Tag Archives: Saudi Arabia

Recognizing the Axis of Evil

North Korea might be hiding or building nukes in Syria. (National Geographic Photo)

If media reports of last week’s IAF raid in Syria pan out, the attack against a North-Korean-supplied Syrian nuclear facility in eastern Syria should serve as a pivotal event in the free world’s understanding of the enemy it faces in the current global war. The central question now is whether this clarity will be followed by a strategic shift in the US and Israeli governments’ conceptualizations of the challenges facing them in the various theaters of war and diplomacy in which they are now engaged.

What the raid exposed is that the free world faces a cohesive alliance of enemy forces that collaborate closely in their joint and separate offensives against their common foes. Whether or not it is called the axis of evil, after the IAF raid it is undeniable that its members – North Korea, Iran and Syria – collaborate closely in their joint war.

Contrary to the prevailing wisdom, this is not a temporary alliance of convenience among three otherwise unrelated states. It is a strategic alignment of three regimes that have been acting in tandem on multiple levels for decades. Their collaborative operations have served two primary functions. First they cooperate in perpetuating their holds on power. This they do primarily through criminal enterprises. Second, they work together to wage war against their common foes. The second objective is advanced primarily through the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction.

Furthermore, all three regimes view diplomatic exchanges with their enemies not as a means to solve their disagreements with them, but as a means to gain advantage by forcing US, Israeli and international concessions that legitimize their regimes and enable them to continue to conduct their war.

TIES BETWEEN the countries have been developing since the 1980s. That cooperation blossomed into a full-scale alliance during the 1990s. This is notable because the 1990s marked the period when both US and Israeli foreign policies centered on repeated attempts to appease all three governments.

In 1994, the US embraced appeasement of North Korea when it signed the Agreed Framework that maintained the economic viability of the North Korean regime in exchange for Pyongyang’s pledge to end its nuclear weapons program. The US appeased Teheran by embracing the supposedly moderate government of president Muhammad Khatami, and downplayed Iran’s role in terrorist bombings of US targets like the 1996 Iranian-ordered bombing of the US Air Force barracks in Saudi Arabia.

Israel pursued appeasement through the Oslo peace process with the PLO, its refusal to contend effectively with the Iranian- and Syrian-sponsored Hizbullah forces in Lebanon, and through its conduct of intense negotiations with the Syrians toward an Israeli surrender of the strategically vital Golan Heights.

It was during the 1990s that North Korean-Iranian-Syrian criminal cooperation reached its apex. It was also during this decade that they made the greatest headway in their ballistic missile and weapons of mass destruction programs. These advances were made while all three regimes pocketed concessions made by the US and Israel, and systematically breached all their commitments to both countries and to international treaties of which they are signatories.

ONE OF the inheritances the mullahs received from the Shah of Iran after they overthrew him in 1979 was a US-supplied Intaglio currency printing press. Since at least 1989 this printing press has been used to produce so-called "super-notes."

Super-notes are highly sophisticated counterfeit US bills that are nearly undetectable. The advent of the super-notes forced the US Treasury to print new currency twice in a decade. In 1992 a Congressional Task Force concluded that the bills which proliferated in Lebanon’s Hizbullah and Syrian-controlled Beka’a Valley were of Iranian and Syrian origin. In 2005, the first super-notes were intercepted in the US. They were sourced to North Korea.

According to a report Sunday in Yediot Aharonot, Iran has financed its purchase of nuclear and other materiel from North Korea through the provision of super-notes to Pyongyang. The US believes that Pyongyang itself procured a Swiss-made Intaglio press sometime in the 1990s. Intelligence services agree that Iran, Syria and North Korea collaborate closely in their currency-counterfeiting operations.

In 2003, the State Department concluded that the North Korean regime had sustained its economic viability principally through counterfeit currency operations.

IN SEPTEMBER 2005, the US launched a financial offensive against North Korea which could potentially have led to the eventual financial collapse of the regime when it labeled the Banco Delta Asia, a Macau-based bank, an agent of North Korean money-laundering. The move followed a US investigation showing that BDA was North Korea’s primary conduit for laundering counterfeit currency. The move effectively cut Pyongyang out of international financial markets, making it far more difficult for the North Koreans to sustain the regime financially.

North Korea’s response to the move was to expand its nuclear and missile collaboration with Iran and Syria still further. Throughout the 1990s, the North Koreans provided Iran and Syria with ballistic missiles, and then missile technologies and assembly plants. After the BDA affair, in July and October 2006 North Korea conducted intermediate and long-range missile tests and then a nuclear test. Iranian scientists were reportedly present at all tests.

THE US responded to the North Korean provocations by intensifying its diplomatic efforts. Those efforts led to the signing of the February 13, 2007 bilateral deal between the US and North Korea, in which Pyongyang pledged to end its nuclear programs within 60 days in exchange for diplomatic acceptance by the US and economic assistance from the US and the international community. In exchange for the North Korean pledge, the US secretly agreed to unfreeze North Korean accounts at BDA and so paved the way for North Korean reentry to international financial markets.

While the deal was hailed as a diplomatic triumph, it suffered from several fatal flaws. The first flaw was that it failed to account for North Korea’s pattern of breaching its agreements with the US. As former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton has pointed out, the US had no reason to believe that North Korea would honor its commitments; and, indeed, when 60 days after the deal was signed, Pyongyang had yet to shut down its nuclear installation at Yongbyon, it was clear that North Korea had maintained its practice of diplomatic perfidy.

The agreement also made no allowance for North Korea’s existing nuclear arsenal or materials, and said nothing about restricting North Korea’s proliferation of nuclear materials and technologies. As last week’s IAF raid on the reportedly North Korean-supplied Syrian nuclear installation made clear, this oversight is full of geopolitical consequences.

IT WOULD seem that the main reason the US signed such an ill-advised deal with the North Koreans is that the State Department wished to neutralize North Korea in order to concentrate its efforts on Iran and Iraq. By so acting, the US failed to recognize the fundamental truth that last week’s IAF raid exposed. Specifically, North Korea is allied with Iran and to Syria, and as a result cannot be set aside or isolated. It is impossible to confront Iran or Syria or North Korea without confronting the entire alliance. And it is impossible to appease one without strengthening all of them.

This truth has been ignored by both the US and by Israel for decades. The Israeli government continues to view Syria as an independent actor and so hopes that eventually it can be sufficiently appeased to accept the Golan Heights from Israel in exchange for a cold peace.

Israel and the US fail to understand the proxy role the Palestinians play for members of this enemy axis, and so view the establishment of a Palestinian state as a means of neutralizing the Palestinian theater rather than recognizing that such a state will serve at best as a safe haven for global terrorists, and at worst as North Korea’s new nuclear client.

The US views Syria only in relation to its nefarious role in Iraq, and so misses the connection between Syrian and Iranian sponsorship of Palestinian terrorists in Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad and Hizbullah, and the war the US fights in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Israel and the US view North Korea as an isolated Asian nuisance that has little connection to the war in the Middle East. As a result, Israel for decades has been indifferent to North Korean provocations and the US has ignored the global implications of Pyongyang’s nuclear program. So too, the US fails to understand how its diplomatic weakness toward North Korea enhances Iran’s position at the bargaining table and advances its nuclear weapons program.

ON THE positive side, the muted, even supportive international response to the Israeli raid makes clear that the diplomatic standing of the members of the axis is far weaker than one would have expected. If, as some have claimed, the IAF raid was a rehearsal for an Israeli or US attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, then the international reaction to the IAF raid shows that such a mission will likely be met with minimal, if any, retrospective diplomatic opposition.

Yet it is far from clear that either Israel or the US understand the significance of Israel’s operation in Syria. A week after the attack, the US announced its intention to give Pyongyang $25 million worth of heavy fuel oil in return for Pynogyang’s good faith in their nuclear activities. Members of the IDF General Staff have recommended renewing negotiations with Syria regarding an Israeli surrender of the Golan Heights. The US is permitting Iranian President Ahmadinejad to attend the UN’s General Assembly meeting in New York next week even as Ahmadinejad has escalated his nuclear and anti-American and anti-Israel rhetoric in recent weeks.

One can only hope that these Israeli and American moves represent simply the death throes of their clearly discredited view of their enemies as distinct and independent actors. Otherwise, the lessons exposed and the advantages gained from the IAF strike will be squandered, and the free world will be weakened as new life is given to the axis of evil.

America’s best friends

Two major arms sales were announced over the weekend. First, the US announced that it is planning to sell Saudi Arabia $20 billion in advanced weapons systems, including Joint Direct Attack Munition kits or JDAMs that are capable of transforming regular gravitational bombs into precision-guided "smart" weapons.

Largely in an attempt to neutralize Congressional opposition to the proposed sale, the Bush administration also announced that it plans to increase annual military assistance to Israel by some 25 percent next year and that it hopes that next year’s increase in assistance will be maintained by the next administration.

The second arms sale was the reported Russian agreement to sell Iran 250 advanced long-ranged Sukhoi-30 fighter jets and aerial fuel tankers capable of extending the jets’ range by thousands of kilometers. Russia’s massive armament of Iran in this and in previous sales over the past two years make clear that from Russia’s perspective, all threats to US interests, including Shi’ite expansionism, work to Moscow’s advantage.

On the face of it, these contrasting US and Russian announcements seem to signal that geopolitics have reverted to the Cold War model of two superpowers competing for global power by, among other things, assisting their proxies in fighting one another. Yet, today the situation is not the same as it was before.

Today, the US finds itself competing not only against an emergent Russia, but against Iran, and the Shi’ite expansionism it advances. Moreover, it finds itself under attack from Sunni jihadism, which is incubated and financed by Saudi Arabia, America’s primary ally in the Persian Gulf.

The US’s proposed arms sale to Saudi Arabia has raised pointed criticism in Israel and among Israel’s supporters in the US. As senior defense officials told The Jerusalem Post Monday, the JDAM sale to Saudi Arabia constitutes a strategic threat to Israel which has no way of defending itself against JDAM capabilities.

To assess the reasonableness of Israel’s opposition to the proposed sale, and to understand the sale’s significance against the background of emerging regional and global threats to US national security interests, it is worthwhile to revisit US actions toward Israel and Saudi Arabia during the Cold War when checking Soviet expansion worldwide was the main goal of US foreign policy.

The US held Israel at arms length until after its stunning victory against Soviet clients Egypt and Syria in the 1967 Six Day War. In the aftermath of Israel’s victory, the US realized that Israel was a natural ally in checking Soviet power in the Middle East. As a result, in 1968 it began providing Israel with political and military aid. This policy paid off in spades in the 1973 Yom Kippur War and in the 1982 Lebanon War when the IDF handily beat the Soviets’ proxy armies. Indeed, from the US perspective, there was no downside to supporting Israel. Israel’s patent lack of expansionist ambitions ensured that the US would suffer no ancillary blowback for its support.

The US-Israel alliance’s central weakness was US’s perception of Saudi Arabia as its strategic ally. This weakness came to the fore most prominently in 1981 with the Reagan administration’s decision to sell AWACs spy planes to the Saudis. As is the case with the US’s current proposed arms sale to the Saudis, back then Israel perceived the AWACs sale as a strategic threat to its national security. Yet, since checking Soviet expansionism and not securing Israel was the US’s primary strategic aim, and since the US perceived Saudi Arabia as an ally against Soviet expansionism, the Reagan administration pushed the sale forward against Israel’s strenuous objections.

In the end, the AWACs were not used against Israel. Yet by the same token, they also did nothing to curb Soviet expansionism or advance any other US interest. During the 1991 Gulf War, the Saudis played no effective combat role against Iraq.

The main Saudi contribution to the US’s victory in the Cold War was its willingness to finance the mujahadeen in Afghanistan who fought the Soviet invasion. There can be no doubt that the rout of the Soviet military in Afghanistan played a central role in causing the dissolution of the Soviet empire. But there is also no question that the blowback from the war in Afghanistan has been enormously detrimental to US national security and to global security as a whole.

The mujadaheen’s US-armed and Saudi financed victory against the Soviets in Afghanistan fed the aspirations of Saudi supported Sunni jihadists. It spawned al-Qaida and provided arms and combat experience to forces that would come back to haunt the US.

So as far as the Middle East and Central Asia are concerned, a primary lesson of the Cold War relates to the relative weight the US can securely place in its alliance with Israel on the one hand, and its alliance with the Saudis on the other. Israel used US support in a manner that advanced both Israel’s national security and US geopolitical interests with no blowback. The Saudis were either inconsequential, or advanced US interests in a manner that caused enormous blowback.

Today as the US faces Russian hostility, Iranian expansionism and Saudi-financed Sunni jihadists, it remains afflicted by the Cold War dilemma of the relative importance of its alliances with Israel and Saudi Arabia. On the face of it, given that today the potential for blowback in supporting Saudi Arabia is far higher and eminently more foreseeable than it was 25 years ago, it should seem clear that in assessing its strategic assets and interests in the region, the US would place far greater weight on its alliance with Israel.

Unfortunately, today the Bush administration is behaving counterintuitively. It pursues its alliance with Saudi Arabia with vigor while eschewing and downgrading its alliance with Israel.

The administration’s hostility toward Israel is not limited to its intention to arm the Saudis with weapons capable of destroying Israel’s strategic assets in the Negev. It is also actively pressuring Israel not to defend itself against Iran and its proxies. Since the Second Lebanon War last summer, the US has pushed Israel to take no action against Iran’s proxy Hamas on the one hand, while pushing Israel to empower Fatah, which has its own strong ties to Iran and to Hamas, on the other. By pressuring Israel to enact a policy of capitulation toward the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria, similar to its capitulation to the Palestinians two years ago in Gaza, the Bush administration is advancing a policy that if implemented all but ensures Iranian control over the outskirts of Jerusalem and Amman.

There are two principal causes of the US’s coolness toward Israel and warm embrace of the Saudis. First, the administration’s failure to achieve its goals in Iraq strengthened the influence of the Saudi’s Cold War proponents. These proponents, led by former secretary of state James Baker’s disciples Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, advance their Saudi-centric agenda while paving the way for a US withdrawal from Iraq without victory. In the Baker camp’s view, the best way to facilitate a pullout is by strengthening the Saudis so that they can perhaps prevent a post-US withdrawal Iraq from devolving into an Iranian colony.

The second cause of the administration’s hostility toward Israel is the Olmert government’s irresolute handling of the Second Lebanon War last year. As was the case 25 years ago, so too last summer, the administration supported Israel against the wishes of the Baker camp. Yet when unlike 25 years ago, last summer the Olmert government led Israel to defeat in Lebanon, it weakened the standing of administration officials who view Israel as a strategic ally and oppose the Saudis, while strengthening Israel’s Baker-inspired foes who view Israel as a strategic liability.

The Olmert government’s enthusiastic embrace of capitulation as a national policy toward the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria merely serves to strengthen the US view that Israel is a strategic liability rather than an asset.

Yet the lessons of the Cold War, and those of the past 15 years remain clear. The Saudis remain at best fair-weather friends to the US, while Israel’s strength or weakness directly impacts US national security and geopolitical interests. As was the case during the Cold War, so too today, the US’s best option for checking Russian and Iranian expansionism and neutralizing Sunni jihadists is to back Israel.

If the US were willing to understand the clear lessons from its Cold War experience in the Middle East, it would not be pushing Israel to weaken itself still further through land giveaways to Iran’s Palestinian proxies. It would not be actively undercutting Israel’s national security by supplying sophisticated weapons to the Saudis. It would be admonishing the Olmert government for its irresponsible behavior and exhorting Israel not to go wobbly because it is needed for the larger fight.

Iran 2, Israel 0

Jafar Kiani was an anonymous Iranian prisoner until earlier in the month he became the first Iranian to be stoned to death since 2002.

Iran’s decision to revert to domestic barbarism is just one aspect of the regime’s strategy for terrorizing its people sufficiently to quell all pockets of resistance to its rule.

The regime’s determination to prevent an internal rebellion is an integral part of its larger plan to cast aside all obstacles to its acquisition of nuclear weapons.

Iran already possesses what it needs to make nuclear bombs. What it needs is time. Last summer’s war against Israel was timed to provide Iran with a respite from international pressure. Hizbullah’s abduction of IDF reservists Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser took place the day before the leaders of the G-8 were scheduled to discuss Iran’s nuclear program. By ordering the assault on Israel, Iran diverted their attention away from its nuclear program.

Ever since the war, the Olmert government has declared that the war split the Muslim world into two camps – the moderates and the extremists. Operating on the basis of this perceived split, Israel has sought to build a coalition with the moderates in the hopes that such a coalition will block Iran from acquiring the bomb.

A year after the war, the time has come to make a renewed assessment of the situation. Are moderates blocking Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons? If not, what has transpired?

A good place to start the analysis is with an item that appeared on both Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s to-do list this week. Both leaders telephoned Turkish Prime Minister Recip Erdogan to congratulate him on his Islamist AKP party’s electoral victory on Sunday.

Turkey is perceived as the paragon of Muslim moderation. Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and President Shimon Peres have all stated that Israel does not have a problem with AKP’s Islamist character. Indeed, in a bow towards Turkish friendship, Olmert revealed last week that Turkey has been facilitating talks between Israel and Syria towards an Israeli surrender of the Golan Heights.

Yet Ankara’s readiness to encourage Israel to hand the Golan Heights over to Iran’s client state does not necessarily indicate that Turkey is Israel’s friend. Indeed, since the AKP rose to power in 2002, it has distanced Turkey from both Israel and the US while warming Turkish relations with Iran and Syria.

Starting with Turkey’s refusal to participate in or support the US-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime, recent years have been marked by steadily increasing Turkish hostility. Two weeks ago, to Washington’s dismay, Turkey signed a $3.5 billion gas deal with Iran.

As to Israel, Erdogan was the first leader to host Hamas terror masters after the jihadist movement won the Palestinian elections in January 2006. During last summer’s war, Iran shipped arms to Hizbullah through Turkey. Turkey’s leaders have repeatedly declared their support for Iran’s right to develop its nuclear program.

IRAN’S COURTSHIP of Turkey is but one aspect of its foreign policy. Over the past several years, Iran has built webs of alliances with other states, alliances that have significantly deepened since last summer’s war.

In the first circle, Iran has its clients – Syria, Hizbullah, the Shiite (and increasingly the Sunni) militias in Iraq, and the Palestinians. Just as these forces fought together last summer, so they will fight together in the future. Ahmadinejad’s visit to Damascus last weekend was strikingly similar to meetings he held with his terror underlings before last summer’s war.

In its second circle, Iran has cultivated strategic ties with countries in Latin America, which, led by Venezuela, share its hatred for America. These ties serve three purposes. First, they provide Iran with a global deterrent against the US. Second, they provide Iran with ready support in diplomatic forums. Third, they build support for Iran among the "progressive" set in the US and Europe.

In Iran’s third circle of alliances are countries like Russia, China and Egypt. While all these states publicly oppose Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, they effectively block the international community from taking effective action against Iran’s nuclear program.

In the meantime, Israel’s coalition of moderates has failed to materialize. The leaders of the sought-for coalition, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, refuse to take any action against Iran. Indeed, they effectively support Teheran. In February, Saudi King Abdullah feted Ahmadinejad during a state visit. The next month, by mediating the formation of the Hamas-Fatah government, Abdullah enabled Iran’s Palestinian proxy to gain control of the Palestinian Authority. As for Egypt, it is using Iran’s nuclear program as cover to advance its own nuclear weapons program.

Then there are the great powers and foremost among them Russia, France and the US. Any UN action against Iran must be agreed upon by all three. And there is little chance of that ever happening.

Russia is Iran’s ally. Russia supplied Hizbullah and Syria with arms and intelligence during last summer’s war. In the intervening year, Russia has sold advanced weapons systems to both Iran and Syria. Last weekend’s report in the Arab media regarding Iranian financing of Syrian purchases of Russian jet fighters, tanks and missiles is part of this overall picture.

Israeli analysts scoffed at the report, noting that the billion dollars Ahmadinejad pledged is insufficient to purchase the weapons he outlined. But those weapons will not all be going to Syria. Last April Iran and Syria signed an agreement essentially merging their militaries. Iran’s Defense Minister Mustafa Muhammad Najjar told reporters in Damascus, "We consider the capability of the Syrian defensive forces as our own." He added that Iran "offers all of its defense capabilities to Syria."

While Russia is selling the weapons to Syria, a Russian military official said of the aircraft, "The Syrians will be getting the top line of Russian aircraft through financing by Iran and [will] share some or most of the platforms with the Iranian air force." Jane’s Defense Monthly reported that at least 10 of the artillery-missile systems will also be transferred to Iran.

Russia also acts as Teheran’s diplomatic shill. During a summit in Teheran last month Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, "We do not see any kind of threat from Iran." In a subsequent visit to Israel, Lavrov insisted that Russia’s arms sales pose no threat to the Jewish state, and anyway, the only way for Israel to ensure its security is to surrender the Golan Heights to Syria.

But the Olmert government refuses to acknowledge that Russia has reinstated its Cold War hostility towards Israel. It vapidly praises President Vladimir Putin for his "positive role" in the region and continues to adhere to the line that Russia will agree to UN Security Council action against Iran.

Then there is France. Last summer France displayed open hostility towards Israel in its representation of the Lebanese government in which Hizbullah was then a member at the UN ceasefire talks. On the other hand, in 2005 France joined forces with the US to expel the Syrian military from Lebanon after the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

Israel hoped that with Nicholas Sarkozy’s victory in the presidential race, France would take a more pro-Israel stance. Unfortunately, the opposite occurred. Sarkozy has warmed French ties with the Iranian-Syrian-Hizbullah axis. Sarkozy legitimized all three when he invited Hizbullah representatives to participate in talks he held with Lebanese factions outside of Paris this month.

Additionally, early this month France led 10 EU member states in meddling in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The foreign ministers of these largely Mediterranean EU member states sent a letter to Quartet envoy Tony Blair, demanding, among other things, that Israel agree to the deployment of international forces in Judea and Samaria, and that Hamas be invited to participate in an international conference on the issue.

As France treats with Iran on Lebanon, the US follows a similar course of engaging the mullah on Iraq. After his meeting with his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad this week, US Ambassador Ryan Crocker announced the formation of a joint US-Iranian security committee which will discuss Sunni terrorism in Iraq.

Apparently in the interest of advancing America’s "security cooperation" with Iran, the State Department refused to raise the issue of the five American citizens being held hostage in Iran at the meeting. And with the prospect of diplomatic "progress" with Iran on Iraq in the air, the US certainly doesn’t want to rock the boat by pursuing the issue of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Indeed, Iran’s carrot and stick approach to powers like the US and France form a fourth circle of ties. Iran has worked to neutralize threats from these countries by attacking their interests in other spheres: Lebanon, in the case of France, and Iraq, in the case of the US. Given both countries enthusiasm for "engagement," it seems that the mullahs have hit on the right approach.

ISRAEL HAS experienced some achievements regarding Iran over the past year. The UN Security Council did pass two sanctions resolutions against Iran. With the active lobbying of opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu, many US public employee pension funds are moving to divest from companies that do business with Iran. And this week, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that like his predecessor Tony Blair, he will not rule out the option of using military force to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Yet despite these achievements, Iran has made steady progress with its nuclear program. Wednesday Ahmadinejad announced, "Iran will never abandon its peaceful [nuclear] work." Sunday, a senior Iranian official told The Independent that with almost 3,000 centrifuges operating at its nuclear facility at Natanz, "We have at the moment enough centrifuges to go to a bomb."

Back in Israel, this week Olmert made clear that he wishes to advance contacts with the Palestinians towards an Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria. His advisors told reporters that Olmert is moved by his desire to get beyond his failure in last year’s war and the criminal investigations into his shady business dealings. He wishes to be perceived as a statesman.

Of course if Olmert truly wishes to be seen as a statesman, then he shouldn’t be concerning himself with Israeli withdrawals that will only strengthen Iran. He should change his strategic focus to Iran which threatens to wipe Israel off the map.

Despite his government’s protestations to the contrary, there is no coalition of moderates to work with against Iran. There is no coalition at all. And time is not in Israel’s favor.

If Olmert wishes to gain the public’s support, and even admiration, he must quickly build and deploy a military option for destroying Iran’s burgeoning ability to destroy the State of Israel.

Olmert’s international coalition

Today Hamas consolidates its power in Gaza and plans its next moves in Judea and Samaria. Fatah – its main competitor – has collapsed.

Fatah was plunged into a state of organizational shock last month after its US-trained militias surrendered control of Gaza to Hamas and its US-benighted commanders fled the area.

Although with sufficient bribes for its angry followers courtesy of Israel and the US, Fatah may be able to temporarily resuscitate itself (at least until its leaders feel secure enough with the size of their Swiss bank accounts to decamp to Borneo), Hamas’s consolidation of its control over Gaza has nonetheless sealed Fatah’s death warrant.

In the course of its jihadist putsch in Gaza, Hamas took control not only of Fatah’s US- and European-financed military arsenal and the CIA and MI-6 intelligence gathering equipment Fatah was lavished with. It also took control of Fatah’s intelligence files and the personal files of Fatah leaders. This means that Hamas now has complete documentary evidence of Fatah’s corruption; its involvement in terrorism; and its double dealing with the West, with rogue regimes like Iran, and with terror groups like Hizbullah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and al-Qaida.

There can be no doubt that under the tutelage of the Iranian and Syrian intelligence directorates, Hamas will use its treasure trove of information in a manner that will block any move by Fatah to renew its support bases in Palestinian society.

Hamas’s intelligence windfall will similarly prevent Fatah from significantly resisting Hamas’s consolidation of control over Gaza and the expansion of Hamas’s rule to Judea and Samaria.

Two examples of Hamas’s use of information to date suffice to make this point clear. First there is Israel and the US’s favorite Palestinian "straight-shooter" Salam Fayad. Fayad – a former senior official from the terror-linked Arab Bank and the current prime minister of Fatah Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s Judea and Samaria government – served willingly as finance minister in Hamas’s government before the Gaza takeover.

Claiming that Fayad was a personal friend of hers, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ignored her own government’s boycott of the Hamas government to meet with Fayad when he visited Washington in the spring.

Sunday Gaza-based Hamas terrorist and parliamentarian Yahya Musa accused Fayad of corruption. Referring to him as "the head of the thieves," Musa claimed that Fayad is "suspected of embezzling $36 million from the Agricultural Development Company."

Musa also hinted that Fayad has personally overseen the finance of terrorism by stating that he "used to channel public funds to Fatah."

The second example is Hamas’s use of information on Fatah commander Muhammad Dahlan. On June 15, Hamas took control of Dahlan’s palatial residence in Gaza. Hamas claimed it found a suitcase filled with gold, forged Pakistani and US passports and the identification card of murdered IDF border guard Nissim Toledano. The last find is particularly revealing.

Since 1994 both the US and Israel ignored mountains of evidence of Dahlan’s involvement with terrorism. Both governments have clung to their support for Dahlan despite his close relationships with senior Hamas terrorists like Muhammad Deif and his own forces’ direct involvement in the murder of Israelis. The fact that Dahlan had possession of Toledano’s ID card shows just how ill-advised this support for Dahlan has been.
Toledano was kidnapped on his way to his border guard base in 1992. His mutilated body was found near the Dead Sea some days later. Toledano’s abduction and murder became a pivotal event for all that would follow in the region.

Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. In response, the Rabin government deported 417 Hamas terrorists to Lebanon where they were quickly taken under the wing of Hizbullah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. In 1994, in the wake of the Oslo peace process with Fatah, Rabin allowed the 417 to return to Gaza, Judea and Samaria. Once back, they immediately fomented a terror onslaught against Israel the likes of which had never been seen before. It was the returnees who organized the first suicide bombing beginning in April 1994.

The fact that Dahlan was in possession of Toledano’s ID raises the question of Fatah’s involvement in his kidnap and murder and casts a pall over the entire attempt by Israel and the West to make a distinction between Hamas and Fatah terrorists.

There can be no doubt that more information about Fatah leaders (and their business and other connections with Israeli political leaders and others) will follow – as suits the operational interests of Hamas and its Iranian bosses.

In light of this it is clear that Fatah can be of no use to anyone any longer. Indeed, those who work to strengthen Fatah may well be opening themselves to blackmail and public humiliation at a time and place of Hamas’s choosing. So not only is Fatah a dead horse, it is a dead horse rigged to a land mine.

Yet for all that, supporting Fatah and Abbas remains the central goal of Israel’s government. This week Israel handed some $120 million over to Abbas and Fayad. Next week it will release 250 Fatah terrorists from prison. Last week Prime Minister Ehud Olmert embraced Abbas at Sharm e-Sheikh after expounding on Abbas’s greatness with US President George W. Bush at the White House the week before.

Olmert and his colleagues portray Abbas as a central member of a camp of "moderates" which includes the Saudis, the Egyptians and the Jordanians. All these so-called moderates are supposed to form a coalition with Israel, the US and the EU against the "extremists" in Hamas, Iran, Hizbullah and Syria. Unfortunately the camp of moderates is a fiction. Jordan is so frightened of a jihadist coup that its government statements are barely distinguishable from Muslim Brotherhood press releases.

Over the weekend, at Egypt’s invitation, Hamas terror forces deployed along the Gaza border with Egypt. For its part, Saudi Arabia oversaw the formation of the Hamas-Fatah "unity" government last March which subordinated Abbas and Fatah to Khaled Mashaal and Hamas. The Saudis have embraced Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In his maiden visit to the Sunni Islamist capital, the genocidal, messianic Shi’ite Ahmadinejad was kissed, and hugged, and held hands with King Abdullah.

For her part, rather than condition any further US support for Fatah on credible steps to fight Hamas and its own terror networks, Rice is redoubling her pressure on Israel. Rice is planning to use $86 million in US-taxpayer funds to have Lt. Gen Keith Dayton train Fatah forces in Judea and Samaria. That’s the same Gen. Dayton who trained and armed the Fatah forces in Gaza who cut and run rather than fight Hamas last month and so surrendered their US-supplied weapons to Iran’s proxy without a fight.

Additionally, Rice is aggressively pushing her plan to force Israel to negotiate and conclude a treaty with Abbas that would involve an Israeli pledge to surrender Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem to Fatah. This is the same Fatah whose membership is revolting and bolting and the same Abbas who Fatah members are revolting against.

As for the Europeans, newly appointed Quartet envoy Tony Blair is set to begin negotiating with Hamas in his planned visit to Gaza next week.

While like Rice, Blair has repeatedly claimed that the absence of a Palestinian state is the cause of all the troubles in the Muslim world today, a week ago a Blair adviser went a step further. According to media reports, the official advised the Israeli government that as far as Blair is concerned, Israel is responsible for the global jihad because of its refusal to surrender to Palestinian terrorism.

The only reasonable explanation of the Olmert government’s behavior in regards to the Palestinians is that the government hopes that by appeasing the US and the rest of the gang on the Palestinian issue, Israel will receive their cooperation in preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately, here too, all evidence points to the conclusion that Israel has not received anything on the Iran front from any of the relevant actors in exchange for its willingness to let Hamas take over Gaza and continue to finance and arm Fatah terrorists.

Over the weekend Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Foreign Minister met with Iran’s ambassador to the Kingdom and reasserted Saudi Arabian support for Iran’s pursuit of "peaceful nuclear technologies." The Saudis and the Iranians also agreed on the need for Islamic solidarity against the "enemies of Islam."

As for the Egyptians, not only are they, like the Saudis now openly moving to get nuclear capabilities of their own, the Egyptians are responsible for enabling Hamas to take control of Gaza. In spite of repeated Israeli entreaties, Egypt has never lifted a finger to prevent the flow of arms and terror personnel across its border. To the contrary, it facilitated Gaza’s transformation into a jihadist hub. Since last summer’s war, Egypt has moved towards reestablishing full diplomatic relations with the Iranians.

Today both the US and the Europeans are poised to set aside the option of escalating sanctions against Iran for its refusal to end its uranium enrichment activities. Over the weekend, their representatives to the International Atomic Energy Agency debated a plan to take a break from escalating sanctions if Iran agrees to stop expanding its uranium enrichment. That is, the US is presently considering a plan that would allow Iran to continue to enrich uranium without facing effective international sanctions as a result.

The tragedy of this situation is that a coalition could be brought together that would be capable of meeting both the Palestinian and Iranian threats to Israeli and global security. Friends of Israel in Congress, the Bush Administration and the US policy community would be happy to work with Israel to counteract Rice’s failed policies.

Unfortunately, Israeli leaders capable of appreciating and acting on this fact are nowhere to be found in the Olmert government.

Dunkirk in the desert

 

It has become fashionable for politicians of both parties — mostly Democrats, but a few Republicans, as well — to promise the rapid removal of U.S. forces from Iraq. In fact, a sort of bidding war has broken out with would-be presidential candidates outdoing each other to come up with ever-shorter timelines for the abandonment of our positions there. A few examples:

Democratic presidential candidate and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson: " I would withdraw all of our forces, without any residual troops, by the end of this calendar year."

Democratic presidential candidate and former North Carolina Senator John Edwards: " I would continue to draw combat troops out of Iraq over the course of about the next 10 months."

Democratic presidential candidate and New York Senator Hillary Clinton, speaking on the recently defeated Iraq withdrawal bill: " I support the underlying bill [to cut off funding after March 2008]…This is consistent with what I’ve been saying for several years."

Republican presidential candidate and Texas Congressman Ron Paul: " I’d come home. I’d just get out of there."

Even the Bush administration has reportedly begun contingency planning to start a draw-down this fall — irrespective of the circumstances on the ground — in response to an expected domestic political imperative demanding what is euphemistically called a "new strategy" come September.

As it happens, the only way a truly rapid disengagement and redeployment from Iraq can be accomplished would be via a kind of Dunkirk in the desert: a pell-mell rush for the beachhead points of embarkation the object of which would be to extricate as many personnel as possible, probably without regard for their equipment and surely at the expense of their safety.

A report last week on, of all places, National Public Radio made clear why the alternative — an orderly, careful and proper redeployment of most, let alone all U.S. forces in Iraq simply cannot be done any time soon. Friday’s broadcast of NPR’s Morning Edition program featured a story by Pentagon correspondent, Tim Bowman, entitled, "Logistics Mean an Iraq Exit Can’t Happen Quickly." Citing several unnamed current Defense Department officials and a retired officer who managed the last withdrawal from Iraq and Kuwait in 2001 after Operation Desert Storm, Bowman reported that it will take at least ten to fourteen months for the United States fully to withdraw from Iraq.

That, it turns out, is the best case. Consider a few factors that will preclude the sort of hasty pull-out Washington’s armchair generals are promising the public: First, every piece of equipment and machinery has to packed and cleaned. Believe it or not, the cleaning must be sufficiently scrupulous so as to ensure that not a single grain of desert sand is transported out of the Middle East, lest it carry bacteria or diseases back to U.S. shores.

The process of preventing such contamination requires first a thorough power-washing (which can take up to an hour) followed by an inspection of the cleaned gear (which can take considerably more than an hour, depending on the complexity of the equipment). This procedure may have to be done twice, if the tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, helicopters, etc. are to be removed via Kuwait. Naturally, conditions have to permit the cleaned equipment to be removed without getting sandy all over again.

Second, while a larger number of American forces were removed from the region in just seven months after the first Gulf War, part of that redeployment was effected through ports in Saudi Arabia and possibly in Kuwait that would not be available this time around. Huge backups at overwhelmed embarkation facilities would no doubt result if our units in Iraq were obliged to pull out in an unduly compressed period.

Third, and most importantly, under the approach to withdrawal advocated by virtually all Democratic leaders and several prominent Republicans, Americans will surely be retreating under fire. As Tom Bowman put it, Americans "would likely have to fight insurgents overland, all the way to Kuwait." This endeavor, according to one officer quoted by NPR, would require "attack helicopters [and] recon helicopters in the air, possibly tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and, of course, armored Humvees [on the ground]" providing protection for the disengaging forces.

The result would almost certainly be calamitous. It may even be that the United States military would be subjected to the reverse of the notorious "Highway of Death" of Desert Storm, albeit on a smaller scale. Perhaps a few legislators still recall what happened to Iraqi Republican Guard and other units who were fleeing along a fixed road system in Kuwait and came under murderous Coalition fire — until JCS Chairman Colin Powell, unnerved by negative publicity, ordered U.S. forces to cease their assault. There is no likelihood that al Qaeda and other terrorists will be similarly moved to pity our troops should they be forced by politicians at home to make a similar evacuation.

When Americans voted for "change" in Iraq last fall, surely this is not what they had in mind. We can only hope that, if American troops must run the gauntlet while abandoning Iraq in order to meet some politically and arbitrarily imposed deadline, they will be welcomed home in much the same way as were British forces who survived the evacuation known as the "miracle of Dunkirk" in 1940. The warning offered on that occasion by Winston Churchill would be even more fitting for our time: "We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations."

If the prospect of leaving behind chaos and genocide on an unimaginable scale in Iraq is not enough to dissuade our leaders from cutting and running from the fight there, perhaps that of a calamitous and bloody retreat under fire for U.S. forces will do the trick. After all, it will be utterly untenable for any to profess that they "support the troops" if the predictable consequence of their actions will be to subject those troops to a devastating — and strategically catastrophic — Dunkirk in the desert.

James Baker’s disciples

 

Ahead of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s trip to the White House on June 19, the Bush administration is pressuring Israel to endanger itself on at least two fronts.

First, the Americans are pressuring the Olmert government to agree to Palestinian Authority and Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas’s request to bring millions of bullets, thousands of Kalashnikov assault rifles, RPGs, antitank missiles and armored personnel carriers into Gaza from Egypt.

The government has yet to respond to the request. Those who oppose it argue that Fatah forces in Gaza are too weak and incompetent to battle Hamas, and so any weaponry transferred to Fatah militias will likely end up in Hamas’s hands.

This logic is correct, but incomplete. It is true that Fatah forces are unwilling and presumably unable to defeat Hamas forces. But it is also true that Fatah forces use their arms to attack Israel. So even if there was no chance of Hamas laying its hands on the weapons, allowing Fatah to receive them would still endanger Israel.

The same limited logic informs Israel’s strenuous objection to the Pentagon’s intention to sell Saudi Arabia Joint Direct Attack Munition satellite-guided "smart bombs," or JDAMS. The government claims that while it has no quarrel with the Saudis, it fears for the stability of the regime. If the House of Saud falls, Osama bin Laden would get the bombs.

Yet like Fatah, the Saudis aren’t simply vulnerable. They are culpable. In addition to being the creators of al-Qaida and Hamas’s largest financial backers, the Saudis themselves directly threaten Israel.

In direct contravention of their commitment to the US (and the US’s commitment to Israel), the Saudis have deployed F-15 fighter jets at Tabuk air base, located 150 km. from Eilat. On May 13, the Saudi Air Force held an air show at Tabuk for the benefit of King Abdullah and senior princes where the F-15s where ostentatiously displayed.

The timing of the show was interesting. It took place the day before Abdullah hosted US Vice President Richard Cheney at Tabuk.

The Bush administration is not just asking Israel to facilitate the arming of its enemies. It is also placing restrictions on Israel’s ability to arm itself. As The Jerusalem Post reported on Wednesday, the Pentagon has yet to respond to Israel’s request to purchase the F-22 stealth fighter. Moreover, the US seems to be torpedoing Israel’s acquisition of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The Pentagon recently voiced its objection to Israel’s plan to install Israeli technology in the jets that are to be supplied starting in 2014. Israel’s installation of its own electronic warfare systems in its F-16s and F-15s is what has allowed the IAF to maintain its qualitative edge over Arab states that have also purchased the aircraft.

The Adminstration’s display of hostility toward Israel is unfortunately not an aberration. It is the result of a policy shift that occurred immediately after the Republican Party’s defeat in the Congressional elections in November.

After the defeat, the administration embraced former secretary of state James Baker’s foreign policy paradigm, which is based on the belief that it is possible and desirable to reach a stable balance of power in the Middle East.

As Baker sees it, this balance can be reached by forcing Israel to shrink to its "natural" proportions and assisting supposedly moderate and stable states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia to grow into their "natural" proportions. Once the states of the region (including Syria and Iran, which Baker wishes to appease) have settled into their proper proportions, stability will be ensured.

Baker fleshed on his view in the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations that were published immediately after the elections. Although President George W. Bush rejected the ISG’s recommendations, the day after the elections he sacked defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and replaced him with Robert Gates, who served on the ISG. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is a disciple of Baker’s ally, former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft.

The problem with the Baker paradigm is that it has never been borne out by reality. It collapsed during the Cold War, both as the Soviet Union worked tirelessly to destabilize countries allied with the US and when the states of East-Central Europe revolted against the teetering empire and gained their freedom with its collapse.

In the 1990s, Baker’s stability paradigm failed to foresee the post-nationalist movements that swept through Western Europe and the Muslim world, and embraced the Soviet goal of weakening the US. Baker still denies the phenomenon and ignores its policy implications.

Today, the notion that stability is a realistic aim is even more far-fetched. Specifically, the willingness of Muslim secularists to form strategic relations with jihadists and the willingness of Shi’ites to form strategic partnerships with Sunnis was unimaginable 20 years ago. Aside from that, the specter of a nuclear-armed Iran throws a monkey wrench into any thought of regional stability. A look around the region shows just how absurd Baker’s notions truly are.

In Lebanon today, Fatah al-Islam, which is apparently allied with al-Qaida, is fighting the Lebanese army in a bid to bring down the Saniora government at the behest of its sponsor – the secular Ba’athist regime in Damascus. Fatah al-Islam is also aligned with Hizbullah, which shares its goal of bringing down the Lebanese government, and with Iran, which gives the Syrians their marching orders.

This state of affairs is also the name of the game in Iraq, where Iran and Syria support both Muqtada al-Sadr’s Shi’ite Mehdi army and al-Qaida’s Sunni death squads. It repeats itself in Afghanistan, where Iran is arming the Taliban, and in the Palestinian Authority.

Furthermore, the paragons of moderation and stability in Egypt and Saudi Arabia that Baker and his followers are so keen to strengthen are neither stable nor moderate. Both Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Saudi King Abdullah are old men of uncertain health. To "stabilize" their regimes, they wrought unholy alliances with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Wahabis, the only forces in Egyptian and Saudi societies that have not been flattened under their jackboots.

This week, Channel 10 reported that the Bush administration recently informed Israel and the Gulf states that it has no intention of launching military strikes against Iran’s nuclear installations. The Americans explained that they need Iranian assistance in stabilizing Iraq to pave the way for an American withdrawal from the country before Bush leaves office. Under Baker’s regency, the administration apparently now subscribes to the belief that they will be better off out of Iraq and with a nuclear-armed Iran, than in Iraq without a nuclear-armed Iran.

For their part, the Arabs have demonstrated clearly that they do not share the administration’s newfound faith that a nuclear-armed Iran will reach a stable equilibrium in a Bakeresque Middle Eastern balance of powers. Their stated aim to build nuclear reactors is a clear sign that they recognize the danger of a nuclear-armed Iran. The administration’s support for the Arabs’ quest for nuclear reactors makes clear that it is now willing to have a Middle Eastern nuclear arms race.

This brings us back to Israel, which is situated smack in the middle of the regional chaos. How is Israel contending with this threatening state of affairs?

The IDF seems to be contending fairly well, at least with regard to Syria and Lebanon. The IDF’s decision to have television crews film Israeli soldiers fighting in mock Syrian villages this week, like Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi’s announcement that the IDF is prepared to fight on two fronts simultaneously, are signs that the IDF recognizes that its only safe bet is to prepare for all contingencies. Were the IDF to complement these actions with warnings to Iran and operational plans to attack Iran’s nuclear installations and distribute gas masks to the public, the General Staff would go a long way toward proving that it is adopting the only reasonable strategic posture available, given the cards Israel has been dealt.

Yet not only is the IDF not warning Iran, the Olmert government is undermining the army’s correct posture toward Syria and Lebanon. Indeed, on every front, including toward Israel itself, Olmert has himself adopted Baker’s failed paradigm.

Rather than publicly explain that in light of Syria’s position as an Iranian client state with regards to Lebanon, Iraq and Israel, there is nothing for Israel to talk to Syria about, Olmert announced Wednesday that he wishes to open negotiations on an Israeli surrender of the Golan Heights to the Syrians.

The Syrians, for their part, cornered Olmert on Thursday by agreeing to his offer. As Karl Moor and David Rivkin explained in Thursday’s Post, it is not true, as Olmert and his minions claim, that Israel has nothing to lose by negotiating with Syria. Given Israel’s perceived weakness in the wake of last summer’s war and Syria’s perceived strength, speaking to Damascus about an Israeli surrender of the Golan Heights will only encourage Syrian belligerence.

And as with the Syrians, so too with the Palestinians, the Olmert government acts as Baker’s water boy. Rather than waging a rational military campaign to defeat the jihadist front that has seeded itself in Gaza, Olmert issues near daily statements telling the Palestinians that Israel will cause them no harm. He defends this policy by declaiming on the importance of strengthening the "stability" of the Palestinian Authority.

Then there is the daily brown-nosing Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni engage in toward the Egyptians and Saudis. Israel praises both as "moderates" while Egypt vows publicly not to act to stop the transfer of weapons from Sinai to Gaza and the Saudis bankroll Hamas and demand that Israel implement their "peace plan" that calls for Israel’s destruction.

Yet all of this incompetent bumbling pales in comparison to Israel’s weakness toward Iran. Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz’s assertion this week to the Post that he does not "think it is right today to talk about military options" toward Iran because he thinks that sanctions can still convince the mullahs to give up their nuclear ambitions comes dangerously close to an Israeli collapse in the face of an existential threat. The fact that Mofaz made this statement the same week that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that Teheran had crossed the nuclear threshold only exacerbates the perception of Israeli strategic disarray.

Sooner or later the US will pay a price for the Bush administration’s decision to embrace the delusion of stability as its strategic goal. With jihadist forces growing stronger around the globe, if the Americans leave Iraq without victory, there is no doubt that Iraq (and Iran and Syria) will come to them.

But whatever the consequences of America’s behavior for America, the price that Israel will pay for embracing Baker’s myths of stability will be unspeakable.

The long road to victory

The common wisdom in Washington these days is that the Americans will leave Iraq by the end of President George W. Bush’s presidency regardless of the situation on the ground. This view is based on the proposition that Iraq is unwinnable. It has had a devastating impact on the administration’s confidence that it can handle Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Monday’s events brought that impact home starkly. On the one hand, the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad came as the US wages a seemingly last-ditch attempt to defeat the insurgency in Iraq. On the other hand, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s performance at the Natanz nuclear installation where he said, "With great pride, I announce as of today our dear country is among the countries of the world that produces nuclear fuel on an industrial scale," indicated that he, for one, does not believe he has anything to worry about from America.

"Right-thinking" people these days claim that if the US and Britain hadn’t invaded Iraq, everything today would have been perfect. The US would have been loved. The Europeans, Arabs and the UN would be standing on line to support the US in preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

As British commentator Simon Jenkins put it in The Guardian on Tuesday, "If ever [British Prime Minister Tony] Blair hoped to carry his ‘Western values agenda’ on a white charger to the gates of Teheran, that hope vanished in the mire of Iraq."

Yet this is untrue. The US’s difficulties with confronting Iran have little to do with the decision to invade Iraq. Rather, America’s feckless diplomacy toward Iran to date is the result of the administration’s early misunderstanding of Iraq and of Iranian and Arab interests.

In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration identified certain basic guiding realities and missed others. First there was the issue of Arab tyranny. As Bush recalled last September, "For decades, American policy sought to achieve peace in the Middle East by pursuing stability at the expense of liberty. The lack of freedom in that region helped create conditions where anger and resentment grew, and radicalism thrived, and terrorists found willing recruits."

Yet recognizing this basic reality did not lead the administration to adopt appropriate policies. Rather than promote liberty, which at its core revolves around a certain foundational understanding of human dignity, the administration promoted elections – fast elections – in Iraq and throughout the region.

In so doing, the administration placed the cart before the horse, with predictable results. The legacy of tyranny is hatred and dependence. And the values of hatred and dependence were those that were expressed at the ballot boxes in Iraq, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority. In all jihadists, often allied with Iran, were empowered while those that were considered moderates modified their positions in opposition to the US.

The Americans pushed for elections in the hopes of finding a silver bullet that would instantly solve the problem of tyranny in the Arab world. But in their rush, the Americans trampled the very liberal democrats they sought to empower.

These forces, who receive no money from Iran and Saudi Arabia to buy votes, and have no private militias to intimidate voters, couldn’t compete against the likes of the Dawa party in Iraq, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or Fatah and Hamas in the Palestinian Authority.

In Iraq, the one openly liberal party, led by Mithal al-Alousi, won one seat. In the Palestinian elections, all political parties were either directly or indirectly tied to terrorist organizations. And in Egypt, the supposedly liberal Kifaya party one-upped dictator Hosni Mubarak when it demanded to nullify Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel.

By pushing fast elections, the US entrapped itself. It inadvertently empowered its enemies and so was unable to embrace the duly elected governments. In opposing the forces it expended so much energy getting elected, the US was perceived as weak, foolish and hypocritical.

After September 11, Bush explained that the attacks showed that the friend of your enemy is also your enemy. As he put it last September, "America makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror, and those that harbor and support them, because they’re equally guilty of murder."

Yet what Bush failed to note is the converse of that reality: The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend. Here the distinction generally relates to Sunnis and Shi’ites. The administration’s failure to grasp that just because Shi’ites and Sunnis are rivals doesn’t mean that they will join forces with the US to fight one another, or won’t join forces with one another to fight the US, has caused the Americans no end of difficulty.

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration did recognize this truth. In its handling of the Iran-Iraq War, the Reagan administration adopted a policy of dual containment. The Americans helped both sides enough to ensure they could keep fighting, but too little to enable either side to emerge the victor. Rather than believing the fiction that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," the Reagan administration advanced US interests by using their rivalry to weaken both.

Rather than follow its predecessor’s example, the Bush administration clung to the delusion that Shi’ites and Sunnis would ally with the US against one another. This fantasy has confounded the administration in every one of its subsequent initiatives toward Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Palestinians.

In Iraq, for three years the Americans treated Muqtada al-Sadr, Teheran’s man in Baghdad, as a potential ally due to the fact that he too is an enemy of al-Qaida. The delusion only ended finally when Sadr moved to Iran in February ahead of the US surge operation in Baghdad.

The Americans’ treatment of Sadr is similar to its treatment of his state sponsor. Since the fall of Saddam, the Americans have repeated the mantra that Iran and Syria share America’s interest in bringing stability to Iraq because the current instability destabilizes them.

While it is true that the chaos in Iraq breeds instability in Syria and Iran, it does not follow that the Iranians and Syrians are interested in ending it.

Since Iran and Syria view the US as their enemy, their ideal scenario is for the US to bleed in Iraq while propping up a weak Shi’ite government that has no inclination or ability to threaten them. That is, for Iran and Syria, the current situation in Iraq aligns perfectly with their interests (which explains why they are working so diligently to maintain it).

As for the Arab world, the administration believes that since the Arabs oppose Iran’s quest to become a regional nuclear power, they will help the US both in stabilizing Iraq and in preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Here too, the administration confuses common interests with common agendas. The fact that the Arabs share common interests with the US does not make them allies. As a young Saudi imam put it this week to The Wall Street Journal, "We are waiting for the time to attack [the US]. Youth feel happy when the Taliban takes a town or when a helicopter comes down, killing Americans in Iraq. It is a very dangerous situation for the US in the whole Muslim world."

The fruits of America’s disorientation were revealed in last month’s three Saudi summits: the Hamas-Fatah summit, the King Abdullah-Ahmadinejad summit and the Arab League-Iranian summit.

Since last summer’s war between Israel and Hizbullah and more intensively since the publication of the Baker-Hamilton Commission report on Iraq last November, the Bush administration has been advancing a vision of an anti-Iranian Arab coalition which will join forces with America to confront and defeat Teheran.

There has been no rational basis for this view since the Saudis, Egyptians and Jordanians responded last year to Iran’s nuclear advances by announcing that they will get their own nukes. But it took last month’s diplomatic cavalcade in Saudi Arabia to finally destroy the fantasy.

First there was the Hamas-Fatah summit in Mecca where Abdullah undermined the US by promising to pay Hamas terrorists a billion dollars in exchange for their agreement to let Fatah terrorists be their junior partners in government.

If that wasn’t sufficient proof that Abdullah is not a friend, there was his warm and fuzzy love-fest with Ahmadinejad.

Their meeting shocked Israeli, American and British intelligence services, who perceived it as the culmination of a progressive Saudi estrangement from the US. It was preceded by a massive expansion of Saudi ties with China and Russia.

Any notion that the US could expect assistance from the Arabs in contending with Iran disintegrated a week later when Abdullah and Mubarak enthusiastically signed onto the Arab League and Iranian statement referring to the US presence in Iraq as an "illegal occupation."

Yet for all their overt anti-Americanism and competition with Iran to see who can destroy Israel first, the Arabs have not become Iran’s allies. They do not want Iran to win its war against America. They want to play Iran and the US against one another. That is, the Arabs are implementing the double containment strategy that the US should have adopted toward them.

The fact of the matter is that the Americans are capable of learning from their mistakes. This week, the commander of US forces in Iraq General David Petraeus published a letter to the Iraqi people ahead of the fourth anniversary of Baghdad’s fall. In it, he discussed the anti-American rallies that Sadr organized from Iran.

As Petraeus put it, "On this April 9th, some Iraqis reportedly may demonstrate against the coalition force presence in Iraq. That is their right in the new Iraq. It would only be fair, however, to note that they will be able to exercise that right because coalition forces liberated them from a tyrannical, barbaric regime that never would have permitted such freedom of expression."

In the end, the protests were ill attended. Now Sadr is whining that he will pull his support for the government as US forces destroy his militia in Diwaniyah and daily release information about Iranian support for the insurgency.

The success the US is now experiencing in Iraq is the result of a process of identifying and correcting mistakes. If such learning could take place regarding the US’s regional strategy, there is every reason to believe that it will contend successfully with Iran and the Arab world. But to correct mistakes it is first necessary to recognize them.

The US is not failing to contend with Iran because it went to war in Iraq. It is failing because it is implementing policies that prefer imaginary silver bullets to real solutions over real problems.

There are no shortcuts in this war. But victory is still waiting at the end of the long and difficult road.

Condi’s embrace of jihadist ‘peace’

In an open act of war, Iran Friday kidnapped 15 British soldiers in the Persian Gulf. Iran’s act of aggression occurred just as the British voted in favor of a UN Security Council resolution imposing increased sanctions against Teheran for its illicit nuclear weapons program.

Several theories have been raised to explain Iran’s behavior. Some say that the Iranians acted against the British in the hope that Britain would respond by abandoning its alliance with the US and swiftly pulling its forces out of Iraq.

Another theory is that in kidnapping the sailors the Iranians are seeking to reenact their ploy from last summer. Then, Iran ordered its Lebanese proxy Hizbullah to kidnap IDF soldiers in order to divert the international community’s attention away from Iran’s nuclear program. As is the case with the British servicemen, so last summer’s attack on the IDF took place as the Security Council was expected to convene and discuss sanctions against Iran for its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Yet another theory has it that Iran kidnapped the sailors to use as a bargaining chip to force the US military to release Iranian operatives who the US has arrested in Iraq in recent months. Whatever the case may be, it is absolutely clear that the Iranians intentionally fomented this international crisis with the expectation that their aggression would in some way be rewarded.

Against this backdrop, and given the stakes involved, it could have been expected that the US and its allies would be concentrating their attention on how to weaken Iran and its terror proxies and curtail Iran’s ability to acquire a nuclear arsenal. But, alas, the US is doing just the opposite.

The Iranians acted as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was en route to the region. Since Friday, Rice has shuttled between Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan, and is on her way to Saudi Arabia. She is not working to coordinate moves to check Iran’s increasing bellicosity. Rather, Rice is laboring to empower Teheran’s terrorist allies in Hamas, the Islamic Jihad and Fatah. This she does by promoting the so-called Arab peace plan, which demands that Israel agree to dangerous and strategically catastrophic concessions to the Palestinian terrorist government.

In behaving thus, Rice is walking in the well-worn footsteps of her predecessors. Indeed, it seems almost axiomatic that when the going gets tough for US administrations, administration officials get tough on Israel.

After the Republicans won control of the Congress in 1994, then president Bill Clinton was hard-pressed to advance his domestic agenda. And so Clinton – who had almost no interest in foreign policy in his opening years of office – turned his attention to Israel and the so-called peace process, in which Israel was expected to give land, arms and legitimacy to the PLO in exchange for terrorism.

Clinton’s penchant for forcing Israeli concessions to the PLO in the name of peace became more pronounced as things became more difficult for him during his impeachment hearings in 1998. As the House of Representatives poised to vote on articles of impeachment, Clinton twisted then prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s arm until he signed the Wye Plantation memorandum, in which Israel pledged to transfer wide swathes of Judea and Samaria to Yasser Arafat’s terrorist government.

Clinton forced Netanyahu’s hand in spite of the fact that, by 1998, it was clear that Arafat was actively enabling Hamas and Islamic Jihad to carry out terror attacks against Israel and indoctrinating Palestinian society to wage jihad for Israel’s destruction.

But negotiating with Netanyahu was inconvenient. Netanyahu refused to implement the Wye agreement in light of Arafat’s support for terrorism and forced Clinton to acknowledge that Arafat was doing nothing to combat terror. Unhappy with this state of affairs, Clinton set out to overthrow Netanyahu’s government.

In an act of unmitigated contempt for Israeli democracy and electoral laws, Clinton sent his own election advisers James Carville, Stanley Greenberg and Robert Schrum to Israel to run Labor party leader Ehud Barak’s campaign in the 1999 elections.

The culmination of Clinton’s campaign was the failed Camp David summit in July 2000. There, and in subsequent desperate discussions with Arafat at Taba, Barak agreed to hand over the Temple Mount to Arafat in addition to Gaza, Judea, Samaria and a pile of money.

Israel paid dearly for Barak and Clinton’s behavior. In the Palestinian jihad that followed Arafat’s rejection of Barak and Clinton’s plaintive offers, more than 1,000 Israelis were murdered – more than 70 percent of whom were civilians. Israel’s international standing fell to all-time lows as global anti-Semitism rose to levels unseen since the Holocaust.

America too, paid dearly for Clinton’s behavior. Rather than pay attention to the burgeoning terror nexus which had placed the US directly in its crosshairs – in 1993 at the World Trade Center; in 1996 at the Khobar Towers; in 1998 at the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; and in 2000 at the USS Cole – Clinton remained scope-locked on the so-called peace process.

Rather than acknowledge the existence and threat of the global jihad to US national security, Clinton pressured the global jihad’s primary victim – Israel – into transferring its heartland and capital to the godfather of modern terrorism.

But while Israel and America bled, Clinton himself paid no price for his behavior. Rather than be blamed for the war he contributed so richly to enabling, Clinton is upheld as a hero at best, or at worst a tragic figure who devoted his presidency to the cause of peace.

Today, Rice’s newfound mania for peacemaking comes when local conditions

negate any possibility of peace. Just last month the Saudis promised the Palestinians a billion dollars and so paved the way for

the Mecca accord, where the Iranian-sponsored Fatah terror group surrendered to the Iranian-sponsored Hamas terror group. In so acting, the Saudis brought about the formation of a Palestinian government openly committed to the use of terrorism as a tool to ensure Israel’s destruction.

International conditions also ensure that Rice’s peacemaking will fail to make peace. Regionally, Iran ups the ante daily against the US-led coalition in Iraq. Domestically, the Democratic-controlled Congress works daily to prevent the US from fighting its enemies. Globally, states as far-flung as Russia, China and Venezuela make deals with terror governments to check US power.

The program that Rice has come to the region to advance does not even have the benefit of a peaceful facade. The Palestinians make clear every single day that they do not and will not accept Israel’s right to exist in any borders, and that they will not work to combat terrorism against Israel. The Arab League, and its member states, for their part, have repeatedly announced that they will brook no change in their "peace" plan which, if implemented will bring about Israel’s rapid destruction.

In behaving as she does, Rice, like Clinton before her, is aided by a politically weak and strategically incompetent Israeli government that is willing to sacrifice Israel’s long-term security for the benefit of prime-time photo opportunities with bigwig American leaders and Arab potentates.

Sunday, the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government has announced that it is open to negotiating on the basis of the Arab plan. As one government official told The Jerusalem Post, Israel will "not dismiss" the plan.

This is Israel’s position in spite of the fact that the Arab plan calls for Israel to surrender east, north and south Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and the Golan Heights to Hamas and Syria and for Israel to permit four to five million hostile, foreign-born Arabs posing as Palestinian "refugees" to immigrate to its truncated territory. As the "peace" plan makes clear, all these suicidal Israeli moves must come before the Arab states will be willing to have "regular" (whatever that means) relations with the indefensible, overrun Jewish state.

Commenting on the government’s position, the official explained, "We would not reject this out of hand."

It is not surprising that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni are behaving in this manner. After all, these are the same leaders who brought about Israel’s defeat in Lebanon in last summer’s war at the hands of Iran’s Hizbullah proxy army. Last summer, Olmert followed Livni’s lead in rejecting military victory as an option. Heeding Livni’s unwise, defeatist counsel, Olmert postponed the essential ground offensive in south Lebanon until it was too late to make a difference and instead opted for a negotiated cease-fire.

As is the case with the Arab "peace" plan, the cease-fire Israel enthusiastically acceded to last summer was strategically disastrous for the country. UN Security Council Resolution 1701 placed Israel on the same plane as the illegal Hizbullah terrorist organization; prevents Israel from taking steps to defend itself; does not require the safe return of IDF hostages Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser; enables Hizbullah to rearm and reassert its control over south Lebanon; and lets Hizbullah’s state sponsors Syria and Iran completely off the hook for their central role in Hizbullah’s illegal war against the Jewish state.

Recent history shows that the US and Israel will both pay heavily for the opportunism of our weak political leaders. It can only be hoped that the Israeli and American people have learned enough from our experiences to demand that our leaders stop their reckless behavior before the price of their cowardice and perfidy become unbearable.

Your money and your life

Terror’s united front:  Fatah and Hamas have teamed up to take the fight to Israel

Anxiety and anticipation swirled through the air in the days preceding Saturday’s swearing-in ceremony for the new Hamas-Fatah terror government in the Palestinian Authority.

Since Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah brokered the Fatah terror group’s surrender to the Hamas terror group last month, everyone who was anyone whispered the same questions: How would the terrorists finesse the existence of Israel in a government platform that refuses to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state? What would the government of, by and for terrorists say about terrorism? How would it elide the issue of the four-to-five million so-called Palestinian Arab refugees they want to settle in Tel Aviv and Haifa?

Most importantly, everyone wanted to know how the Palestinian terrorist unity government would approach the so-called peace process, wherein Palestinian terrorists promise Israel peace but never deliver, while Israel gives them land, guns, money and international legitimacy. How would they treat the writ of faith that stipulates the world will be a safe and peaceful place if only the Jews hand Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem and a pile of cash over to Hamas-Fatah?

Would they meet the Quartet’s lip-service requirements by denouncing violence, acknowledging Israel’s existence and accepting the Israel-PLO agreements that have brought us the current paradise of peace to the Promised Land?

Sadly for the peace processors, the answers to all the above questions was no. The Palestinians, under the Hamas-Fatah government, have turned their backs on their supporters on the Israeli Left, in Europe and the State Department. The platform of their government is antithetical to everything the Israeli Left, the EU and the State Department claim to stand for.

Instead of accepting the legitimacy of Israel, the new government platform rejects Israel’s right to exist. And as PA chairman and Fatah terror chief Mahmoud Abbas explained, the so-called "right of return," or unlimited immigration of millions of foreign Arabs to the State of Israel – which would lead to the destruction of Israel – is the non-negotiable position of the entire Hamas-Fatah terror government.

Rather than renounce violence, Hamas terror boss and PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh stated clearly on Saturday that his Hamas-Fatah government supports "all forms of resistance." Abbas lackey, legislator, Palestinian negotiator and corrupt Fatah businessman Nabil Shaath echoed this point on behalf of Fatah. Defending the terror government’s support for terrorism, Shaath said, "The right to resist the occupation is a legitimate right… This should not stop us from seeking a hudna [temporary truce], particularly if it’s in the interest of the Palestinians. Meanwhile, we won’t give up our right to resist."

Indeed, the government platform says that "resistance" can only be halted upon realization of the "right of return." As to peace, the unity deal between Fatah and Hamas gives no quarter to the peace-mongers. While the government’s platform authorizes Abbas to negotiate with Israel, Haniyeh explained that any agreement recognizing a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza must not hinder the rights of the Palestinians to continue "liberating" the rest of Palestine, i.e., Israel.

Faced with complete rejection of their minimal conditions, the Israeli Left, the Europeans and the State Department took the only step they could possibly take: They ignored everything the Palestinians said and did. Confronted by the Palestinians’ absolute commitment to terror and extortion, they have closed their eyes and moved to embrace the fantasy that there is a deal to be made with the Palestinians.

For its part, the State Department, while stipulating that it won’t speak to Hamas, is more than happy to speak with Fatah ministers who flack for Hamas. The Americans’ favorite terror financier and recycled PA Finance Minister Salam Fayad will be visiting Washington later in the week. In one of his most recent exploits, Fayad oversaw the disappearance of $100 million in tax revenue that Israel transferred to Abbas’s office.

The Palestinians could not be clearer about their demands. Having made no steps toward Israel or even their own devoted supporters, they want Israel to stop defending itself, and they want Israel and the rest of the world to give them lots of money. They want the former so that they can attack Israel without fear. They want the latter because, dedicated as they are to Israel’s destruction, they are thoroughly uninterested in developing their own society and economy into anything remotely resembling a viable state. Indeed, they are incapable of even feeding their own people. And so they need us to do it for them, even as they wage war against us.

While all of this is quite infuriating, there is nothing new in the actions of any of the concerned parties this week. Indeed, a reading of 60-year-old documents shows that little of substance has changed since Palestinian Arabs first resorted to terror to foil the emergence of a Jewish state.

The 1939 British White Paper reserved its "unqualified condemnation" for "methods employed by Arab terrorists against fellow Arabs and Jews alike," only to explain that "it cannot be denied" that the only proper response to Arab terror was to cut off Jewish immigration and thereby doom European Jewry to its fate. The only thing the British wanted Jews around for was to hold up "the whole of the financial and economic system of Palestine."

Needless to say, Palestinian Arabs pocketed the concession and continued attacks as the British plan was too "pro-Jewish." In September 1948, in the midst of the War of Independence, which came as the Arab world and the Palestinian Arabs launched a war of extermination against Israel rather than accept the UN’s partition of the country, the UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte explained that without "economic union" between the Arabs and the Jews the plan was anyway doomed to failure because of the "justifiable doubts concerning the economic viability of the proposed Arab state."

The Palestinian Arabs failed to establish their own state at the time due to their "unwillingness to undertake any step which would suggest even tacit acceptance of partition, and by their insistence on a unitary State in Palestine."

Then as now, there was no viable Palestinian Arab state because the Palestinians were so dedicated to destroying Israel that they could not spare the time or interest to support themselves. Then, as now, the so-called international community insisted on ignoring or apologizing for the genocidal bellicosity of Palestinian Arab nationalism, while attempting to appease the Palestinians with money and the conferral of international support and legitimacy for the cause of Israel’s disembowelment.

Thoe only thing that can be done in the face of this historically consistent depravity is to finally declare that the jig is up. Those who support recognizing all or part of the Hamas-Fatah terror government are in breach of international law and of UN Security Council Resolution 1373, which bars member states from financing terrorists and those giving them safe harbor.

There is no peace process, only a war process. And if we do not recognize this fact and fight, we shall soon begin to bury more innocents whose lives will be sacrificed because we were too stubborn to acknowledge reality.

Israel’s man in Mecca

The terror twins: Iran and Saudi Arabia bankroll Islamic extremism and conspire against Israel. AP photo.

Israel’s man in Mecca is at it again. Five years ago, for the first time, the Palestinians were beginning to feel diplomatic pressure. In January 2002, the IDF’s interception of the Gaza-bound Karine-A Iranian weapons ship in the Red Sea exposed the close relationship that Fatah terror chief and Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat had developed with the mullahs in Teheran. In February 2002, a little-known al-Qaida terrorist by the name of Abu Musab Zarqawi, who had set up shop in Iran after fleeing US forces in Afghanistan dispatched three Palestinian terrorists to Israel to conduct terror operations. The men were arrested en route in Turkey.

By February and March 2002, Israel had accumulated and disseminated a critical mass of evidence demonstrating that the Palestinian jihad against Israel was being massively funded by the same states that were funding al-Qaida. Israel had also shown that far from being interested in peace or in combating terror, Arafat, his official PA militias, and his Fatah terror group were directing the jihad.

With the foreign-funded Palestinian terror machine on the verge of being delegitimized, something had to be done to change the subject.

Enter Saudi Arabia.

As one of the PA’s chief terror financiers; one of the epicenters of jihadist propaganda and recruitment; and the Arab state with the most influence over the Bush administration, the Saudis had an interest in preventing the US from acting on the knowledge that there is no difference between al-Qaida and Hamas or between the PA and the Taliban-led regime in Afghanistan.

And so, then crown-prince, (and current King) Abdullah invited The New York Time’s in-house peace-processor Tom Friedman to Riyadh for dinner. After serving his guest the customary royal meal of freshly slaughtered lamb and sticky rice, Abdullah informed Friedman that if Israel weren’t so insistent on defending its citizens from murder, he would introduce a peace plan he happened to have sitting in his desk already.

That plan was first fully enunciated at the Arab League Summit in Beirut on March 27, 2002. The day was a watershed day. In Netanya, 30 Jews were murdered at the Park Hotel by a jihadist suicide bomber while celebrating the Pessah Seder. The massacre caused the Sharon government to finally launch its limited counter-terror offensive – Operation Defensive Shield – in Judea and Samaria after more than a year of stalling.

On March 27, 2002, two conferences convened in Beirut. In the first conference, terror masters from Hizbullah, al-Qaida, Hamas, Fatah, and Islamic Jihad convened to discuss collaboration and strategy. At the second conference, the leaders of the Arab League agreed to accept the Saudi initiative.

As published the next day, the Saudi plan includes two stages. In the first stage, Israel divests itself of defensible borders by surrendering the Golan Heights, Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria. It also allows itself to become inundated with millions of hostile foreign-born Arabs who call themselves Palestinian refugees.

After Israel completes these tasks, the Arab world will agree to sign peace agreements with Israel and have "normal," (but not diplomatic), relations with the indefensible Jewish state. Given that it was acceded to by such terror states as Syria, Libya, Sudan and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, it should surprise no one that the Saudi plan included no mention of the need to end terrorism, incitement or jihadist indoctrination and violence in its pledge to have normal ties with Israel.

While the international media and the leftist Israeli media greeted the Saudi plan enthusiastically, then prime minister Ariel Sharon did everything he could to discredit the initiative. Sharon understood that it was a tactical ploy to delegitimize Israel’s military campaign against the Palestinian jihad and to rebuild the legitimacy of the PA.

From a strategic vantage point, both Sharon and then foreign minister Shimon Peres made it clear that Israel did not accept the Arab view that Israel must surrender all the lands it gained control of in the Six Day War as a precondition for peace. That is, both Sharon and Peres were quick to point out that the plan itself, if implemented by Israel would be a strategic catastrophe for the Jewish state and was therefore unacceptable as a basis for negotiations.

Then too, the Sharon government rejected the sequencing of events, with Israel giving up the store in exchange for vague, unverifiable commitments to an unclear peace sometime down the road. Indeed, President Moshe Katsav invited then crowned-prince Abdullah to visit Israel as a means of calling the Saudi bluff. As Katsav put it, "assuming that the Crown Prince is interested in promoting [his peace plan], the most natural way to do this is by meeting the Israeli government."

With Israel’s rejection of the plan, and with the documents the IDF secured during Operation Defensive Shield proving definitively that Arafat was a terrorist, the Saudi plan was laid to the side. But now, five years later, Saudi Arabia is again placing it on the international agenda.

Saudi Arabia’s motivations today are as clear as they were five years ago. Then, in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Saudis wanted to block the US from recognizing that the jihad against Israel is part and parcel of the global jihad against the US and the rest of the free world. Today, against the backdrop of the Iranian nuclear threat – which also makes clear that the war against Israel is simply a front in the larger jihad – the Saudis again wish to convince the Americans not to view Israel as a strategic ally.

The Saudis reportedly raised President George W. Bush’s hackles by mediating last month’s Mecca agreement between Hamas and Fatah which transformed the Iranian and Saudi-financed Fatah terror group into a junior partner in the Iranian and Saudi-financed Hamas terror group’s government. The Saudis, like the Palestinians wish for the West to renew its underwriting of the PA in spite of the fact that it no longer makes any bones about being a terror regime.

The easiest way to do that is to pretend that there is a possibility of renewing the "peace process" by putting a deal on the table that Israel will have to reject. With Israel rejecting "peace plans," the Saudis and their counterparts in the Arab League will say that there is no distinction between peace rejecting Israel and peace rejecting Hamas and therefore the West – and the US in particular – should recognize Hamas and give it lots of money.

So in resubmitting their "peace plan," the Saudis are simply acting as they have always acted – as Israel’s enemy and as a country dedicated to preventing the US from basing its Middle East policy on a recognition of the basic fact that Arab and Islamic hostility towards the US stems from the same source as Arab and Islamic hostility towards Israel.

What is new in the current iteration of the Saudi game is Israel’s response. Rather than reject the plan as their predecessors did, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni are embracing it as a basis for negotiations while applauding the Saudis for their "positive" role in the region.

In press interviews last week, Livni said that Israel’s only real quibble is that the Saudi plan stipulates that Israel has to allow millions of hostile foreign Arabs to move here. If they would just fix that one little thing, which she refers to as "an absolute red line," (apparently as opposed to a flexible red line), then we could start getting down to business.

Aside from that, Livni said that the plan "is positive in my view." As she put it, "The initiative does discuss the 1967 lines, but it would be great if we were in a position where the conflict was a border dispute."

For his part, not only does Olmert consider the Saudi plan to be a positive development, according to Haaretz, Olmert so values Saudi Arabia that he decided not to reject the Mecca deal for fear that doing so would upset his friends in Riyadh.

Olmert’s aversion to annoying Riyadh reportedly stems from his desire to keep the Saudis on board in opposing Iran’s nuclear weapons program. If this is true, then Olmert is as much of a fool as Livni, who claims to truly believe that the Saudi plan can be the basis for negotiations.

In Olmert’s case, he apparently has failed to understand that an Iranian nuclear bomb will imperil Saudi Arabia regardless of its impact on Israel. The Saudis would have to oppose Iran’s nuclear program even if Israel were to destroy the PA and send its leaders – from Hamas and Fatah alike – packing to Mecca. Israel doesn’t have to pay anything for Saudi support of actions to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations.

So it is possible that Olmert and Livni are supporting the Saudis because they are obtuse. It is equally possible that they are using the Saudi plan as a diversion to shift public attention away from the fact that they led the country to defeat in the war against Iran’s Lebanese proxy last summer and that due to their continued incompetence, Israel currently faces the prospect of a new war starting at any moment.

Whatever the cause of their support for the Saudis, that support is but another sign that they are incompetent to lead the country.