[Peace-discuss] Iran in the crosshairs?

[C. G. Estabrook]

This seems backwards. The USG doesn't care what Israel does with the 
Palestinians, with the important proviso that no part of Palestine should become 
a base for opposition of the general US control of the Middle East (hence the 
rejection of Hamas for "terrorism" = resistance to US domination).

So the US and Israel have for a generation rejected the world-wide consensus in 
favor of a two-state solution.  But now the US (in both the Bush and Obama 
administrations) and elements within Israel (including Yisrael Beiteinu) are 
supporting a Palestinian state(let) on the basis that it be a sort of Indian 
reservation for Palestinians, under Israeli control. They just have to find a 
Palestinian (probably Abbas) to act as a trustee/jailer for the Palestinians.

But Iran's cooperation with the US in regard to both Afghanistan and Iraq is far 
more important to the US than what happens to the Palestinians. That's what 
worries the Netanyahu government so much, and why they keep rattling the saber 
against Iran so loudly. They keep calling in their markers in the Congress and 
elsewhere, because they're worried that the Obamans have decided that Iran can 
do them more good in their general program of control of the Middle East (the 
"diplomatic revolution") than Israel can.

It's an unstable situation. In a similar impasse a generation ago, the Israelis 
kept warning Washington that they could "go mad" -- e.g., they had nuclear 
weapons that could reach the USSR...  --CGE


Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> Note especially the interesting 4th paragraph. ---mkb ... /There appears to
> be also an American effort to link an operation against Iran with a more
> favorable approach by Israel to peace with the Palestinians. An article in
> Yedioth Ahronoth last week suggested that the United States is hinting that
> its willingness to attack Iran (or permit Israel to do so) will be directly
> related to the Netanyahu government's flexibility on issues such as
> evacuating settlements, pullbacks from the West Bank and progress on a peace
> accord with the Palestinian Authority. /