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Obama, Netanyahu, and Iran

[Wall Street Journal] Elliott Abrams - Israelis see an Iranian bomb as an existential threat. They cannot be sure an Iranian leader waiting excitedly for the Mahdi's return will be using game theory and mathematical calculations to decide whether it's sensible to strike the Jewish state. Even former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani, whom European diplomats view as a wonderful moderate, called Israel "a one-bomb country." U.S. Middle East Envoy George Mitchell seems impressed by the Arab preoccupation with Iran rather than with the Palestinians. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seems to get it too. With the Palestinians split between Fatah and Hamas, the old "peace process" is increasingly irrelevant to real world crises. There is a critical struggle under way right now in the Middle East, but it is not between Israelis and Palestinians; it is the people aligned with us - including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the PA, Israel and the UAE - against Iran, Qatar, Syria, Hizbullah and the Palestinian rejectionist groups. The writer, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, was the deputy national security adviser overseeing Near East and North African affairs from 2005 to January 2009.
2009-05-11 06:00:00
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