Indeed, the outcome of the scheduled Feb. 10 Israeli elections may be the single biggest factor in whether Obama will be able to succeed where so many of his predecessors have failed. Before the Gaza offensive was launched, a solid win for the right wing and the installation of Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu as the next PM seemed a forgone conclusion. (When Netanyahu was last in power in the late 1990s, his intransigence in negotiations was legendary. Dennis Ross describes him as “insufferable” in his memoir The Missing Peace.) But the success of the attacks have bolstered the popularity of Defence Minister Ehud Barak and his Labour party, offering the possibility of a more moderate type of coalition government, even with Netanyahu at the helm.
Obama’s most pressing challenge, however, will be the same as George W. Bush’s: Iran. With its influence in Iraq and Afghanistan, support of Gaza’s Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and soon-to-be-fulfilled nuclear ambitions, Tehran’s Islamic regime has succeeded in placing itself at the centre of most of the region’s problems. Efforts by successive American administrations to “contain” the ayatollahs have clearly failed. And, for the first time since the 1979 revolution, it may be time to try formal talks, a possibility to which Obama remains open. (There are really no other options on the table. According to a recent New York Times report, Bush and the Pentagon rejected a proposed Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear program last fall, denying the IDF both the “bunker bombs” it needed and permission to overfly Iraq.)
Baqer Moin, a Iranian analyst and broadcaster living in London, England, says the Iranians are as eager for change as anyone. “The Americans have always thought that if you corner Iran it will give in. And that’s just psychologically wrong,” he says. “Iran wasn’t a colony, but one of the slogans of the revolution was ‘Independence.’ They would like to be taken seriously as a state.” With the precipitous drop in the price of oil, the Islamic regime is under more economic pressure than ever, notes Moin, and perhaps ready to compromise in exchange for an end to the trade embargo. And even if negotiations fail, they may be to America’s benefit, strengthening the case for more drastic action and building international support.
For a politician who is burdened with such high expectations and faces challenges on so many different fronts, it is possible that Obama’s rhetoric about a “new” direction in foreign policy will remain just that. Certainly, that is the advice he will receive from the bureaucracy in Washington, where the conventional wisdom has long been that a new president shouldn’t waste his capital on the Middle East. Elections are upcoming not just in Israel, but also Lebanon, Iran, and Gaza, offering the possibility of more willing partners down the line. (Although the smart money says the votes will make things more complicated, not less.) And with the Palestinian leadership—the linchpins of a wider peace deal—more divided and weaker than perhaps ever before, the biggest question for Obama might be: “why bother?”
But as with the Gaza crisis, it could be that events force his hand. Or that the new president simply becomes captivated by the promise that has ensnared so many of his predecessors. “There’s been a framework for a peace deal for years,” Moshe Ma’oz, a Hebrew University peace and conflict specialist, says from his Jerusalem home. “If there is goodwill and leadership it can be done in no time.” But Ma’oz has a warning for the new American president. “Here, there is no love. Nobody loves anybody. It is all a matter of self-interest.”
Pages: 1 2
