With Republican Congressman Ron Paul coming in a close third in the Iowa presidential caucus, we must look seriously at his foreign policy views, particularly on the Middle East and Israel, and ask whether such views are suitable for a commander-in-chief charged with the security of the United States during a period of conflict with a determined Islamic enemy.

Much attention has been paid, since Paul’s strong showing in Iowa, to statements issued in Rep. Paul’s newsletter publications. Many of these newsletters contain material on domestic matters (such as race relations) that may be objectionable, but one of the most troubling statements on the foreign policy front relates to credence given to a conspiracy theory blaming the Mossad for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. From an April 1993 edition of the newsletter:

It was only a matter of a few days after the World Trade Center bombing before Mohammad A. Salameh was arrested. Is he guilty? Who knows? Recall that shortly after the Kennedy assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald was apprehended and accusations were made. Whether it was a setup by the Israeli Mossad, as a Jewish friend of mine suspects, or was truly retaliation by the Islamic fundamentalists matters little.

This statement shows a susceptibility to conspiratorial thinking, which, while contrary to any good analysis, is particularly dangerous when considering the Middle East. The Arab world is fraught with all manner of ludicrous and delusional conspiracy theories about the Jews and Israel, and that a potential American Commander-in-Chief would give them any credence is deeply troubling. Even if, as Rep. Paul claims, he was not the author of the newsletters in question, then at the very least he hired and supervised, or failed to supervise, individuals who maintained these beliefs. Anyone who genuinely considers the possibility that Israel would intentionally bomb an American civilian building for the sole purpose of framing Islamic terrorists, cannot ever be an ally of or, indeed, even neutral in regards to Israel.

The other interesting element of the quote is the use of the word “retaliation.” The assumption that any act of terrorism committed by Muslims must be the result of U.S. behavior, and, therefore, justifiable is a hallmark of Paul’s policies and is deeply troubling. A perfect illustration occurred in Paul’s remarks during the December 15th Iowa Republican debate. “… [T]o say all Muslims are the same is dangerous talk,” he stated. “They don’t come to kill us because we are free and prosperous. Do they go to Switzerland and Sweden? I mean that’s absurd.”

Of course all Muslims are not the same. No one is suggesting that they are. Paul’s claim that Muslims want to harm us “because we are bombing them” ignores the reality that Islamists have deeply-held religious and ideological beliefs that mandate jihad against non-believers, the spread of Sharia, and the dominance of an Islamic caliphate. We know this because not just Islamic terrorists, but Muslim jurists, thinkers and policy-makers say so routinely, as evidenced by a wide collection of Arabic-language video and transcripts available from translation services like MEMRI.

Ironically the Swiss Federal Department of Justice and Police recognizes better than does Rep. Paul the reality of jihadist motivations, writing in a 2006 report summary, that Switzerland was both home to, and a target for, Islamist terrorists.

Furthermore, which Muslims exactly does Paul claim the United States bombed prior to the 1993 “retaliation” bombing?

Paul blames Israel for much of the faults of the Middle East and, according to former Paul staffer Eric Dondero, has privately expressed his wish that Israel not exist. Dondero writes,

He wishes the Israeli state did not exist at all. He expressed this to me numerous times in our private conversations. His view is that Israel is more trouble than it is worth, specifically to the American taxpayer. He sides with the Palestinians, and supports their calls for the abolishment of the Jewish state, and the return of Israel, all of it, to the Arabs.

Paul has attempted to create the impression that his stance on Israel is motivated not by anti-Zionism, but, rather, by a principled position on independent national sovereignty. He points to his voting against condemning Israel for the 1981 Osirak reactor bombing, and claims that our “interference” with Israel is to their detriment. Said Paul in a November presidential debate in Washington,

We interfere with them when they deal with their borders. When they want to have peace treaties, we tell them what they can do because we buy their allegiance and they sacrifice their sovereignty to us. And then they decide they want to bomb something, that’s their business, but they should, you know, suffer the consequences. When they bombed the Iraqi missile site, nuclear site, back in the ’80s, I was one of the few in Congress that said it’s none of our business and Israel should take care of themselves.

EMET believes that a close American-Israeli security alliance is to the benefit of both nations, but we understand that one could make the opposing argument that Israel is burdened by its American alliance in good faith. However Paul’s stance is disingenuous, as evidenced by his remarks on the House floor on Israel’s Operation Cast Lead invasion of Gaza that began in December 2008. Paul claimed that Hamas was “encouraged by and really started by Israel,” much as he blames the U.S. for the rise of Al Qaeda. In interviews with Iranian state television, Press TV, he described Gaza as a “concentration camp.” Far from wanting to free Israel to see to its own national security, Paul seizes upon occasions when Israel acts to ensure its security, as in Operation Cast Lead, to condemn it and, by extension, the United States.

Paul prefers pat answers that blame America and Israel to conducting serious investigation of the motivations of our self-declared enemies. Indeed Paul’s belief in American-centric grievance terrorism denies agency to other countries and cultures. He refuses to take into account any historical, cultural or political developments prior to America’s rise to superpower status. Paul’s only solution is a return to American isolationism as a foreign policy.

Paul believes that if Washington ceases to support and ally itself with the Jewish state, then a large number of America’s problems with the Muslim world will disappear. But suppose that a President Paul initiated a foreign policy in which the U.S. government didn’t defend Israel in the United Nations Security Council, recognized “Palestine” as a nation, called on Israel to negotiate with that state, and stopped the sale of American weapons or technology to the Jewish state. Would these actions prompt the Islamist or Muslim worlds to reward us with better behavior?

Certainly, there is plenty of evidence to suggest they would not, just by examining the past three years. President Barack Obama is markedly less supportive of Israel than was President George W. Bush. Obama made improved relations with the Muslim world a cornerstone of his foreign policy, as delineated in his Cairo declaration in 2009. Based on the Paul logic, positive results should come from the Muslim world, but we see no evidence of its becoming more supportive of the United States. Have the Palestinians been more willing to compromise? No. The Palestinian Authority seems to be approaching the even more extreme and radical group, Hamas, with which it now plans to merge. Also, the PA has unilaterally pushed for statehood recognition by the United Nations, an effort the Obama Administration has opposed. And has the rest of the Muslim world become more cooperative with the United States? Not at all. Pakistan hid Osama Bin Laden until we found and killed him, and it continues to support the Taliban in Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia still produces textbooks and religious materials filled with anti-Christian and anti-Jewish bigotry. And Iran still pushes ahead with nuclear weapons production.

We have every reason to suspect, therefore, that the Middle East’s reaction to an even softer Ron Paul approach to diplomacy would be greater intransigence.

Paul pretends that this reality does not exist or that it does not matter. Osama bin Laden should not have been killed, under Paul’s reasoning. Iran is not trying to acquire a nuclear bomb, he claims, and if it were, that’s Teheran’s choice. “If I were an Iranian, I’d like to have a nuclear weapon, too, because you gain respect from them,” he told Iowans.

Paul’s foreign policy has a seductive attraction. If all the troubles America endures are because of her actions, then ceasing these actions is a cure-all. But this is simply not so. A retreat to some mythical isolationist foreign policy is as impossible as it is undesirable. It would cede regional hegemony to national and non-state actors who have their own innate motivations for wishing death to those they label “infidels,” and make the world, America, and Israel, infinitely more insecure.

— William Butler Yeats

By all accounts, 2011 has been a cataclysmic year in the Middle East. What began with a government official’s harassment of Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street vendor, and ended in his self-immolation on December 18,2010, sparked riots that led to what has been dubbed “The Arab Spring” but that we at EMET have more appropriately entitled “The Arab Tsunami.”. The events in Tunisia resulted in a wave of protests that has shaken up the Arab and Muslim worlds, stretching all the way from Morocco to Yemen.

As anyone who has not been asleep for the greater part of this year is aware, what transpired in the region in 2011 has been more dramatic than anything to occur in the Middle East since the days after World War I, when French diplomat Francois Georges Picot, together with British diplomat Sir Mark Sykes, carved up the region for their countries.

What has happened since last December 18 has  awakened the populations throughout the region to protest their countries’ poor economic conditions and total lack of human rights, as well as corruption  within the region’s leadership. That then led, among other astonishing developments, to the resignation of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia; the end of the 33-year reign of  Yemenite President Ali Abdullah Saleh;  the overthrow and death of Libyan strongman  Muammmar Gaddafi and, most astonishingly, the end of the 30-year, iron-clad reign of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

As of now, more than 37,000 people have died in these protests, and the region is still awash with blood. What will be the final outcome of these cataclysmic events is difficult to predict. Sometimes, revolutions result in more freedom, as defined from the liberal, Western point of view. The French Revolution took decades and finally resulted in more freedoms. A revolution, however, might result in a more oppressive regime within an overarching system, such as occurred in the Russian Revolution of 1917, or the  Iranian Revolution of 1979.

We at EMET have long seen the rising tide of radical Islamism and have expressed the fear that what began with the Facebook generation by a few young, freedom-loving activists (in the Western sense of the concept) would lead to elections  ushering in Islamist regimes. That is because the people who truly have the political power and infrastructure control the mosques.

We are witnessing now, as in Germany in 1939 and in Gaza in 2006, the reality that one election does not a democracy make.

EMET has stressed throughout this year that democracy entails the chance to have second, third and fourth elections, and that the institutions that allow a person to dissent without fear of one’s very life must already be in place: a free and independent press, a free and independent judiciary, freedom of assemblage. And, as Natan Sharansky has written: the freedom to scream from the middle of the public square and criticize those in power, in the government.

So, where are we today? Just looking at this week’s headlines, I’d like to present an overview of a few hot spots in this troubled region.

Syria

More than 6,200 people have been murdered by the brutal boot of the repressive regime of Bashar al-Assad within the last several months of the uprising, including  hundreds of children. Hundreds, if not thousands, more have disappeared from the streets, perhaps languishing in jail, where God only knows the abuse to which they have been subjected, if they even remain alive.  The Syrian government claims that the uprising was orchestrated by “foreign terrorists.” As I write these words, residents of the besieged city of Homs cry out for the world to come and witness the endless bloodshed, which has killed more than 100 residents over the past few days. Videos posted throughout the Internet show blood-soaked streets in that city, with bodies lying about. Homs has been cut off from food and electricity, and, in a scene reminiscent of the film Schindler’s List, the regime’s soldiers take pot shots at people leaving their homes  during certain hours. The brave dissidents there, despite, the level of brutality that this oppressive regime has stooped to, have not given up.

EMET has been urging strong American sanctions against Syria, as well as covert or overt help for the dissidents. Replacing the Assad government has got to be better than the current situation. Furthermore, Syria is part of the Iranian constellation, and anything that weakens Teheran’s sphere of influence is a good thing.

Egypt

The results of the long-awaited second of the three rounds of parliamentary elections are finally in, and no surprises occurred. As EMET predicted, the Islamist parties received more than 75 percent of the vote. The highest percentage of votes went to Salafist parties that are even more extreme than the horrific Muslim Brotherhood. This all but paves the way for a radical Sharia state to Israel’s immediate west and the continuation of an open smuggling corridor of goods, weapons and fighters into Hamas-controlled Gaza. The eight million Coptic Christians in Egypt have long endured persecution, but since Mubarak’s overthrow, this minority has endured massacres and unspeakable abuses.

The Egyptian military that has maintained control since the ouster of Mubarak has  been exceedingly brutal, particularly in abusing female protestors, who, when arrested, have endured humiliating and painful “virginity tests,” which the army claims protects the women from the charge of prostitution.  This week, millions of viewers were stunned by the YouTube video of a female demonstrator savagely beaten by the Egyptian military; her abaya (cloak) was opened, with her bare midriff and her blue bra appearing as an Egyptian officer prepared to stomp on her with his boot.

I am certain that when the Tahrir Square demonstrations began earlier this year, none of the organizers thought it would have come to this.

Israel has no assurances that there will not be a radical, Sunni Islamic state along on its border or that Egypt will — despite public pronouncements due to diplomatic and economic factors — uphold the fragile 1979 Camp David peace treaty with Israel. In fact, both of the major Egyptian parties have stated that the treaty has to be reexamined.

Since the Camp David Accords was signed, America has elevated the Egyptian military from a C-, Soviet-equipped force to an A+, American-equipped one. EMET has been alone on Capitol Hill in arguing, ever since the demonstrations began in Tahrir Square last winter, that America should withhold further military aid until the results of the elections are known. The results show that, as predicted, Sharia has swept through the region. EMET calls for an immediate cessation of all military funding and weapon shipments to Egypt.

Palestinian Authority-Hamas

Taking a cue from the success of its Islamist brothers in Egypt, Hamas decided this week to  enter into the upcoming Palestinian parliamentary  elections in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria, if you will), which are due to take place in May. Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar has expressed every confidence in winning the elections.

Beyond that, last Thursday, the Palestinian Liberation Organization — which many world bodies, including the United Nations, feels has the sole legitimacy for representing the Palestinian people — held a historic meeting in Ramallah, where an accord was reached to open up its umbrella group to “activate and reconstruct” it to include organizations that do not currently belong. This paves the way for Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to join the PLO.[1]

Just as the Salafists participated in the Egyptian elections not to share power, but to dominate, Hamas is now entering into a relationship with the PLO to dominate it.

I am certain we will soon hear pundits inside the Washington Beltway saying that now is the time for Israel to make dramatic concessions for peace, to buoy Fatah’s chances of winning in the upcoming elections.

Yes, you heard it right: Israel will be asked to sacrifice her own strategic depth, once again, in this tumultuous and rapidly growing Islamist region of the world, for the sake of internal Palestinian politics and to inject a transfusion into the moribund peace process.

Or, borrowing a page from Yasser Arafat’s and Abu Mazen’s playbook, it will not take long before we begin to hear the talking heads telling us that there is a “moderate faction” to talk to in Hamas.

Do not be fooled: Osama Hamdan, Hamas’s newly dubbed foreign minister, told the Al-Quds newspaper: “Anyone who thinks Hamas has changed its positions and now accepts the PLO’s defeating political position is living under an illusion. Hamas cannot make a mistake that proved to be a failed one. … By moving toward reconciliation with the PLO, we are reconstructing the organization and reconsidering its failed program.” So as not to be misunderstood, he added: “Hamas’s goal is first and foremost the liberation of our lands from the sea to the river and achieving the right of return.”[2]

Or, as Khalil Abu Leila, another Hamas official, stated, “Hamas will not join the PLO political program. Rather, a major task of the Hamas provisional leadership will be to bring the PLO back to its correct path and the goal for which it was established, mainly, the liberation of Palestine.”[3]

Iran

Against this rising tide of Sunni Islamist fundamentalism throughout the region is the Iranian quest for hegemony and for the reclamation of the triumph of Shiite Islamism.

One particularly horrifying way Iran has engaged in this quest is through its pursuit of nuclear weapons. None of us was surprised when the International Atomic Energy Agency reported last November that Iran now has the ability to create nuclear weapons, having mastered the “critical steps involved in the process.” The report further stated that a Soviet scientist tutored the Iranians about detonation reactions, and that North Korean and Pakistani nuclear scientists were also available to lend their knowledge and expertise.

This of course totally refutes the National Intelligence Estimate of 2007, which stated:

We judge with high confidence that in the fall of 2003, Tehran  halted its nuclear weapons program. …We judge with high confidence that  the halt, and Tehran’s announcement of its decision to suspend its declared uranium enrichment program and sign an Additional Protocol to its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Safeguars Agreement, was directed primarily in response to increasing the international scrutiny and pressure  resulting from exposure of Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear work.

First lesson: Do not trust any accord signed by a despot or a dictator. One barometer of whether or not a ruler means what he says is how he treats his minorities and his dissidents. It is all directly related to an underlying premise of one’s respect for the dignity of human life and the basic rights of man.

Speaking of dissidents: There was a moment of opportunity, when the brave, young Iranian dissidents were out on the streets, en masse, and the leader of the free world, President Obama, said nothing in their support for a full two weeks, while skulls were being crushed and people were disappearing from the streets. Most people in Iran are under 30. They were born after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, despise the theocracy and are feeling suffocated by its choking stranglehold.

The Iranian prisons are bursting with such protestors.  Taking a page from the Soviet Jewry movement, in which names like Natan Sharansky became household words in the West, we should all know the names of people like 26-year-old Hossein Ronaghi Malkhi, a blogger and human rights activist, who was arrested for fomenting the demonstrations in June 2009. He was sent to the notorious Evin Prison, where he has beaten and tortured and needs a kidney operation.

The Iranian nuclear program has led to a more rigorous pursuit of nuclear weaponry within such Sunni Arab states as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. They, of course, have the petro dollars to buy scientists, technology and nuclear material.

All of this adds to the destabilization of an already volatile and unpredictable region, where human rights abuses are on the rise along with Sunni and Shiite Islamism.

Lessons for 2012

This has been a traumatic year for the entire region. It is a time of chaos and instability, in which we should have learned:

1) The United States has only one stable, reliable ally in the Middle East — the State of Israel, which .should be strengthened against the rising tide of radical Islamism. It is also time we learned that, whether we like it or not, radical Islamists perceive of America as the Great Satan.  As British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once warned, our projection of our values onto the world simply does not work. We must understand the sociological and tribal structure of the Middle East before we enter into any further agreements with governments of the region.

2) Appeasement and groveling to despots and dictators have not enhanced America’s standing in the region, but has weakened it immensely.  America’s outstretched hand for dialogue has not  prevented Iran from reaching its goal of nuclear capability and regional dominance one iota.

3) The United States appears like a sleeping giant that unconditionally dishes out our precious and rapidly dwindling resources — foreign aid — to unfriendly, unreliable parties in the region without any leverage, making us appear even more  embarrassingly pathetic there. This applies to our aid to Pakistan and certainly has been the case with the Palestinians. Ever since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, we ostensibly conditioned our aid to the Palestinians on very basic principles, all of which they have continuously ignored. Rather than doing away with U.S. aid to the Palestinians, we have done away with enforcing the funds’ conditionality.

4) This is the time to finally stop our military aid and weapons shipments to Egypt, or we will be forced to confront these American-made armaments’ possibly use in attacking our one ally in the region, the State of Israel, or American soldiers and sailors on the Sixth Fleet.

5) Now, in the midst of all this regional chaos, is precisely not the time to pressure Israel to take more risks for peace. The growing radical Islamism is a time for stability, at least in one tiny sliver of the region, the State of Israel.

6) We should be helping and propping up the voices of the dissidents within Iran, and those within the Iranian constellation of power, such as the brave, besieged Syrian dissidents. Not to do so will strengthen the menacing hand of Iran and is nothing short of immoral.

[2] Ibid

[3] Ibid.

This past Friday, at a policy conference in Washington, Puneet Talwar, Senior Director for Iran, Iraq and the Gulf States at the White House National Security Council addressed the group. In his “on the record” remarks, Mr. Talwar calmly stated, “We have a three legged stool in our policy toward Iran: The first leg of the stool is engagement. The second is sanctions. And the third is our military option. We are keeping all of the options on the table.”

This is eerily familiar. It is precisely the same statement we had heard from then candidate Obama when he came to address the AIPAC policy conference while running for office in 2008.

Since then, almost four years have elapsed, and the centrifuges have been assiduously spinning  uranium to the highly enriched grade necessary for a nuclear bomb. It is said they now have enough enriched uranium for at least one nuclear bomb, and that they are hard at work at a delivery mechanism. As these words are written the Iranians are launching yet another atomic facility, deeply underground, beneath the mountains near the holy city of Qom.

One of the most chilling elements of the policy debate regarding the Iranian nuclear program is the bizarre time stasis in which those who oppose action against Iran exist. Warnings of an approaching nuclear deadline date back at least as far as 2004, when European experts warned Iran could be between five and six years away from a bomb. Even the widely panned and inaccurate 2007 National Intelligence Estimate which incorrectly claimed that Iran had halted production in 2003, set the earliest possible date for Iran to possess enough highly enriched Uranium for nuclear weapons at some time between 2009 and 2010. More recent assessments, such as that of Israeli military intelligence, put Iran is six months to one year away from producing a bomb. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told CNN Iran was less than a year away from being “unstoppable” in its nuclear effort. Weapons inspector David Albright put the Iranians within six months of possessing enough nuclear material if they conduct a crash program, while a more hawkish estimate placed it as low as 62 days.

Yet none of this fazed the Obama Administration, which spent a substantial amount of energy in arm-twisting Congressmen in an effort to push back implementation dates for a new round of Iranian Central Bank sanctions proposed by Senators Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ) from two months (already quite a long time) to half a year.  The Obama Administration had also been seeking wider latitude and discretion in applying the proposed sanctions.

According to one report, by Reuters, the Administration has received at least some of those demands, although Sen. Mark Kirk has said the Congressional negotiators resisted “most” of the administration’s attempts to weaken sanctions. A press release from the Armed Services Committee indicates that the implementation timeline survived Administration pressure, a positive sign.

But in what bizarre dimension of time and space does this administration reside where sanctions, implemented six months from now can halt a nuclear program that could potentially be completed, or at least “unstoppable” by the time they take effect?  And yet the officials from the same administration expect to have their cake and eat it too by the claim that “all options” including the military option are on the table, as did Mr. Talwar, or as referenced by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta in his speech to the Saban Center.

One must doubt very seriously that anyone in the administration believes that boilerplate response, and for certain the Iranians do not considered it a credible threat. Are the Iranians expected to believe, that an administration which refuses to recover its own downed aircraft for fear of the reaction, will take a full scale military option against it? The same “military option” that has been “on the table” for the past decade, as Iran continued to pursue its nuclear ambitions?

The reality is that while American policy, focused on its table full of options, has remained static for the past ten years, Iran has quietly, persistently marched forward. All policy options, whether they are sanctions, or military force, or even diplomacy, are perishable goods. The longer you wait, the less valuable they become.

This is not to say that the sort of covert attacks against Iranian nuclear installations which appear to be underway , are not helpful, and that they have not bought us time. They are and they have.  But however much time such actions buy, it is not all the time in the world. We must stop treating the Iranian nuclear bomb as though it is some kind of desert mirage, which remains just out of reach, regardless of how much time is spent moving towards it.

The Kirk-Menendez Amendment was a noble and bipartisan move, of the kind all too rare in Washington. It is disturbing the amount of pressure the administration was willing to bring to bear against elected legislators, in the name of NOT bringing pressure against Iranian thugs. It stands also as evidence that American legislators can still come together and produce innovative and useful policy legislation, but only if they are willing to stand up to an administration which expends momentous energy to insure that nothing effective gets done.

There is a fourth option which neither President Obama or Mr. Talwar has discussed, or used, at all, but it is worth discussing briefly.

In June of 2009, after the elections, there were thousands of brave dissidents on the streets. Most people in Iran are under age 30. They despise the mullahcracy in which they have been raised. These people were crying out for a word of support from the leader of the free world, and nothing was said in their behalf for nearly two weeks, while skulls were being crushed and people have summarily disappeared from the streets.

During the era of the Soviet dissidents, we worked with one the “refuseniks”, and everyone knew some of their names.  But few known the names of those like Sa’id Malikpur, a 35 year old web designer from Canada who went to visit his sick father in Iran in 2008, and was arrested by the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Prior to his incarceration, he had been developing a web site, which the regime says he used for posting pornographic images, but which Mr. Malikpur claims no knowledge of. He has been held in the notorious Evin prison, where he has been held in solitary confinement for over a year, and human rights groups say he has been routinely tortured. Mr. Malikpur has been sentenced to death.

It is absolutely unconscionable that we are not empowering the brave dissidents of Iran, and widely distributing these dramatic stories of human rights abuse. The window of opportunity was wide open in June of 2009. We must try, using the new technologies of the internet; Facebook and Twitter to see if we can pry open the window once again, and help these brave people overthrow this despicable regime.

And in terms of the other three options:  Despite the complacent assurances of some people in Washington, we are quickly running out of time.

Firstly, the commander killed was Major Gen. Hasan Moghaddam, a senior IRGC commander with responsibility for the “Self-Sufficiency” unit of the Iranian’s missile forces, in particular surface-to-surface missiles. Moghaddam is said to have been a favorite of Ayatollah Khamenei, and it strains credibility that he was engaged in such a routine activity as personally supervising the transfer of munitions when the “accident” occurred. Secondly, according to an Israeli news report, Moghaddam had close ties to assassinated Hamas arms provider Mahmoud Al–Mabhouh, which suggests that, if Moghaddam was killed by the Mossad, they may be working their way up al-Mabhouh’s list of associates, possibly using intelligence gained from the terrorist’s interrogation before he was killed.

Western intelligence sources are confident that the explosion was indeed a successful Mossad operation.  The assassination of Moghaddam is just the latest in a series of shadowy attacks against Iran, specifically related to the missile program. Explosions have also killed Iranian missile technicians, an IRGC base where Shabab missiles are stored, and convoys transporting missiles, probably intended for Hezbollah.  Numerous nuclear scientists have been assassinated in the past two years, including Russian nuclear scientists killed in a plane crash in June.

Coincidentally, the Iranians also admitted Sunday that they had suffered from another computer virus attack, called “Duqu”, which is closely related to the previous Stuxnet virus. The Iranians claim to have “neutralized” Duqu before any substantial damage was done, but considering that Duqu is primarily designed as an information-gathering device, rather than a weapon of sabotage, it seems likely that whoever injected the code into the Iranian computer systems probably already got what they came for. “Duqu” would represent the third such virus attack against Iranian systems, including Stuxnet, and another virus program which the Iranians called “Stars”.

Lest one think that Iran is some hapless victim, the Islamic Republic is active in the shadows as well. Former CIA spy Reza Kahili’s Iranian sources tell him that the operation which included the assassination plot against a Saudi Ambassador on U.S. soil, and Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington and Buenos Aires, were hatched at the direction of Iran’s supreme leader. Bahraini intelligence claims they successfully intercepted a plot to bomb Saudi targets in the small Gulf country, and destroy the causeway which connects Bahrain to Saudi Arabia. On November 3^rd, an Afghan suicide bomb team targeted a construction company in Herat, Afghanistan. The likely commander of that operation, Samihullah, has close ties to Iran’s Al-Qods force.  Iranian support for the Taliban in Afghanistan has been publicly known for some time, and is a great concern for U.S. forces. Closer to home, Iran is heavily active in Latin America, expanding Al Qods and Hezbollah forces, ties with anti-American regimes, and even drug cartels. The Iranians have also been active in promoting and cheerleading the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, in the exact same manner they did the Arab Spring protests. Iran routinely host U.S. based Muslim Brotherhood front groups such as CAIR, MPAC and MSA, on their Press TV propaganda outlet.

When we consider the on-going covert conflict with Iran, it becomes readily apparent that the two sides have vastly different objectives. The West (including Israel and the United States, and other western allies who may be assisting in intelligence activities) are almost wholly focused on the nuclear weapons issue. Targets are those actively involved in the Iranian nuclear weapons project, or increasingly, involved in the delivery systems for such weapons, meaning surface to surface missiles.  The operations against Iran are largely technocratic. The elimination of particular scientists or arms suppliers, target specific reactors and centrifuges.  Success or failure can best be measured by Iran’s progress towards nuclear weaponization.

Are we succeeding? The recently released IAEA report contained intelligence information from ten countries, all leading to the conclusion that Iran has constructed and “cold tested” all the components of a nuclear warhead, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested that the up to date intelligence places Iran further ahead than would be suggested by the already alarming U.N report. And despite the skill and ingenuity displayed by Western Intelligence in attempting to disrupt Iranian nuclear efforts, such efforts are likely doomed to failure. As U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen stated in February of last year, even an overt military strike would not stop the Iranian nuclear program for good.

By contrast, the Iranian objectives appear to be primarily about spreading influence and ideology, both regional, vis-à-vis its chief competitor Saudi Arabia, but also globally, seeking to hamper U.S. interests. The Iranians are clearly willing to engage in any theater, including the U.S. capital itself. The Iranians are a revolutionary opponent, focused on the spread of their Islamic revolution. They firmly believe that any action which upsets the status quo, and which creates chaos or dissension is to their advantage. As Iranian President Ahmadinejad said, “… [Iran] builds something you can’t respond to: Ethics, decency, monotheism and justice.” In other words, Ahmadinejad views the Iranian ideology as its most powerful weapon.

Viewed in these terms, can the Iranians then said to be achieving their objectives? One would be hard pressed to argue otherwise. The new Islamist Prime Minister of Tunisia has called for a new Caliphate and hosts Hamas. The head of Tunisia’s new ruling Islamist party, Rachid Ghannouchi has publicly declared that he “quite likes” Hamas’ rocket attacks against Israel. Even a leading Saudi thinker is calling the recent upheaval in the Middle East, “The Muslim Brotherhood Spring”. Prior to Mubark’s overthrow in Egypt, Egyptian intelligence warned the U.S. of Iran’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood in June of last year, according to a Wikileaked State Department cable. In the UAE, the Crown Prince warned of the risk of elections in any country with an organized Muslim Brotherhood presence.” Despite this the U.S. says it would be “satisfied,” with a Muslim Brotherhood victory, and trains Islamists in electioneering techniques.

Arguably then, Iran is achieving its broad objectives, even as particular operations, such as the Saudi Ambassador assassination fail and their hand is publicly revealed. By contrast, the efforts by the Western covert agencies have been operationally successful, and their fingerprints largely wiped cleaned. But despite numerous operational successes, the Iranians continue on undaunted, inching ever closer towards a nuclear weapons arsenal.

The West must adopt a far broader effort if it hopes to best Iran in this shadowy conflict. While operations delaying or hampering the Iranian nuclear project are positive, (as Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said of the Iranian explosion, “May there be more like it”) but these acts are merely to buy time, they do not represent an actual strategy against Iran’s global ambitions. Nuclear weapons play a role in these ambitions, but they are not a goal in and of themselves. The goal is worldwide Islamic revolution with Iran as its leader.

The West must set as its own goal, not merely the prevention of Iran’s nuclear weapons, but the overthrow of the regime, and the defeat of Islamism as an ideological force. To do that will require a willingness to combat Iran in every sphere of endeavor, and on every continent where they are operational. The U.S. must immediately cease cooperating with Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist parties, and equip liberals and democrats with the tools and training necessary to be successful against their Islamist opposition. This idea that the U.S. must support all parties equally in the interest of a free and fair election is deeply misguided.  Refusing to intervene in our own interest means only that Iran’s preferred parties and Islamist fellow-travelers are allowed to dominate. We should instead act, as we did when CIA operations affected the outcome of the Italian election of 1948, keeping the Communists from power in Italy. Even with the opportunity of the Iranian protests in 2009 squandered by an Obama Administration at pains to keep open negotiations with Iran, we can still work within Iran with opposition parties and dissidents to undermine and eventually defeat the regime.

Until such a strategy is devised and executed, we will find that the west can succeed at all of its covert operations, and yet still lose the shadow war.

Over the past year, events in the Middle East, including most notably the Arab Spring, have dramatically altered the security landscape facing the nation of Israel, as well as the national security interests of the United States in the region.  While each of these events have been well cataloged separately and in greater detail elsewhere, it is useful to consider all of these disparate threats together, when thinking about the security and stability of the Middle East. The five categories we have highlighted in this document, “Strategic Threats to Israel and Mideast Stability” represent both relatively new threats such as those posed by Turkey’s Islamization and increasing anti-Israel stance, as well as traditional opposition which is evolving and enhancing its capability including Hezbollah’s successful dominance of the Lebanese government. As we continue to examine the strategic threats to Israel and the greater stability of the Middle East, as EMET does weekly with its articles and analysis, we must also keep in mind that no strategic threat exists in isolation, but instead each acts to multiply the others, leading to an increasingly degenerating security situation for the Jewish state, as well as its ally the United States, and weakening of the overall stability of the region.

Iran – Iran remains the most dangerous actor in the Middle East, more dangerous than Al Qaeda, according to a U.S. official.

• Support for Terror- Iran continues to be recognized as the foremost state sponsor of international terrorism in the world, supporting Hezbollah and Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban. Additionally Iran’s elite terrorist unit the Al-Quds force has expanded its capabilities and become increasingly aggressive, including plans to target the Israeli embassy in Washington D.C, and the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in addition to Saudi targets.

• Arming Terrorists- Iran continues to use air, land, and sea transport in an effort to arm Palestinian terrorists for attacks against Israel. Israel has repeatedly interdicted arms shipments from Iran including the MV Francop, and Victoria. Additionally Iran continues to smuggle arms overland via the Sudan. Since 2008, Iran has successfully upgraded the Palestinian’s missile capability from homemade Qassem to 122mm Iranian and Chinese manufactured Grad Rockets with a 40km range.

• Nuclear Weapons- Iran has continued to make progress with its nuclear weapons program, according to most western intelligence agencies as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which has issued a new report on the Iranian advancements which claims Iran is “on the threshold” of nuclear capability. The IAEA report also claims that Iran has tested all the component parts for a nuclear warhead, and an analysis of the Iranian warhead device in six different categories suggests it is unlikely or impossible for it to be designed for anything but a nuclear weapon.  Former CIA Spy Reza Kahili, who was a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, claims that Iran already possess  a small number of nuclear weapons acquired on the black market.  Iran has threatened to invade Israel and “battle Zionists in the streets of Tel Aviv” if its nuclear program is attacked.

• Syrian Crackdown- Iran is said to be deeply involved with assisting Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s crackdown of his people, according to European , American, and Israeli sources. Iran has publicly remained supportive of their Syrian ally, despite earlier criticism. Iran has issued threats against Western intervention in Syria.

Hezbollah- Hezbollah continues to represent a substantial strategic threat to Israel’s national security both along Israel’s northern border, and world-wide:

• Missile threat- According to Hezbollah’s internal discussions and public threats, they are prepared to launch as many as ten thousand missiles into Israel against military and strategic targets such as airfields, as well as against civilian targets, including major population centers such as Tel Aviv.

• The Northern Border- Hezbollah has, according to Brig. Gen (ret.) Shimon Shapira, developed with Iranian assistance, an operational plan for the invasion of the Galilee, to commence following its planned missile barrage at the outset of conflict. The plan involves a joint invasion by five Hezbollah brigades, targeting Nahariya, Shlomi, and Carmiel. While Hezbollah’s ability to actually carry out such an operation may be questionable, it represents a very aggressive posture and the increasing confidence of the terror group.

• Dominance of Lebanon- Through a series of political, and military crises engineered by Hezbollah, the terror group and its allies now heavily dominate the Lebanese government, including the position of Prime Minister. With the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) sniper attack against Israeli troops which occurred in August of last year, and considering bellicose statements made by Lebanese officials there is every reason to suspect that if Israel were required to take military action against Hezbollah, they could expect the LAF to side with Hezbollah against Israel. This reality seems to have been recognized by the Obama Administration which, while it had been reluctant to do so, has quietly ended aid to Lebanon because of the ascension of a Hezbollah-controlled Cabinet.

• World-wide terrorism- Hezbollah remains a major international terrorist organization with operations that stretch far beyond Lebanon, to West Africa, South America, and even Mexico. Hezbollah’s expansion is piggybacked on Iran’s expanded alliances in the Western hemisphere. Hezbollah continues to seek to conduct major terror attacks against Israeli interests with a stated desire to retaliate for the assassination of Hezbollah archterrorist Imad Mughniyeh, which the organization blames on Israel, although it is unclear who actually conducted the operation.

Syria- Syria is facing grave protests from a wide-spread domestic opposition, which may make Assad feel cornered and even more dangerous.

• Assad’s Instability- The Assad regime in Syria has been wracked by several domestic protests which began during the so-called “Arab Spring.” Assad has utilized a mixture of promises of reform along with ruthless security crackdowns to try and maintain control, but protests have now gone on since mid-March, despite the more than three-thousand  who have been killed by Syrian security forces.  This instability has resulted in Assad seeking to divert attention towards Israel. This was most notable during the June, 2011 attempt by Palestinians, sponsored by Syria, to violently storm the Israeli border, which resulted in 23 protestors killed. If Western pressure on Syria continues, Assad may again seek to use similar attacks on Israel as a lever to release tension and to attempt to distract from Syria’s brutal crackdown and abuses.

• Retaliation against Israel- Deeply concerned about the possibility of NATO intervention in Syria comparable to its intervention in Libya, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad has threatened to bombard Israel with its strategic rocket forces, among the largest in the Middle East, if NATO should attack Syria.

• Support for Hamas and Hezbollah- Syria remains a major supporter of Hezbollah, as well as all major Palestinian terrorist groups, including especially Hamas. This has continued despite strain between Hamas and Syria over Syria’s crackdown on the opposition, which includes the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is Hamas’ parent organization.
• WMD program- Syria is known to have been pursuing nuclear weapons at two sites, one the Al-Kibar Reactor, was targeted by Israeli in an airstrike in September of 2007. The Al-Kibar reactor is reported to have been a direct copy of a North Korean design.  The second site, which now appears inactive, is believed to have been based on a Pakistani design from nuclear proliferator A.Q Khan.  Additionally Syria is believed by some to have the most advanced chemical and biological weapons program in the Arab world.

Gaza- Palestinian terrorists in Gaza continue to represent a threat to Israel, particularly through their ability to launch missiles and other artillery weapons into the Israeli heartland.

• Hamas and the Missile Threat- According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hamas has doubled its rocket arsenal, and expanded its anti-tank capability. Hamas now possess thousands of rockets, including Iranian-made Fajr-5 rockets with a 75km range which could strike Tel Aviv. Additionally, Hamas’ weapons manufacturing and weapon smuggling capabilities are believed to be much improved compared to their abilities prior to Operation Cast Lead in 2009. Politically vis-à-vis other Palestinian factions, the release of  Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit has strengthened Hamas, according to both Hamas, and some Israeli assessments.

• Salafist/Al Qaeda Activity- Salafist-Jihadist groups, some with links to Al Qaeda have continued to expand in Gaza. These groups have an occasionally cooperative and occasionally competitive relationship with the ruling Hamas. Attacks have included the terrorist raid near Eilat which killed eight in August of this year, as well as rocket attacks.

• Blockade-Running- The Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip is a necessary and legal tactic in its conflict with Hamas, but has been repeatedly challenged by a variety of radical-left and Islamist organizations, most notably the Turkish IHH, an organization with ties to terrorism, and which initiated violence against IDF commandos during the Mavi Marmara incident. Efforts to breach the land crossing at Rafah, are also common occurrences, orchestrated by the Muslim Brotherhood. Another organization prominent in efforts to break the blockade via land is Viva Palestinia, headed by British Politician George Galloway, who has appeared on video providing money and vehicles to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, and which represents well the alliance of Islamist and radical leftist organizations aligned to undermine the legal blockade.

Egypt and North Africa- Following the so-called Arab Spring, the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist groups are on the rise throughout the region.

• Terrorism in the Sinai- Following the collapse of the Mubarak government, reports surfaced of increased terrorist activity in the Sinai Penisula, including up to 400 Al Qaeda-linked terrorists. Terrorists have repeatedly targeted the Egypt-Israeli gas line, and the threat from terrorist incursion has forced the IDF to reinforce the southern border, following the attack by Al Qaeda-linked militants from Gaza who infiltrated into Israel via the Sinai border.

• Opening of border with Gaza- The interim Egyptian government agreed in April of this year to open the Rafah border crossing into Gaza, despite this some pro-Palestinian organizations continue to express discontent with the limited border crossing restrictions which Egypt has maintained.

• Weapons Smuggling- Following the fall of the Egyptian and Libyan governments, there has been a substantial increase in the flow of arms through Egypt. Many of those weapons are headed to Gaza, including Grad Rockets, advanced anti-tank weapons, and Russian SA-7 anti-aircraft missiles.

• Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood- The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is widely believed to be the greatest beneficiary of the fall of Egyptian President Mubarak, as upcoming Parliamentary elections loom. Despite having attempted to reassure Egyptian liberals and the West with claims that it would not run for a majority of the seats, nor run a presidential candidate, the MB has broken both promises. They are expected to win at least a plurality of seats and therefore dominate the government, as well as to control the drawing up of the new constitution. The MB has made an electoral alliance with other Egyptian Islamist groups, including the State-department-listed Foreign Terrorist Organization Gamaa Al-Islamiya. Despite this the MB continues to receive State Department funded election training, and a U.S. official responsible for “Middle East Transitions” has said the U.S. would be “satisfied” with a Muslim Brotherhood election win. Muslim Brotherhood leaders have expressed thanks to Iran’s Supreme Leader, demanded the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador, stated a desire for preparations for war against Israel, and said they intend to impose Islamic law on Egypt in the event of electoral victory.

• Annulment of Peace with Israel- In addition to the Muslim Brotherhood’s call for war preparations against Israel, other Egyptian politicians have competed to appear the most anti-Israeli. Egyptian Presidential candidate Amr Moussa, Liberal opposition figure Ayman Nour, and Foreign Minister Nabil Al-Arabi have all spoken out against the Camp David Peace Accord. Long-time Western favorite and former IAEA chief Mohammad ElBaradei declared that Egypt should go to war against Israel if Gaza were attacked. More than 50% of the Egyptian public said they want an end to the peace treaty in an poll taken in April of this year.

Changes to Turkey- Once a close ally of Israel in the region, the formerly secular state is increasingly competing for leadership of the Muslim world by showing its anti-Israel credentials.

• Islamization of Turkey- The Islamist Turkish AKP party has established control of the Turkish Intelligence agency (MIT), appointing a close friend of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan to the position of intelligence chief. The AKP has also successfully orchestrated what some have called a frame up against secular members of the military. The entire Turkish military brass has since resigned in protest. There are allegations that Turkey may have taken part in arming Hezbollah. According to State department documents released by Wikileaks, the Islamist Gulen movement is close to the ruling AKP and may dominate the Turkish police force.
• Conflict for Islamic supremacy in Middle East- Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has made no secret of his conflict with Israel. The IHH, the Islamist group which initiated the violent confrontation on the Mavi Marmara, has close ties to Erdogan’s ruling AKP.  Turkey has also taken a very visible role in promoting the Arab Spring. Turkey’s support for Syrian protestors has brought the two countries closer to military conflict.

• Challenging Israel- As Turkey competes with Iran (the other non-Arab Muslim country in the region) for dominance, one of the fields of competition is in anti-Israel activity. Turkey has turned to the Israel-Arab conflict as a means to boost its credibility among its Arab neighbors. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has used the Flotilla incident to boost Turkey’s status in the Muslim world by showing a willingness to confront Israel, by demanding U.N Action, and Israeli apologies. Israel’s refusal to apologize provided an excuse for Turkey to cut military ties with Israel. Additionally, renewed Israeli ties with Greece, and Cyprus, two nations with their own strategic concerns about Turkey, and the discovery of natural gas in the Eastern Mediterranean have increased the possibility of Turkish-Israeli conflict.

Imagine our response if today a terrorist group — an offspring of Al Qaeda — is being shielded by a Mexican government and operating just across our border. They have agitated the Mexican people and riots have taken place denouncing America and its imperialist-colonial occupation of Texas, California and even Arizona and New Mexico — all territory taken by force of arms (even though the Mexican governments started the wars).   And that is not to mention the demonstrations seeking the return of the lands that Americans took from the Indians or Native Americans also by warfare and domination.  These groups have not only expelled all the Americans who lived in Mexico but seek to rid the entire North American continent of these “Europeans” who have been transported to their continent and taken their lands by conquest.

How would President Barack Obama respond if last Thursday, members of this Mexican Al Qaeda, dressed in Mexican army uniforms, and with Mexican government assent, crossed the border into the United States and killed eight American citizens traveling on tourist busses while driving innocently from their homes in Los Angeles to Sea World in San Diego. And when the President called out the U.S. Army to capture or kill the attackers the Mexicans launch more than 100 missiles from Tijuana to rain down on San Diego and Los Angeles.

You don’t have to imagine it.  This is precisely what Israel has been enduring for the past several days. This past Thursday saw a series of well coordinated cross-border terrorist attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians. It began when a bus transporting 40 people from Beer Sheva to Eilat, most for a quiet family vacation, was attacked en route to that popular resort.  The bus was attacked by a group of terrorists known as “The Popular Resistance Committee,” which is an umbrella group of terrorists, drawn from the Palestinian Authority’s security apparatus. It is believed that the Popular Resistance Committee gets its funding from Iran.

The  terrorists, dressed in Egyptian army uniforms, came across the Israeli border from Egypt and sprayed the oncoming bus with a barrage of automatic weapon fire. It was only because the clear-thinking bus driver immediately accelerated through the gunfire that no one was killed — although several passengers were critically wounded. A total of fourteen people  were evacuated to nearby hospitals.  Simultaneously, another bus and two civilian vehicles were attacked. Israeli Defense Forces rushed to the scene only to have an explosive device, similar to those used against American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, detonate in their faces. By the end of the day, the Israeli toll was eight Israelis killed and at least thirty-one wounded.

The terrorists originated in Gaza but slipped across the border into Israel through the Sinai, a vast  peninsula that Israel had returned to Egypt as part of the 1979 Camp David Accords. The peace that Egypt maintained there with Israel has been an ice-cold peace,  but never-the-less the Egyptian army patrolled the Sinai and assured that it would remain peaceful. However, since the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, the new military government had left it unpatrolled and open to terrorists and thieves.

Israel, like any other nation, has a sovereign responsibility to protect its citizens — even according to Article 41 of the United Nations Charter. No nation can allow cross-border attacks on its citizens — not the United States in 1916 — and not Israel in 2011.

When the IDF began hunting down the terrorists who had killed the Israeli civilians they only targeted terrorist headquarters and places where the terrorists trained or were known to be hiding. As the terrorists fled toward Gaza, the Hamas government of Gaza unleashed a barrage of over one-hundred missile on Southern Israel, striking the major cities of Beer Sheva, Ashkelon and Ashdod. Thousands had to flee to the bomb shelters.  Almost every hour on the hour the silence was broken by the alarm siren of “Seva Adom” (Code Red: which translated into “incoming missile).

Fed by more than 50 years of hatred for Israel and the Jews, the Egyptians of Cairo erupted in a violent demonstration against Israel, even scaling twenty stories of the Cairo Tower to pull off and destroy an Israeli flag as hundreds cheered below.

EMET has been saying for the past  six months that the political and strategic landscape in Egypt has been changed by the revolution in Tahrir Square — and not for the better! Although the revolution was ushered in by the small, young  elite and educated “Facebook” class, the Egyptian political infrastructure is manipulated by the radical Islamists who have control of the mosques.

The Egyptian army, while it is a professional army, is fighting to maintain its control over the government and has bent to the will of the people in the street who have been taught to hate Israel.  The argument that this army will resist the operations of the terrorists and support Western interests is an exercise in overheated imaginings.

Look what has already happened as a result of American brokered peace treaties: the Sinai which was returned to Egypt in exchange for peace is now being used as a launching pad for terrorists to attack Israel — and Gaza, which the Israeli’s evacuated and gave to the Palestinians in return for a promise of  peace has become the main launching pad for terror against Israel and for attacks by thousands of missiles — in addition to being the elected home of a government pledged to the destruction of the Jewish state.

Unless and until the Egyptians demonstrate that they are fully capable of living in peace and enforcing the peace, America should put an immediate hold on any transfer of more weapons to Egypt. It is very possible that we may see these very weapons tuned against Israel or even against our own military in the 6th fleet offshore.

And this does not take a great leap of imagination.

Saudi Arabia responded by pulling its ambassador from Damascus. Following Saudi Arabia’s lead,  Riyadh’s Gulf Cooperation Council allies, Kuwait and Bahrain, did the same. The Arab League also condemned the Syrian massacres. Unconfirmed reports from Israeli news have indicated that Turkey has privately approached Syrian President Bashar Assad and demanded he step down.

The United States “welcomed” the Saudi move to pull their ambassador while at the same time the U.S. has kept Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford in the country. Officially, Ford’s goal is to liaise with opposition leadership, but there is little for him to do because Damascus has restricted his access and movement.

Fox News reported Tuesday that the Obama Administration is working on plans to demand Assad step down but it remains unclear when that plan will turn into action. In the meantime, other plans are being considered for United Nations action and the possibility of unilateral sanctions against Assad. Although if it is to be sanctions, it is questionable what value they will have in persuading Assad. Sanctions can be useful in compelling an autocrat to action, but Assad is fully committed to the course of his actions now. If anything, sanctions will probably speed up his repression because he must complete his bloody work before sanctions impair his security forces’ ability to keep him in power.

In all these cases, America finds itself once again “leading from behind.”  One must question why the United States must wait until such human rights stalwarts as Saudi Arabia say “enough-is-enough” before we become willing to act.

Syria is an ally of Iran, who is supplying weapons that kill American servicemen and women in Iraq and Afghanistan. Syria funds terror, supporting Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Syria served as a transit point for Al Qaeda members to move into Iran. And yet, the United States, as it did in Libya, seems to wait for an Arab League decision before deciding how to act.

What is the logic behind American Mideast policy?

Consider for a moment, each of the major players in the region and their actions in response to the “Arab Spring.” For most of these nations, there is already an outline of a grand strategy as they move forward.

Iran: Iran supported the insurrections in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Bahrain. It opposed the insurrections in Iran (obviously) and also in Syria, where IRGC and Hezbollah assets are said to be participating in the violence.  Iran is also helping to insure the loyalty of Assad’s forces by targeting Syrian military officers who have defected to the opposition. In doing so, it supported an increase in disorder among its Sunni or secular Arab opponents in the region.  Iran is constantly seeking ways to bring Islamist parties to power and forward its Khomenist revolution. It opposed what it might consider “counter-revolution” against itself and its allies, with the brutality for which it is known. In general, it seeks to foment chaos, subverting its opposition and expand its influence, while maintaining an iron grip at home.

Saudi Arabia: Saudi Arabia opposed the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. It sent military force to back its ally Bahrain and strengthened cooperation among the Sunni Arabs by expanding and bolstering the Gulf Cooperation Council as a regional alliance vis-à-vis Iran. It called Qaddafi illegitimate (unsurprisingly considering Qaddafi’s attempts to assassinate the Saudi King). Saudi Arabia and its GCC allies have now stepped in to condemn Syria for its violence against the Sunni Arab majority. Clearly Saudi Arabia’s actions are based on its own need to insure stability against its Shiite minority at home and to draw a red-line against the advance of Iranian revolutionary activities abroad. It has used the specter of Iranian intervention to formulate an alliance of Sunni states with itself as the head.

Turkey: Turkey called for Mubarak and Qaddafi to be ousted, called the Tunisian revolt “a model for others,” urged restraint on both sides in Bahrain and has been among the most active in calls for Syria to cease its violence. This comes despite the fact that Turkey and Syrian relations have improved greatly since the Islamist AKP took power in Turkey and Turkey has been considered by some to be have been drifting into the Iranian-Syrian axis for some time. However Turkey has also been working to increase its leadership role in the Islamic world by organizing and participating in resistance activities against Israel (such as the now infamous Mavi Marmara incident). In addition to attempting to stave off a humanitarian catastrophe on its border, Turkey appears to be using the “Arab Spring” as an opportunity to take the mantle as a third pole of authority in the Islamic world, opposite both Tehran and Riyadh. Some have referred to this as Turkish President Erdogan’s “Neo-Ottoman” aspirations.

The United States: The United States backed the ouster of Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and long time American ally Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. It called for the Bahraini regime, which hosts the American 5^th fleet, to endorse reforms, and opposed Saudi intervention.  After rebel violence forced Yemeni President Saleh to flee to Saudi Arabia, the U.S. has called for him not to return to power. The U.S. also called for the removal of Qaddafi and joined a campaign of airstrikes to hamper the Qaddafi military’s ability to fight the rebels seeking to oust him, but only after receiving cover from the Arab League and the United Nations and at the insistence of western allies such as France and the United Kingdom. Regarding Syria, as mentioned, the United States has slowly increased criticism, only after having been embarrassed by statements calling President Assad a reformer, even after his brutal crackdown against protestors began.

In every case but one, the overarching strategic concept of the parties can be surmised fairly easily. But what is the strategic concept driving U.S. action in the region? By what standards did the U.S. decided to call for the ouster of Mubarak, Ben Ali, Saleh, and demanded reforms in Bahrain, but remains repeatedly behind the curve in dealing with Syria? A campaign built entirely on democracy promotion, or human rights concerns, would have seen Syria as much if not more of a target then Egypt or Libya. A pragmatic, perhaps cynical strategy of merely supporting allies and opposing enemies, would have precluded seeking Mubarak’s exit, and may have backed intervention to insure Bahrain remained out of Shiite hands and risk of Iranian interference, which is after all, the supposed reason behind massive U.S.-Saudi arm sales.

The Obama Administration handling of these events gives the distinct impression that they are “winging it.” Responses to each crisis has been slow to evolve, and based on seemingly random series of factors. In one case, Libya, humanitarian concerns seem to have triumphed. In another, Egypt, democracy promotion has been the order of the day — regardless of the costs: such as the rise of the illiberal Muslim Brotherhood, which the Obama Administration has seen fit to embrace as “mostly secular” despite the facts.  In the Syrian situation, the U.S. has maintained its desire to pursue engagement. Even the flawed concept of seeing institutions of regional cooperation, like the Arab League, take the lead on security issues has been hit or miss, endorsed in Libya, but ignored in Egypt.

In a time of continuous crises, the strategy of “muddling through” is bad foreign policy. With an articulated strategy, a country may find allies to help — but first you have to have a strategy.  Flailing from one crisis to another and responding in an erratic manner to each alienates any possible support. Whereas American leadership may have brewed discontent from states and organizations forced to swallow their ambitions in the face of American power, American incoherence creates a deeply anarchic environment where enemies are testing to see what they can get away with and allies scramble to cut deals outside of the U.S sphere of influence.  How can America “muddle through” while civilians revolt against tyrants in the streets, unsure if their sacrifice will earn American action — or American indifference.

“Age and health aside, the likelihood of Khomeini taking and holding power for any prolonged period of time are (sic) just about nil. For one thing, the army, the most important organized force in the country could not unite behind him and his concept of instituting a sever religious state opposed to modernization and close ties to the United States.”

James Weighart, Foreign Affairs Columnist,  January 18, 1979

On Saturday, the front page of the New York Times displayed  a picture above the fold showing tens of thousands of Egyptian Islamists pouring into Tahrir Square in Cairo demanding that Egypt be ruled by strict Islamist law. The New York Times caption read, “Islamists show their strength in Egypt.”

This comes as no surprise to us in EMET.  Ever since the dramatic overthrow of the Mubarak government in Egypt last winter, EMET was alone in demanding that the U.S. government halt  the continuing supply of military aid to Egypt — or at least place it on “temporary hold” to  await the results of the upcoming elections in September — if there are elections.

Anyone who has been paying attention to the Middle East should realize that a radical Islamist wind has chilled the atmosphere and high jacked many of these revolutions that began in pursuit of rights and democracy. Although these revolutions might have been initiated by the young and well-educated of the Facebook generation, this group turns out to represent only a small part of their nation’s population.  They may well have initiated the process of political transformation, but it appears that they lack sufficient political influence and infrastructure to gain the support of the masses and be propelled to political power.

There is a rising tide of fundamentalist Islam throughout the Middle East and Egypt will prove no exception.

In a nation where the adult literacy rate (defined as a primary school education) reaches only 58 per cent of the population, the Muslim Brotherhood and other fundamentalist Salafi organizations have long ago planted deep roots within the mosques and Imams to spread their influence over the Egyptian masses.

On December 2, 2010, before the  dramatic events of this past  winter in Cairo began to unfold, the Pew Research Center released a poll of  Muslims in Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan,  Nigeria, Lebanon, Jordan and Indonesia.  In Egypt, a full 95 percent of the population believed that Islamic law and the Muslim religion should play a larger role in politics — the highest percentage of all Muslim countries surveyed.

Of the countries surveyed, Egypt also had the highest percentage of respondents who favored the court’s adhering to the strict punishments that are meted out according to Sharia law: 77 percent were in favor either whipping thieves or the amputation of their hands, 82 percent said that women (not men) who commit adultery should be stoned to death (only women can be tried for adultery), and 84 percent say that apostates —  those who convert to Christianity — should receive the death penalty.

Yet, except for EMET, the foreign policy establishment and the pundits in Washington (unfortunately including AIPAC) since the revolutions of the Arab Spring have been on Capitol Hill arguing for continuing the flow of advanced military aid to Egypt. Amazingly, earlier this summer, the U.S. government  even  sold two additional advanced Abrams tanks to the Egyptians.

Now what could be the use of these advanced tanks for Egypt? Are they planning to defend themselves against attacks from Libya or the Sudan?  Unfortunately, we know what they are planning to use these for.

In fact, all the arguments government officials have put forward in favor of continuing the flow of military aid to Egypt are identical to those disastrous arguments that were used to continue sending arms to Iran following the Khomeini revolution in 1979, including:

1.) It is better that the get weapons from us than anyone else.

2.) Their military was trained by America and remains close to the U.S.; the military is a moderating Western influence in a sea of radical Islamists; and as a highly professional American-trained institution their military represents Western ideals.

In terms of the first argument, I never quite understood how our supplying  the weapons  to a potential enemy makes them any less lethal?

In terms of the second argument: we are talking about the Middle East here! The military is neither Western nor Eastern. It wants to survive.  And most people survive in the Middle East by allying themselves with the biggest bully in the playground. Besides, if the military is truly professional, it does not make policy, it implements it. Good soldiers obey orders.

Is there some sort of information that the  CIA or the State Department or the DoD has that they are not telling us? On what basis do they believe  that continuing to supply advanced arms to Egypt will have any greater influence over events than the continuous supply of arms we sent to Iran — who is now an implacable enemy?  The Middle East is overflowing with upheaval and instability and the influence of the radical Islamists grows stronger every day.  This is not the time for our continuing unthinking investment in institutions that may become tomorrow’s new despots or the tools of new radical governments.  Now is the time to await developments while we seriously consider where America’s best interests lie.

Like so much else in regards to the Middle East, I wish to be proven wrong.  But I fear that EMET, once again, will be proven right.

What began as a routine harassment by a government bureaucrat to a Tunisian vegetable vendor (and ended in his self-immolation), resulted in the fall of the governments in Tunis and in Egypt, and has stirred up a virtual tornado of protest stretching from Fez to Damascus.

This hurricane emanated from a deeply pent up human desire for freedom, for basic human rights and dignity.

Over these last five years, ever since EMET’s inception, we have been celebrating and working together with those courageous and rare people from the Muslim and Arab world who have risked everything—-from exclusion of family and friends–to their very lives- in order  to tell the  truth about the Muslim and Arab worlds from which they hail.

These are amazingly brave people such as Nonie Darwish, Wafa Sultan, Brigitte Gabriel, Ali Alyami, Mosab  Hassan Yousef, Fahrid Ghadry,  Walid Phares, Amil Imani ,Zhudi Jasser, Zeyno Baran and Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Manda Ervin, whom you will be hearing tonight.

These are people who have penetrated through our superficial differences and have reached down into the core of what unites us and makes us all truly human. They, and our honorees tonight are our heroes in the struggle to preserve Western civilization from the threat of radical Islam. And tonight we are here to say thank you to each and every one of them.

But we are also here for another reason: As the Muslim and Arab worlds are being rocked by this tsunami of the desire for freedom; their struggle is being increasingly hijacked by an Islamist agenda.

And we have but one precious tiny, little country, Israel, who is the Eastern outpost of Western democratic values of pluralism, of tolerance, of freedom of religion, of a free and independent judiciary and a free and independent press that we here have to protect and to defend.

Because Israel is the Eastern outpost of Western democratic values, that is why it is resented and despised by the Islamists, and because of where Israel sits, exactly on the seam lines in the Clash of Civilizations, it  is protecting every of us in the room here today.

The Facebook generation might have Initiated the struggle for human rights and freedoms in Egypt,  but the Islamists have wide and deep inroads into the mosques and a well established political infrastructure that has  penetrated into the army and the political establishment.

Every Egyptian politician running for office scores political points by saying it is time to re-evaluate the Peace Treaty with Israel, leaving that long border that Israel shares with Egypt, or with Hamas- controlled- Gaza, vulnerable to the infiltration of weapons and vulnerable to the outbreak of new hostilities.

When the Shah of Iran was about to fall during the 1979  Iranian Revolution, folks here in Washington argued that we have to support the Shah and continue to send military aid and equipment to Iran because the army is the most Western o Institutions.. (Sound familiar?)Then, as soon as the Khomeini Revolution occurred, the very first thing that the Islamists did was declare war   United States and Israel by seizing the American Embassy and taking 50 US officials hostage…and people in the Department of Defense were scrambling to stop the shipments.

I am sure  you are all familiar with  George Santayna’s adage of those who do not study history are condemned to repeat its mistakes.

That is why EMET, unlike any other organization in Washington, has been on the Hill since the eruption of the Arab spring, arguing that it is way past time to stop the military aid shipments to Egypt.

On May 5, in Cairo, Abu Mazen of the Palestinian Authority and Khalid Mishal of Hamas of Hamas shook hands and formed a unity government. The PA has crossed a line in the sand, and the wolf that most of us in this room knew Fatah has been all along, has finally emerged from outside of the sheep’s clothing for all of the world to see. It is against American Law to give money to a terrorist organization.

The Last Time I checked, Hamas was still listed in our State Department as a Terrorist Organization. yet our tax payers’ dollars are still going out to the PA as we speak, and our CIA is still training their (quote unquote) police force in the West Bank, (or Judea and Samaria if you will), under the illusion that these rifles will never be turned against Israeli soldiers or civilians.

As the old saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you, Fool me twice. Shame on me. We demand an end now to our American taxpayers’ dollars going to the P.A. No more conditions. Now. Period. End of Story.

In Syria, over 1400 people have lost their lives for demonstrating in the streets. The government has used attack helicopters to wantonly and arbitrarily shoot at protestors.  Thousands of anonymous people have been detained and brutally tortured.  Still more are fleeing over the border to Turkey, creating a REAL refugee crisis. President Bashir Assad is guilty of committing crimes against humanity, and has GOT to step aside.

President Obama in his May 19th address regarding the Middle East said that America has a historic opportunity and responsibility for people clamoring for basic freedoms and dignity.  He called upon President Assad to lead his people to democracy or get out of the way. Yet we have done nothing in the last month to help the Syrians in their bloody struggle to overcome the brutal dictatorship of Bashar Assad

Syria is part of the Iranian constellation, and the only nation that has been empowered by all of this  has been  the Islamic Republic of Iran.

There is a story in today’s Ha’aretz  that Israeli intelligence has found that Iranian Republican Guards are on the ground in Syria, working together  with Hezbollah to brutally crush the demonstrators.  They also instigated and paid people to come out for the notorious Al Nakba  and Al Naksa days  of demonstrations against the state of Israel.

In June of 2009, after the fraudulent election results were announce in Iran, true lovers of democracy were calling out for our help and their calls were summarily ignored, as skulls were being crushed..

Iran has one of the most egregious human rights records in history. More people have been executed and  more women stoned to death on trumped up charges of adultery in Iran than anywhere else in the world

Ahmadinajad, and his mullahs, who are the true Hitlers of our generation, have exploited this period of Arab instability to dig their tentacles, deeper and deeper into the region. They are doing this, as they relentlessly pursue nuclear weapons capabilities and are growing closer to their goal of wiping Israel off the map by passing the day. .

There is a rising tide of radical Islamism throughout the region and we have got to be sure that in this Arab hurricane that is recklessly rocking the Middle East, we do not sacrifice our one proven, true stable democratic, ally in the region, Israel, in order to buy the good will of other fair weathered friends in the international community.

That is why, contrary to what President Obama might have said in his Middle East Speech last month, Israel needs defensible borders. As  Ambassador Dore Gold recently pointed out in a recent article.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the signer of the Oslo Accords, made clear in his last Knesset address in October 1995 that Israel could never withdraw to the 1967 lines. He stressed that Israel would have to retain control of the Jordan Valley, the great eastern, geographic barrier which provided for its security for decades since the Six Day War.

Prime Minister Rabin didn’t say a word about land swaps. For neither Resolution 242 nor any subsequent signed agreements with the Palestinians stipulated that Israel would have to pay for any West Bank land it would retain by handing over its own , pre-1967 sovereign land in exchange.

We are not going to make our tiny Jewish state, only nine miles wide at its narrowest waist, the sacrificial lamb for America to win a popularity contest in the Arab world.

The West Bank is within easy striking distance of every single Israeli city. And just one Kassam rocket missile launched at Ben Gurion airport from Kalkilya, which is only 6 few miles away, will cut off all air transit and isolate the Jewish state.

Now is not the time for people to urge Israel to take risks for peace.

The forces of radical Islam are rampant throughout the region, and it is incredibly naive to believe that the Palestinians are immune from  Islamist and Iranian influences. Israel needs a topographical buffer zone to defend her own population. There is no substitute for a geographical line of defense, especially in the age of missiles.

Israel has given the land…Now where is the peace? This land for peace formulation has produced a paradoxical relationship and has only empowered Iran and other Islamist  groups who despise both Israel and the United States, equally. Every piece of land Israel has ceded has become  an Iranian puppet state controlled by either by Hezbollah of Hamas.

If I were a scientist, I would have said a long time ago that it is time to go back to the null hypothesis. Or as it says in the philosophy of holes: When you are in a hole, stop digging

Yet people in our Foreign Policy Establishment go back to the same old failed foreign policy paradigm because of three factors:1.) a desire to claim their place history, 2.)  a true failure of imagination in our foreign policy establishment  and 3.) cognitive dissonance: Which, in layman’s terms means:: “Don’t bother me with the facts. I have my mind made up.”. Or as the novelist Saul Bellow put it, “A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”

We at EMET are here because we do not think American foreign policy should be based upon illusion and wishful thinking, but upon reality. And the reality in the Middle East is not always so pleasant. We at EMET are different because we will not sweep the truth about the harsh realities of life in the Middle East  under the rug to score popularity contests with everyone across the map.

We do that  for one simple reason: because we need Israel to survive. Our people have gone through  far too much in our history  simply to have our little, tiny strip of land sacrificed on the  alter of political correctness.

And we know that when our enemies talk about wiping us off the face of the map, they mean business.

We in this room all know that Israel is the canary in the coal mine. And we need America, as we love and know it, the last great hope of Western civilization and the democratic values we all cherish, to survive.

And that is why we are here tonight to honor people like Senator Daniel Inouye and Congressmen Trent Franks who has long been  champions of Israel’s survival, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali who has spoken bravely about the difficulties of life under Islam, Manda Ervin from the Alliance of Iranian Women, and Itamar Marcus  from Palestinian Media Watch whose excellent institute has been documenting for years and years the Palestinian Authority’s systematic program of  incitement to hate and to kill and its failure to teach all of its people, and especially its children, that  all of Israel will not one day become Palestine, from the river to the sea.

“And yet, no matter how hard it may be to start meaningful negotiations under current circumstances, we must acknowledge that a failure to try is not an option.  The status quo is unsustainable.  And that is why on Thursday I stated publicly [in the State Department speech] the principles that the United States believes can provide a foundation for negotiations toward an agreement to end the conflict and all claims — the broad outlines of which have been known for many years, and have been the template for discussions between the United States, Israel, and the Palestinians since at least the Clinton administration.” [ed. Italics added]

This is simply not true. There might have been some news commentators and “Mideast experts” inside the beltway who have been saying this, but that does not make it established American policy.

The fact is that United Nations Resolution 242 which was drafted in the immediate aftermath of the 1967 war has served as the core agreement for all treaties between Israel and her Arab neighbors.

United Nations Resolution 242 never said that Israel has to return to the “1967 lines with agreed upon land swaps.”  On June 19th, in the immediate aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War, in which Israel captured these territories in the process of fighting off attacks on every front, President Lyndon Johnson stated that the prewar 1967 “truce lines” had been “fragile and violated.” What was requires, in President Johnson’s view was now “recognized boundaries”, that would provide Israel with “security against terror, destruction and war.”[1]

Ambassador Joseph Cisco, who was then involved in the drafting of UN Resolution 242, commented a few years later on Meet the Press, “I was engaged in the negotiation for months of that resolution. That resolution did not say “total withdrawal”.[2]

The US government and the government of Britain worked together in drafting the resolution.  British Foreign Secretary George Brown, who had served in Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s government declared that, “The proposal said that ‘Israel will withdraw from territories that were occupied, not from the territories, which means that Israel will not withdraw from all of the territories.”[3]

President Richard Nixon, in 1973 in a private conversation with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger stated clearly, “You and I both know that the Israelis cannot go back to the other [prewar 1967] borders.”[4]

What was obvious to so many previous negotiators seems to have disappeared into thin air and has been replaced with a dangerously simplistic and totally foreign idea, “We all know what the final resolution of the borders will more or less look like, along the 1967 lines with a few land swaps…”

It appears that many wise people seem to have forgotten how utterly indefensible the 1949 armistice lines had been. These borders had kept Israel under constant attack by Arab armies and Arab terrorists from the founding of the state in 1948 until the 1967 war.

In a highly volatile and rapidly changing Middle East, there are certain geographic and topographic realities that no responsible person can ignore.  Seventy percent of Israel’s population and its industrial center is located within a coastal plain which is only nine miles wide in many places. This area includes Israel’s major highways, its technological infrastructure, and its one international airport.  Overlooking this coastal plain are the high mountain ridges of the West Bank. Any hostile military force that commands these high mountain ridges will pose a grave threat to the heartland of Israel and its vital infrastructure. The mountain ridge rises 3,000 feet at its apex and descends eastward to the Jordan Valley Rift, which is the lowest point on earth, dipping 1200 feet below sea level. This line of mountains and steep valleys provides the only natural line capable of defending the very center of Israel — a 4200 foot high barrier. In possession of the Palestinians on the other hand, an Arab attack launched from these mountains could quickly overrun the coastal plain and gravely risk the very existence of the state of Israel.

On May 24, 2011, Prime Minister Netanyahu stated clearly and forcefully during a speech before a Joint Session of the Houses of Congress (in which he was interrupted 50 times by applause and 29 times by standing ovations), “Israel needs defensible borders.”

In addition, the President’s plan to leave the highly volatile and emotional issues concerning the return of millions of Arab refugees and the status of Jerusalem until after the borders were agreed, would give the Palestinians a pretense, or cause to launch a new attack on Israel — but this time from their strategic mountain ridges against Israel’s narrow nine-mile neck — a move that could cut Israel in two.

It is not a prescription for peace — but rather a prescription for war.

What is even more dangerous, is that President Obama as well as previous American administrations, in their zeal to sign a historic peace treaty, have totally ignored all the obligations that the Palestinian agreed to but then refused to implement — while leaning heavily on Israel to make more and more concessions.  Obligations to stop their incitement to hate and to kill have been part of Phase One in every agreement since the Oslo Accords.  Yet absolutely nothing has been done — or even tried on the Palestinian side.  We all know that the Palestinian Authority uses every means possible to incite its citizens against Israel’s existence, instill hatred of the Jews and to glorify those who martyred themselves killing Israeli civilians.  They have taught their children to hate Jews and Christians, and that Israel will be erased and their lands will someday be theirs.  Where is the President’s insistence that the Palestinians lay the cultural and educational groundwork that will assure a peace that will endured for generations.

Prime Minister Netanyahu said it clearly and plainly in his speech to Congress, this conflict “is not about the establishment of a Palestinian state — it is about the [continued] existence of a Jewish state!” A state the Arabs and the Palestinians refuse to accept.

As President John F. Kennedy remarked, “Peace does not just exist in signed documents and charters alone, but in the hearts and minds of people.”

The real objection to President Obama’s remarks is that his position has failed to adapt to the sociological and societal factors of the region, even as those conditions have altered dramatically. No matter the history or events that have taken place in the last 43 or even the last 62 years, the solution to all of the problems in the Middle East, including the dangers and turmoil of the “Arab Spring,” is a return of Israeli boundaries to the pre-1967 lines, with agreed upon land swaps.”

President Obama’s speech to the State Department on Thursday, May 19th was supposed to have been about the Arab Spring. I was delighted with certain aspects of his remarks, such as when he said that,  “The Syrian regime has chosen the path of murder and the mass arrests of its citizens…The Syrian people have shown their courage in demanding a transition to democracy. President Assad now has a choice: He can lead that transition or get out of the way.”

So why does President Obama believe that the Israeli-Palestinian issue is at the core of every Mideast crisis? How does making America’s one stable democratic ally in the area less able to defend itself and more vulnerable enhance the chances for peace and stability in this critical region of the world?

Under any pressure, the State Department returns to the same old tired formulations, even when they are highly extraneous to the issue at hand.

If Israel were to disappear today, would Shiites and Sunnis embrace? Would the Iranians and the Saudis hold hands and sing “Kumbaya “? Would Bashir Assad or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stop arresting and killing their dissidents?

This is a formula which pays no mind to the reality that Hamas, who publically demands the destruction of Israel and has ruled Gaza as an Iranian colony and armed missile base for the better part of the last decade, has now signed an agreement to combine with the Palestinian authority. This is not merely an obstacle to peace, as President Obama seems to assert, it is a positive red-line and the final piece of evidence, if more was necessary, that the Palestinian Authority is devoted to intransigence over cooperation and “resistance” over peace, no matter how many times the “broad outlines” of a peace plan are placed in front of them.

It is also a formula which ignores the fact that the new Egyptian regime, which under Mubarak once made half-hearted efforts to contain weapons smuggling, has made the decision to leave the border with Gaza wide open to promote even greater importation of arms to Hamas, Israel’s sworn enemy. The same Egypt which maintained a very cold peace, but still a peace, now openly cheers presidential candidates who compete with each other in efforts to reject the Camp David accords and return to a hostile relationship with Israel.

How can Israel discuss the establishment of Palestinian borders, as they face government-organized mobs attempting to overrun its borders? Thousands of Palestinians assaulted the Israeli borders on “Nakba day,” a day specifically set aside by Palestinians to reject the reality of the Israeli state. A rejection not just of Israelis living in the West Bank, or even of an Israel within the 1967 borders, but the complete rejection of the very existence of Israel and of any Jewish state in the Middle East. These actions occurred on every Israeli border, including the once quiet Golan Heights border, where the dictator Assad decided that releasing a flood of bussed-in Palestinian protestors would distract from the ongoing massacre of his own Syrian citizens.  It is not a coincidence that the strategic heights have been historically Israel’s quietest border. With the IDF in command of the heights, not even the Syrian regime was foolish enough to risk open conflict. For the Israelis to return the Golan Heights into the hands of a mass-murdering terror supporter like Assad, will require a suicidal level of naivety.

President Obama bases his insistence that now is the time to renew the “peace process” because of the ongoing revolutions in the Middle East. Says President Obama:

First, the number of Palestinians living west of the Jordan River is growing rapidly and fundamentally reshaping the demographic realities of both Israel and the Palestinian Territories.  This will make it harder and harder — without a peace deal — to maintain Israel as both a Jewish state and a democratic state.

Second, technology will make it harder for Israel to defend itself in the absence of a genuine peace.

Third, a new generation of Arabs is reshaping the region.  A just and lasting peace can no longer be forged with one or two Arab leaders.  Going forward, millions of Arab citizens have to see that peace is possible for that peace to be sustained.  And just as the context has changed in the Middle East, so too has it been changing in the international community over the last several years.

There’s a reason why the Palestinians are pursuing their interests at the United Nations.  They recognize that there is an impatience with the peace process, or the absence of one, not just in the Arab World — in Latin America, in Asia, and in Europe.  And that impatience is growing, and it’s already manifesting itself in capitals around the world.

These claims are disturbingly erroneous for a number of reasons. Firstly, the demographic claims are extremely dubious, as EMET advisory board member Yoram Ettinger has long argued.  Secondly, what technological innovations is President Obama referring to?  Upgraded Iranian rockets and missiles in the hands of Hamas and Islamic Jihad? Or does he mean the same technological innovation, of social media and networking, which brought forward Obama’s third point… regarding the Arab Spring and the rise of democracy. And by the way, is President Obama acknowledging here, that overwhelmingly the Arab people are against Israel, and against peace, reflecting the deep-seated anti-Jewish hatred with which they have long been educated — and that democracy — following the will of the people, may result in tearing up the existing treaties and a return to a state of war with Israel?

As for the reason why the Palestinians are now pursuing a United Nations route to independence, it is not due to “impatience with the peace process.” What utter nonsense. The Palestinians are the ones who have refused negotiations. Even after Israel’s unprecedented settlement freeze, the Palestinians still refused to talk. They are pursuing unilateral independence because decades of a successful propaganda campaign, have finally borne fruit, and made such a pursuit seem viable. This is especially so, since repeated U.S. pressure against Israel, even in the face of Palestinian intransigence has created such daylight between the Israeli and U.S. positions, that the Palestinians had reason to believe that such a strategy would work, that the U.S. would actually consider withholding its no-vote from such a dangerous and destabilizing plan. Additionally much of the so-called “impatience” in Latin America stems not from any deep –seated interest in the Peace Process, but rather the expanded influence of Iran, and its ally Venezuela in the hemisphere, which has gone unchecked by the United States.

This is why peace will never come when Israel’s greatest strategic ally actually undermines, rather than supports the possibility of peace. As the recently deceased Osama Bin Laden expressed it, people, most especially the people of the Middle East, favor “the strong horse.”  Disunity between the United States and Israel, and the unchecked advances of Iran in our own hemisphere, coupled with a confused reaction to the Arab Spring, where former U.S. Allies have been chastised and hounded from office, but long time U.S. adversaries have been largely ignored, creates the impression that the anti-peace crowd of Iran, Hamas, and their allies are in the ascendance.

The Palestinians obviously believe this to be the case and that they can get what they want without ever having to acknowledge the existence of the State of Israel.  This means that they will never come to the negotiating table because they can get what they want from an international community that seeks to appease the Arabs and is willing to once again throw a democratic country to the wolves — as it did in its shameful betrayal of Czechoslovakia to Hitler.  And with President Obama’s insistence that now is the time for peace, because it may be too late otherwise, can he really predict the future?  Does he know the outline of history and that his solution will guarantee peace and not actually provoke another bloody war? Does he know what is in the hearts of Hamas, of Hezbollah, Fatah, the Egyptians, the Syrians or even the Iranians?  And what if he is wrong?  Is America prepared for another three front war in the heart of the Middle East if his predictions prove to be tragically misguided?

As Henry Kissinger once stated, “When the pursuit of peace is the sole objective of foreign policy — it becomes a weapon in the hands of the most ruthless.”

[2] Ibid

[3] Ibid

[4] Ibid