Israel Matzav

What's a poor Sheikh to do?

As you will all recall from Wikileaks, the Gulf Arab countries are scared out of their minds about an Iranian nuclear weapon, and would like the United States to do something about it. Unfortunately, that does not appear to be on President Obama's agenda. Israel would like to do something about Iran, but especially in light of the 'Arab spring' (which Obama is backing), the Arab countries fear being labeled as Zionists if they support an Israeli action.

What's a poor Sheikh to do?

“In the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq War, Arab countries said across the board that they were against the invasion, then one by one each crumbled and fell in behind the US,” said Jonathan Schanzer, vice president of research at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

“The difference is that it isn’t the US leading the charge here, but the Israelis – that creates a different problem.

None of these states want to be the one that openly allowed the Israelis to have overflight rights.

“At the end of the day the Iraq coalition of Arab states was relatively easy despite the posturing. This time... though most of these states want to see an attack, the danger is being branded a traitor and siding with the Zionist entity” he said. “These states travel in herds, in packs – when one breaks, the others feel more comfortable breaking as well.

“I suspect we’ll see a quiet, almost invisible coalition that provides any assistance Israel needs but in such a way that provides them cover and plausible deniability,” Schanzer said.

Ilan Berman, vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, agreed.

“The threat posed by a nuclear Iran is not strictly an Israeli issue. Many regional states are deeply apprehensive over Iran’s nuclear program, and are likely to approve of decisive action against it. As a result, a military strike on Iran may not ignite a regional conflagration, or create greater sympathy for the Iranian regime. Arab states could, simply, look the other way,” he said.

“The longer Iran’s nuclear program is allowed to progress without serious penalties, the more convinced regional states will become of two things. The first is that they need to erect their own strategic counterweights to Iran, likely in the form of a nuclear capability,” Berman said. “The second is that they can do so with impunity since, if the West hasn’t punished Iran for its nuclear advances, they won’t be [punished] either. The result will be a multi-nuclear Middle East – and a security nightmare for both the United States and Israel.”

These analyses are on point. So why can't the Arab countries make the US see it?

Caroline Glick argues that we have to wait Obama out.

At least until the US presidential elections next year, Israel’s best bet may be to simply step up its covert efforts to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program.

The goal of these efforts should be to slow down Iran’s nuclear progress sufficiently to prevent it from developing a nuclear arsenal or moving its nuclear project to hardened locations until after the US presidential elections.

In the meantime, Israel should continue to develop its independent capacity to attack Iran. It should also take military action to weaken Iran’s terror proxies in order to limit their capacity to wage war against Israel in the aftermath of an eventual, post-presidential election Israeli or US strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Obviously, it would be a mistake to assume that Obama will lose his reelection bid. But even if he wins, as a lame duck, second term president, he will have less power to harm Israel than he will as a first term president poised for reelection.

I disagree with Caroline's last sentence. Israel could be devastated by a four-year lame duck Obama. Unencumbered by the need to face reelection, all his Jew-hatred and Israel-hatred could come out into the open.

What could go wrong?

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Gulf states, Iranian nuclear threat

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:36 PM