The "Peace Process" Boogaloo

Spectator UK

Within a few days of the American presidential election, Iran was already testing Obama with Ahmadinejad slyly offering him his congratulations. Obama gave a guarded, pro-forma reply that Iran had to stop supporting terror and that its development of  nuclear weapons was unacceptable, without saying what he would do to bring ‘change’ to Iran.  In response to that Ali Larijani, Speaker of Iran’s parliament, pointedly did not deny that Iran was developing nuclear weapons. The ball is now once again in Obama’s court, and the impression strengthens that Iran is looking forward to running ever bigger rings around America.

In America, where I currently am, I hear amplification of this analysis. The point missed by many is that, contrary to the view that Obambi represents an abrupt break with the warmongering Bush, the said warmonger effectively tore up his own doctrine sometime around the middle of his second term. The key is Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and the way she has effectively hijacked American policy in the Middle East.

In order to counter the increasing power of Iran, Rice wanted to form a coalition with Arab states such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, which regard Iranian power as a mortal threat to themselves. Their price was the ‘peace process’ towards the creation of a Palestinian state. These ‘moderates’ never for a moment expected this would actually result in a Palestinian state – indeed, they would find such a development distinctly unappealing because it would be a proxy of Iran and thus increase still further Iranian control in the region. But the ‘peace process’ helped them in various ways: it weakened Israel, gave them a place at the global top table and furnished them with a plausible line to sell to their own home constituencies.  

There were those within the Bush administration who viewed this with alarm. They argued that the US should be bolstering ‘moderate’ Palestinians by helping develop the institutions of a free society such as a free press and the rule of law, building economic strength and easing the lives of ordinary Palestinians — but not complicating all this by a political overlay which effectively rewarded terror by pressuring Israel to give up yet more land for Hamas/Iran to colonise. These voices were ignored. Rice was determined to force a political settlement.

The result is that the US has fallen into a trap. Far from peeling off moderate Palestinians from Hamas, Egypt and Saudi are trying hard to repair the breach between Fatah and Hamas. These putative allies of America are treading a fine line: playing the US along ostensibly in a common front against Iran, but at the same time doing nothing to act against Iran – indeed, on the basis that the US is weak and will not act against Iran, even taking care to keep their own lines to Iran well and truly open.

So America has not only gained nothing, not only weakened the Israeli front line but  given Iran what it needs most of all – the invaluable gift of time for it to bring its nuclear weapons programme to fruition. The result has been that, even before last week’s election, more and more voices in Washington were to be heard saying that America probably could live with a nuclear Iran after all. Unable or unwilling to control Rice through his own incompetence and weakness, Bush was already halfway to Obama’s position.

We will not know how Obama’s foreign policy will develop until we know his full team and particularly who gets State and Defence. But all the evidence to date suggests that he will throw Israel’s security under the bus while appeasing the enemies of the free world.  

The appointment as his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, the reputed bruiser whose role is to crush with extreme ruthlessness all opposition to Obama’s programme,  tells us very little — even though he is a former Israeli with a father who was in the Irgun Jewish terrorist organisation. So what? So was the father of Israel’s foreign minister Tzipi Livni, the woman who has done so much to weaken Israel by seeking to give away Israeli assets to Palestinian leaders who say in terms they will never accept Israel as a Jewish state, as well as strengthening the Syrians by talking to them.

Rahm Emanuel himself was involved in the catastrophic Oslo appeasement process, which led directly to the second intifada and helped fuel the rise of Hamas. What is little understood in a western world in thrall to the noxious narrative of Jewish control over the American agenda is that American Jews are overwhelmingly liberal or on the left – and Jews on the left who support Israel often espouse policy positions which threaten to destroy it, thus making themselves the useful idiots for Israel’s enemies. Indeed Israel’s own politicians on the left, including the current Prime Minister — who has now said that Israel should revert to the pre-1967 ‘Auschwitz’ borders, a remark which caused even Haaretz to choke on its falafel — have gone down precisely the same suicidal road.

In similar vein the prominent Oslo veteran Dennis Ross, who is currently desperately jostling for a place in Obama’s foreign policy team, is a friend of Israel –and yet he appears to have learned nothing from a process which led directly to the deaths of thousands of Israelis and the current impasse. He appears to be incapable of thinking outside the box marked ‘peace process’. But unlike the pursuit of true peace which can only arise from justice, the ‘peace process’ creates more violence through arousing expectations which are not met and though strengthening the men of violence by rewarding and thus incentivising terror. And meanwhile Palestinian children are still taught to hate Jews and told that one day Israel will be destroyed – and the Islamists in the region continue to multiply and divide into ever more extreme and murderous groups and factions.

According to CNN, the Iranian Speaker Larijani said that

U.S. behavior toward Iran ‘will not change so simply’ but that Obama’s election showed internal conditions in the United States have shifted.

The Iranians are amongst the most shrewd and sophisticated strategists around. They can see that the election of Obama is a signal of American weakness. The question no-one can currently answer, however, is whether President Obama will now repudiate his history and turn through sheer force of circumstances into a centrist and war leader – which would be remarkable but by no means unprecedented  – or will remain true to his radical past. Upon the answer to that question, the ability of the free world to defend itself against the onslaught now depends.