are coming.

Tehran plays a patient game. Wherever possible, it is determined to pursue its goals through open political means, including elections. With pro-American and other democratic groups disheartened by the perceived weakness of the Obama administration, Tehran hopes its allies will win all the elections planned for this year in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

“There is this perception that the new U.S. administration is not interested in the democratization strategy,” a senior Lebanese political leader told me. That perception only grows as President Obama calls for an “exit strategy” from Afghanistan and Iraq. Power abhors a vacuum, which the Islamic Republic of Iran is only too happy to fill.

So presumably an American approach that doesn’t view Iranian power as the primary challenge in the Middle East misreads the situation.

And as Barry Rubin points out, the State Department’s own analysis supports the view that Iran is the major challenge for the United States in the Middle East.

What can this report teach U.S. policymakers?

Regarding Iran, their government has massive evidence of its continuing role as “the most significant state sponsor of terrorism.” Why is Iran doing this? According to the State Department, “To advance its key national security and foreign policy interests, which include regime survival, regional dominance, opposition to Arab-Israeli peace, and countering Western influence, particularly in the Middle East.” That’s right, and it’s not going to change, especially one Iran has nuclear weapons.

Not only does Tehran use the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (the institution most supportive of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) “to clandestinely cultivate and support” Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hizballah; plus radical Islamist groups in Afghanistan, the Balkans, and in Iraq against U.S. forces.

As for Syria, events highlighted its “ties to the world’s most notorious terrorists,” including the death of Hizballah Operations Chief Imad Mugniyah, killed while under Syrian government protection. “Among other atrocities, Mugniyah was wanted for the 1983 bombings of the Marine barracks and U.S. Embassy in Beirut, which killed over 350.” Moreover, as the report shows, Syria has been tightening its alliance with Iran and continued financing terrorism.

While U.S. efforts reduced their numbers, terrorists destabilizing Iraq continued coming in “predominantly through Syria,” and “receiving weapons and training from Iran.”

Here’s the bottom line: Not only do Syria and Iran believe that destabilizing the region, bullying or controlling their neighbors, and expelling U.S. influence is in their interest but they’re also directly involved in trying to kill Americans.

American interests in the Middle East are threatened by Iran. The United States must marshal its allies to fight Iranian designs. The Israeli view of the situation – that Iran is the major source of instability in the Middle East – is largely in agreement with the State Department’s latest analysis. So the question is whether the Obama administration will allow itself to be distracted by pretending that pressuring Israel will make handling the Iranian challenge easier or whether it will heed the State Department’s analysis and give priority to the Iranian threat.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.