Iran's continued rejection of all western diplomatic offers demonstrates graphically that President Obama's policy of engagement has been a dismal failure.
Last month, President Barack H. Obama, in his first State of the Union address, admitted that his Middle East policy as pertains to the Israel-Palestine conflict has been a failure. Iran's continued rejection of all western diplomatic offers demonstrates graphically that President Obama's policy of engagement likewise has been a dismal failure. Nearly three-quarters of a year ago, this writer suggested that Obama follow a different course in order to achieve his goals.i Despite being awarded the Nobel Peace prize, it's time for the White House to recognize that peace requires more homework than either the President's team performed, or did the team of his predecessor, despite genuine good intentions on the part of both groups. After all, we are talking about the Middle East, where history is measured in millennia and not in single years or decades.
A large part of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is exacerbated by the extremist position of the Palestinian Moslem Brotherhood, aka Hamas, which categorically denies any and all legitimacy to the State of Israel and continually declares its intention to eradicate the Jewish state, a goal stated clearly in its charter.ii Similarly, strife between Israel and its northern neighbor Lebanon has been provoked by the activities of the Shiite resistance organization Hezbollah, whose cross-border attack on an Israeli army patrol sparked the three week Lebanon War of July 2006. Both Hamas and Hezbollah receive training, financial support and huge amounts of arms and explosives from their benefactor and patron, the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has been gripped by an unprecedented level of social ferment for the last eight months since the fraudulent election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to a second term of the presidency. Despite the problems at home, the regime has cranked up its aid and supply to Hezbollah and Hamas; the recent dramatic discoveries of weapons smuggling including the mid-January 2009 unidentified air-strike in the northern Sudan on a truck convoy smuggling arms into Egypt for transport to Gazaiii, the January 20, 2009 search of the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea by a combined U.S.-Egyptian naval task force searching for the Iranian freighter M/V Monchegorsk, aka M/V Iran-Hedayat renamed en route as the Panamanian-registered M/V Famagustus loaded with an estimated 60 tons of arms meant for Hamas in Gazaiv, the January 23, 2009 boarding of an Iranian freighter flying the Cypriot flag with weapons discovered in its hold, bound for Latakia, Syria, the cargo either intended for Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanonv, the sinking in the Red Sea of an Iranian vessel transporting arms to Gaza in mid-April 2009vi, and most dramatically, the Israeli capture of the Antigua-flagged freighter M/V Francop, carrying hundreds of tons of Iranian arms bound for Hezbollah via Syriavii.
The preceding short list of interdicted Iranian arms shipments to Hamas and Hezbollah should serve to make it crystal clear that the Ali Khamenei regime of Iran is actively pouring fuel on the fire in the conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians as well as that between Israel and the Lebanese who are being held hostage by Iran's proxy, Hezbollahviii.
As any firefighter knows, the first thing to do in fighting a fire is to cut the oxygen and fuel supplies that are feeding the inferno. It's time for Obama and the State Department, as well as the European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Lady Catherine Ashton, to visit Texas and take a lesson from the ghost of legendary oil-well firefighter "Red" Adair in how to put out fires: cut the fuel supply! If one wants to solve the Israel-Palestine conflict, cut off the fuel to the terrorists that have been torpedoing every attempt to bridge the gaps between the opposing parties. And today it is the Iranian regime that is supplying the gasoline to intensify the flames of conflict.
With Iran itself in flames due to the courageous supporters of the "Green Revolution" that now seek to finally end the three-decade nightmare of radical Islamic theological rule that has engulfed Iran, the U.S. and the E.U. should be doing the utmost to support the Iranian people's attempt to bring about regime changeix. Specifically it's time to apply a very strict regime of sanctions against Iranx – cutting off everything other than food and medicines. The argument that such sanctions only hurt the people but not the regime is faulty as these sanctions are meant to cause the lower classes to turn against the regime for its mismanagement of the oil wealth. The recent vote of the Iranian Majlis (parliament) to end a three-decade old program of subsidies for food and fuelxi has already caused the level of discontent to rise dramaticallyxii. Strict sanctions and embargoes of Iran will ratchet up the pressure on the Iranian economy to the point where the working class will be fed up with a regime that spends its wealth on building nuclear weaponry, suppressing its citizenryxiii, and financing world-wide terrorismxiv. From the beginning of the protests the street demonstrations regularly repeat the chant "Na ghazeh na lobnan janam fadai iran" — "Neither Gaza nor Lebanon is our business; no to Gaza and no to Lebanon. Iran is our business, and I give my life for that!"xv – indicating the popular displeasure with the Iranian regime's support of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Hizballah-Iraq. Although it has been clear to the Iranian resistance movement for years, the popular press is now reporting that at best 10-15% of the Iranian population supports the current regimexvi.
Given the information just cited, it should be clear that any regime change in Iran that removes the theocratic mullah regime and its valeyat-e faqih (rule of the Islamic jurisprudent) doctrine would not only be an improvement for Iran itself, but would put a stop to the exportation of Khomeinism (i.e., Islamic revolutionary fundamentalism). Hezbollah/Hizbullah-Iraq would wither for a lack of funds and direction, and Hamas would find its threat capabilities severely diminished for lack of funding and supply of weaponry. With these Iranian proxies removed or seriously curtailed, the Palestinian populace would have a chance to decide whether or not it wants genuine peace with Israel.
However, there remains another hurdle to cross before peace can become a realistic goal. It applies to both parties to the Israel-Palestine conflict, but there is a greater problem currently on the Palestinian side. I am referring to the problem of corruption. The Palestinian electorate didn't vote for Hamas in 2006 because it wanted to be governed by sharia law, but because it was thoroughly disgusted with the endemic corruption of Fatah. Despite the trouncing that Fatah took at the polls in 2006, it has done almost nothing to reform itself in the meantime. Baqshish (bribery) is the order of the day, and forget about accountability or transparencyxvii. As a result, Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority, peopled as it is with Fatah fat-catsxviii, has little popularity with the average Palestinian. Until that situation changes, Islamic radicals will be able to seduce the average Palestinian voter to support Islamist parties that promise justice, law and orderxix.
Although Israel doesn't suffer the degree of corruption that does the Palestinian Authority, it too, could benefit greatly from greater transparency and accountabilityxx. Too many political figures in Israel operate under a cloud of suspicion of financial misdeedsxxi.
There remains another area that must be encountered before peace talks have any chance of success. I refer to the subject of incitement. Predominantly a problem from the Palestinian sidexxii, but not exclusively soxxiii, incitement to violence against the other remains a critical barrier to peace. Although the "Roadmap" of 2003 discussed the need to end incitementxxiv, non-compliance by extremists (on both sides) has prevented progress in traveling the map which originally envisioned a completed solution by 2005xxv.
When the above mentioned steps have been implemented, then honest parties on both sides of the conflict will be able to find ways to make the necessary compromises to bring about a solution agreement that lays the groundwork for genuine peace and cooperation. But if these steps are disregarded or sidestepped, peace will remain just as elusive as it has been for the past sixty-two years.
Endnotes
i "Solving the Iran Problem Could Help Solve the Palestinian Problem, but not Vice Versa", http://www.worldsentinel.com/articles/view/102662, May 17, 2009.
ii See Articles 6, 7, 13, 14, and especially 15 and 28 of "The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), August 18, 1988, http://www.mideastweb.org/hamas.htm.
iii Michael R. Gordon & Jeffrey Gettleman, "U.S. Officials Say Israel Struck in Sudan", The New York Times, March 26, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/world/africa/27sudan.html?_r=1, and Robert Mackey, "The Sudan Airstrike Mystery", The New York Times, March 26, 2009, http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/sudan-airstrike-mystery/.
iv Debka, "US-Egyptian Red Sea hunt for Iranian ship carrying 60-tons of arms for Hamas", http://docstalk.blogspot.com/2009/01/us-egyptian-red-sea-hunt-for-iranian.html, January 23, 2009.
v Debka, "US Warships Board Iranian Ship Carrying Arms For Hamas", http://patdollard.com/2009/01/us-warships-board-iranian-ship-carrying-arms-for-hamas/, January 24, 2009.
vi Al-Usbu, "Report: ‘Iranian ship sunk while bringing weapons to Gaza'", http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=210123, April 26, 2009. See also:
Haaretz Service, "Iran arms ship bound for Gaza downed near Sudan", Haaretz, April 27, 2009, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1081215.html.
vii Yossi Melman, "ANALYSIS: Arms ship seizure just another battle in the secret war with Iran", Haaretz, November 5, 2009, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1125896.html.
viii Elias Bejjani, "Extinguish Lebanon's Inferno before it Burns You", Global Politician, January 28, 2010, http://www.globalpolitician.com/26198-lebanon, and Ibid, "Shiite Lebanese are fleeing Hezbollah's ministate", Global Politician, January 22, 2010, http://www.globalpolitician.com/26180-hezbollah-lebanon.
ix Saba Farzan, "Iran's Revolution Devoured By Its Own Children", Wall Street Journal, February 9, 2010, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704820904575054810881353520.html?mod=googlenews_wsj.
x Mehdi Kaliji and J. Scott Carpenter, "America and the Iranian Political Reform Movement: First, Do No Harm", The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, February 3, 2010, http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC07.php?CID=512. For video of their presentation before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs,, see: http://www.internationalrelations.house.gov/hearing_notice.asp?id=1148.
xi Gregg Carlstrom, "Iran's parliament approves controversial subsidy reforms", The Majlis, January 14, 2010, http://www.themajlis.org/2010/01/14/irans-parliament-approves-controversial-subsidy-reforms.
xii Djavad (Salehi-Isfahani), "A good time for goodbye to subsidies", Tyranny of numbers, January 16, 2010, http://djavad.wordpress.com/2010/01/16/a-good-time-for-goodbye-to-subsidies/#more-647.
xiii Ali Alfoneh, "The Basij Resistance Force: A Weak Link in Iranian Regime?" (Policy Watch # 1627), The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, February 5, 2010, http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=3171.
xiv Brian Binley, "BINLEY: Iran revolution needs support", The Washington Times, February 9, 2010, http://washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/09/new-revolution-needs-support-of-sanctions/.
xv Afshin Ellian, "Iranians Want Regime Change", Wall Street Journal, December 30, 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703510304574625713733452476.html. Also see the following videos: "No to Gaza No to Lebanon, I die for Iran", Tehran, September 17, 2009, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozU5KTSyh7c&NR=1, and "No Gaza, no Lebanon just Iran", June 15, 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSpG7EH6yrA.
xvi Amil Imani, "Empowering Iranians", Arutz Sheva, January 14, 2010, http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/9260. See also: Jerry Guo, "Iranians Tire of Ahmadinejad's Nuclear Push", Newsweek, October 5, 2009, http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/wealthofnations/archive/2009/10/05/iranians-tire-of-ahmadinejad-s-nuclear-push.aspx, and Dieter Bednarz & Eric Follath, "The Iranian Regime's Fear of the People-The Beginning of the End?", Der Spiegel, January 5, 2010, http://www.sanfranciscosentinel.com/?p=55168.
xvii Ed Rettig, "The New Fatah Charter, ‘Long Live Palestine: Free and Arab'", AJC Weekly Briefing on Israeli and Middle Eastern Affairs, February 3, 2010, http://www.ajc.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=ijITI2PHKoG&b=1717407&ct=7982403&msource=IMPACT13&tr=y&auid=5893885.
xviii Mohammed Daraghmeh, "Israeli TV alleges Palestinian corruption", (The Associated Press), The Washington Post, February 10, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/10/AR2010021002557.html, and Khaled Abu Toameh, "PA issues arrest warrant for Shabaneh", The Jerusalem Post, February 11, 2010, http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=168375.
xix Khaled Abu Toameh, "Corruption will let Hamas take W. Bank", The Jerusalem Post, January 29, 2010, http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=167194.
xx Ron Friedman, "Israel ranks 32 in global corruption index", The Jerusalem Post, November 18, 2009, http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:pHUeHIA7WFwJ:www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite%3Fcid%3D1258489190747%26pagename.
xxi Haaretz service, "Poll: 90% of public believes Israeli leadership rife with corruption", Haaretz, October 6, 2008, http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasen/spages/991476.html, and Ze'ev Segal, "Olmert indictment sounds alarm on Israel corruption", Haaretz, August 30, 2009, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1111127.html.
xxii Peggy Shapiro, "Palestinian Hate-Education Continues", American thinker, April 2, 2008, http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/04/palestinian_hateeducation_cont.html, and Brooke M. Goldstein, "Can Hamas Make Sesame Street Sweet?", The American Spectator, October 12, 2009, http://spectator.org/archives/2009/10/12/can-hamas-make-sesame-street-s.
xxiii Haaretz Service, "West Bank rabbi: Jews can kill Gentiles who threaten Israel", Haaretz, November 24, 2009, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1126890.html.
xxiv U.S. Department of State, "Roadmap to Solution of Israeli-Palestinian Conflict", America.gov, April 30, 2003, http://www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2003/April/20030430134837relhcie0.3930475.html.
xxv Ibid.
Every American within a few years of Social Security’s full eligibility status cannot remember a time in their lives when Israel was at peace and not in the daily news. Like the “Troubles” between the Irish and English, the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, plus their Muslim allies in the region, has run hot and cold year after year, sometimes an uneasy cease-fire, at other times full scale war. American presidents have assumed the role of international statesmen, but failed to bring about a lasting peace – blame it on the lousy cuisine at Camp David – who knows why?
Even Obama, who made his rep hustling money out of Federal, State and local governments as a “Community Organizer”, is chasing the siren song of the Great Statesman, but, like his predecessors, failing to bring about a peace within the Middle East. And now that we’re on the cusp of a new era of declining American hegemony and witnessing the rise of future Asian Superpowers, it’s long past due to ask some questions about our country’s role in the Middle East.
We all know about the “OIL”, the black gold that makes our civilization possible, the source of our incredible wealth – and we know that independence from oil is both an impossible dream and a continuing nightmare. Whether America gets its oil supply from the Middle East or Venezuela, oil is a fungible commodity and the current price per barrel is of critical importance to all First World nations. Maintaining the peace to keep the oil flowing and the price stable is to everyone’s interest. Wind power, solar power, geothermal power – all the erogenous zones of Prius drivers holding mundane jobs as teachers, government workers and secretaries and who plaster their bumpers with catchy stickers calling upon all to Save the Earth, even these innocents can’t replace oil as energy king or graduate to serious contention as a political force. But the movers and shakers, those with the top of the line Mercedes in their multi-car garages and their major investments in industry, know the country will remain dependent on oil – in fact, the dependency will remain as long as they have any say in the matter – and there’s no doubt they have quite a bit to say on the subject.
We also know about the symbiotic relationship between Israel and the United States, we won’t let any playground bully smack Israel around, at least not without a stern warning to pick on someone else, or should we plant our massive fist in your face. Israel knows that their defense budget is backed up by our defense budget, their military forces in a relationship similar to the Delaware National Guard supported by the Fed’s Regular Army. And Israel remains our hostage to fortune in the Middle East – we’ll come into the region if necessary, gun blazing and use preserving Israel’s existence as the excuse to keep the peace.
This long running Broadway Comedy, now in its 32nd Act and 15th Intermission, featured Saddam Hussein and the Two Wars of Liberation. Iran has sassed us before, Reagan put a stop to their former nonsense but now they’re back with a smart mouth and uttering threats and warnings. We watched as the Bosnian War made its stage debut, Egypt did its thing a couple of times, Libya had a brief appearance in a one act tribute to barbarity. Pakistan and Afghanistan, home to terrorists, apparently unreachable by the most powerful army on earth, are the current heart throbs of the diplomatic teeny boppers.
Somehow, after all this time, we begin to sense something very wrong, something false, in this long standing conflict. Peace is never achieved no matter how hard we try. Various authors, including this one, always have a ready and infallible blueprint outlining the Road to Peace. Boycott Iran, sure, but countries always pay lip service to the boycott and secretly trade with black sheep nations blessed with billions in oil profits. And unlike South Africa, international moral condemnation just bounces off the Middle Eastern countries.
The question we could ask is whether our political leaders and the Captains of International Industry are sincere in their attempts to end the conflict? We could have put Saddam away but let him go the first time – no one can give a legitimate reason for that little “oops”. Terrorists have no central government so we can’t capture their capitol and force peace. But those Middle Eastern countries with formal governments seem equally immune to the tried and true tactic of deposing leaders and installing governments friendly to us. Maybe Iraq will prove the exception to this track record of failure, but a history of the region argues against it. And somehow Israel and Iraq as strong democracies doesn’t seem enough moral force to change the face of the Middle East.
As patriots, we’re told our young men and women must give their lives or become permanent cripples to support our government’s efforts to bring peace to the Middle East. But the body bags are all too real, peace an illusion spanning decades. Is the Status Quo important to maintain – maybe too important? Are Conservatives the convenient and patriotic puppets to the Captains of Industry and their well-paid allies in both major political parties?