The NIE under Middle Eastern Eyes
I met Dan Diker on our first evening in Israel this past summer. He is an officer of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs headed by Dore Gold. Dan is a foreign and defense policy analyst for the center. His analysis of the upshot of the NIE on Iran's nuclear program suggests that Ahmadinejad's recent invitation to address the GCC annual summit in Doha represents American weakness and Israeli double Jeopardy. He has just written the following column in Hebrew for a conservative Israeli weekly:
The scene last Monday of Iranian President Mahmaoud Ahmadinejad walking “hand in hand” with Saudi leader King Abdullah at the Gulf Cooperation Council’s annual Summit in Doah, Qatar is worth a thousand words. Abdullah’s readiness to cozy up to Ahmadinejad at a time when Iran threatens to replace Saudi Arabia as the new hegemon in the Middle East could be the latest signal of how terrified the Sunni Arab establishment -- particularly the Gulf states -- are of Iran’s rising power. It is also seems a graphic indication of Saudi and “Gulfie” nervousness over their perception of America’s growing weakness and loss of political will opposite Tehran.Dan sent his column to us and to Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft, one of my traveling companions this summer. Jim has posted it as "Cowering America may cause double jeopardy for Israel." The column appears here in slightly edited form, together with the photo that Jim dug up to accompany it. Max Boot has related thoughts in "The Gulf States and Iran."It was little coincidence that the Abdullah /Ahmadinjad photo op took place virtually in tandem with the release of the US National Intelligence Estimate that partially whitewashed Iran’s Nuclear Weapons’ program. On the face of it, Ahmadinejad’s address of the Sunni Gulf Cooperation Council -- the first for any Iranian President -- that included Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Oman, seems counter intuitive. Wasn’t the GCC created to offset the very threatening Iranian regional influence it now appears the Gulf States are ready to honor?
In fact, as the Washington Institute’s Simon Henderson points out in a December 7 analysis, the UAE set a precedent in November by impounding an Iranian-bound shipment of undisclosed material banned by UN Security Council Resolutions 1737 and 1747 because of its potential use for nuclear weapons or missile programs. The Washington Institute’s brief also notes that Bahrain's crown prince for the first time openly accused Iran in a recent interview of seeking nuclear weapons.
And didn’t the same Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and other “Gulfies” send senior officials to Washington’s Annapolis Conference two weeks ago, to show the “angered” Iranians that the US could lead the coalition of Arab Sunni States to Isolate Tehran’s Islamo-fascist regime? So how can what looked like the beginning of a "kiss and make up” session last week between Iran’s Ahmadinejad and Iran’s Sunni Gulf rivals be understood?
In fact, last Monday’s release of the latest and National Intelligence Estimate declaring that Iran ceased its nuclear weapons program in 2003 helps vindicate Iran’s declarations that it maintains no nuclear weapons program. While the Arab states don’t believe that for a minute (to which their participation at Annapolis attests), the US about face on Iran’s race for nuclear weapons undermines the efforts of President Bush and Secretary of State Rice to isolate Iran by coalescing Sunni Arab, and Western countries and to some degree Israel via diplomatic pressure to concede on the Palestinian issue. But the American intelligence bureaucracy’s slap in the face to the White House also embodies a symbolic power in Iranian and Arab eyes.
For Arab Sunni Gulf States that are worried about Iran’s ascendancy under a nuclear umbrella, the National Intelligence Estimate submitted by 16 Intelligence agencies underscores growing confusion, disunity, and discord in Washington. That apparent lack of American unity and purpose for them spells weakness and a lack of political will, as a number of leading Islamic affairs experts inside and outside the Washington’s beltway have been warning for some time. At the same time, Iran continues to march ahead with its atomic weapons plans while destabilizing the region via proxy terror groups in Iraq, Hizbullah, Hamas, and promising to liquidate Israel, the US’s key Middle East ally.
There are palpable Arab fears of Iran -- particularly a nuclear one -- as Jordan’s King Abdullah II expressed in 2004 when he expressed Arab league jitters over what he coined "the Shiite crescent.” Leading Near East scholar Bernard Lewis has long reminded the West that Arab political culture runs with the “winning horse."
This is the also the context in which the recent Annapolis Conference should be considered. Instead of pressing for victory against Iran, Bush’s summoning much of the international community to Washington to advance Palestinian-Israeli peace and to send a message to Iran was likely perceived somewhat differently in the Middle East.In the context of Professor Lewis’s “winning horse” analogy, Bush in the Arab and Persian mind may have appeared more like the school weakling who needed to turn to the rest of the class to back him up to send a threatening message to the class bully, in this case the 120 pound Ahmadinejad. So with the National Intelligence Estimate weakening massive American diplomatic efforts to mobilize the international community against Tehran, Arab states prefer to mingle with Iranian power than American uncertainty.
The NIE report also jeopardizes Israel militarily and diplomatically. First, the chances of an American led attack against Iranian nuclear installations now are far less likely. That could leave Israel alone to defend itself militarily against a nuclearizing Iran. It’s not a dissimilar position in which the Jewish State found itself in June of 1981 when it faced the prospect of an atomic Iraq under Saddam Hussein.
Diplomatically, Israel has already “eaten straw” even before the post Annapolis diplomacy gets underway. For months Israel’s senior political leadership has indicated privately and hinted publicly that its readiness to pursue bilateral peace talks under American sponsorship is a diplomatic quid pro quo for American efforts to create a broad International coalition against Iran with the support of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf States. Last week’s National Intelligence report undermines the very foundation of American pressure on Jerusalem and Olmert’s agreement to do a “dance” at Annapolis and solve the Palestinian issue by 2008.
But despite the American administration’s appearing at least half castrated opposite Iran and with the Gulf states reengaging with Ahmadinejad, Israel will still be expected to make far-reaching concessions to the Palestinians to “keep its part of the bargain.” However, pressure on Israel to solve the Palestinian issue without commensurate American leadership against Iran reinforces the fatally mistaken message encapsulated by the 2006 Baker-Hamilton Report and illustrated to many at Annapolis: That solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict instead of first neutralizing ascendant Iran seeking nuclear weapons is the key to peace and stability in the Middle East.
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