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Sunni Arab Leaders Are More Concerned with Tehran's Designs than Palestinian Aspirations

(Foreign Policy) Ray Takeyh - For decades, the received wisdom of the foreign-policy establishment insisted that Israel could not be integrated into the Middle East unless it came to terms with the Palestinians. This curious argument ran counter to Washington's own experience with Arab-Israeli peacemaking: Former President Jimmy Carter's Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, after all, included only a superficial nod to the Palestinians. Jordan signed its own peace treaty with Israel in 1994 while the Palestinian issue once again remained unresolved. Yet successive U.S. administrations appointed their various envoys and squandered time and political capital on a conflict that always eluded a solution. Iran's imperial rampage created opportunities as Sunni Arab potentates were more concerned about Tehran's designs than Palestinian aspirations. Enmity toward Iran is the currency of trust in today's Arab world. The United Arab Emirates led the way in making peace with Israel. And then came Bahrain, the stalking horse for Saudi Arabia. More peace treaties are possible unless the U.S. returns to its previous path of lecturing the House of Saud that it must share the Middle East with the Islamists. The writer, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, was senior advisor on Iran at the U.S. State Department.
2020-11-19 00:00:00
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