[GJM] Fw: [globalnetnews-summary] Bush's Middle East policy in tatters

[mary rose]

FYI and consideration.

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Sent: Friday, May 23, 2008 8:27 PM
Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] Bush's Middle East policy in tatters

"it is not that oil is becoming more expensive, but the dollar is becoming 
cheaper."


http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JE21Ak02.html

Bush's Middle East policy in tatters

The George W Bush administration's failure in rolling back Syrian and 
Iranian influence in Lebanon pales in comparison with the withering away of 
its Arab-Israeli "peace process". Time and again during Bush's recent Middle 
East tour, what emerged was the palpable sense that the US has been all but 
marginalized from a new Middle East that is taking shape. And now China, 
too, has appeared on the region's chessboard. - M K Bhadrakumar (May 20, 
'08)

Bush's Middle East policy in tatters
By M K Bhadrakumar

"They [Arab leaders] have stopped taking their instructions from Islam, they 
have decided that peace with the Zionists is their strategic option, so damn 
their decision." - Osama bin Laden, audio message, May 18

Last Tuesday, while United States President George W Bush was setting out 
from Washington on a five-day tour of the Middle East, Iran's semi-official 
Fars news agency quoted Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad as hinting that 
Tehran might consider a cut in oil exports. Of course, Iranian Oil Minister 
Gholamhossein Nozari quickly clarified that Tehran was only reviewing its 
exports



and here, too, a decision was to be taken on a possible increase or 
decrease.

Neither Ahmadinejad nor Nozari said anything like Iran was reviewing oil 
output as such (which exceeds 4.2 million barrels per day, the highest level 
since the 1979 Islamic revolution). But US oil prices went into a tizzy 
nonetheless and hit a record high of US$126 per barrel by the time Bush 
landed in the Persian Gulf region.

Bush was expected to press the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries 
(OPEC) for an early meet to raise oil production. (OPEC is scheduled to next 
meet in September to decide on its oil output policy.) Stephen Hadley, the 
US national security advisor, was on record that Bush would tell Saudi King 
Abdullah that the oil-exporting countries should regard it to be in their 
self-interest to "take into account the economic health of their customers 
who pay these prices". In the event, when they met on Friday, Bush found 
that the Saudi king was not to be persuaded.

Meanwhile, Nozari was back on stage. He told Fars news agency, "I believe 
there is no need for an [emergency] OPEC meeting. Why should there be this 
meeting when oil prices go up? The OPEC members are currently utilizing 
their full capacity and are supplying the market ... With oil at US$126, it 
is not wise for those with oil not to supply it." Nozari then added, "I 
believe it is not that oil is becoming more expensive, but the dollar is 
becoming cheaper."

It would have been unthinkable five or six years ago that a visiting US 
president would receive such an open rebuff in the Middle East. Last 
weekend's exchanges revealed the extent of decline in the US's dominance of 
the Middle East through the present Bush administration. No doubt, oil lies 
at the very center of the decline of the American dominion. The cascading 
rise in oil prices has led to a massive transfer of resources to the energy 
exporting countries. Iran is one principal beneficiary.

The huge accumulation of wealth enables Iran to exert influence regionally 
and ensure there is practically nothing the US can do to stop its rise as a 
regional power. Goldman Sachs in a report on Friday predicted oil would 
further jump to a level of $140 by July. "The near-term outlook for oil 
prices continues to be bullish," Goldman said. Investors are flocking to the 
oil market as a hedge against the fall in the value of the dollar. The Wall 
Street Journal has reported that at the moment the Iranians hold about 25 
million barrels - about twice the quantum of the US's daily imports - of 
heavy crude in offshore tankers in the Persian Gulf.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov underscored these realities of the 
new regional order when he called on the big powers recently to "put 
concrete proposals on the table guaranteeing the security of Iran and 
ensuring Iran a worthy, equal place in talks on resolving all problems in 
the Near and Middle East."

Lavrov is not alone in doing some fast-forward thinking. US specialists also 
realize the need for new thinking regarding the shaping of a nuclear Iran. 
Essentially, it boils down to reflecting the limits of American power. A 
leading US expert on Iran, Ray Takeyh a senior fellow at the influential 
Council on Foreign Relations, took the bull by the horns when he suggested 
recently that the time had come for the US to "concede to Iranian indigenous 
enrichment capability of considerable size" and to concentrate instead on 
ways and means to make certain that "untoward activities" do not take place 
within the perimeters of its nuclear infrastructure.

Takeyh wrote last week while Bush was in Iran's neighborhood, "Iran has an 
elaborate nuclear apparatus and is enriching uranium. It is impossible to 
turn the clock back. Instead of reviving an incentive package rejected long 
ago by Iran or issuing calls for military retribution that worry no one in 
the country's hierarchy, the United States and its European allies would be 
wise to negotiate an arrangement that would meet at least some of their 
demands."

True, oil and nuclear proliferation make a serious mix. But they form only 
one facet of the breakdown of the Bush administration's Iran strategy. The 
breakdown is comprehensive. During his tour, Bush kept trying to secure 
support for his containment policy toward Iran. However, the regional 
countries remain circumspect. Iraq's Arab neighbors refuse to get involved 
in the quagmire in that country despite their constant wailing that Iranian 
influence in Iraq has reached an intolerable level. They won't allow 
themselves being lined up with any further efforts by the Bush 
administration to confront Iran. While criticizing Iran in private to their 
American interlocutors and urging US counter-measures, they hedge their 
bets, factoring that the next US president might well engage Iran in 
unconditional talks.

The developments in Lebanon have further exposed that the Bush 
administration has no effective plan for coping. If the Washington-based 
newsletter Counterpunch is to be believed, a pre-planned Israeli 
intervention (with US acquiescence) in Lebanon during the recent fighting 
had to be called off at the last minute on the basis of intelligence that 
Hezbollah would massively retaliate. In the view of the US intelligence 
community, Tel Aviv would have been subject to "approximately 600 Hezbollah 
rockets in the first 24 hours in retaliation".

Counterpunch says the Bush administration developed cold feet after it 
"initially green-lighted" plans regarding Israeli military intervention on 
the side of the US-backed militias. "The Hezbollah rout of the militias in 
West Beirut plus the fear of retaliation on Tel Aviv, forced cancelation of 
the supportive [Israeli] attack."

Unsurprisingly, there is much anger and bitterness among Lebanese warlords 
that they were let down by the Bush administration. Prime Minister Fuad 
al-Siniora wanted to resign and the Saudis had to dissuade him from doing 
so. The result is plain to see. The political balance has shifted in favor 
of the Hezbollah and the pro-West militias have been humiliated. Most 
important, an improbable alliance formed between the Hezbollah and the 
Lebanese army (which the Bush administration assisted to the tune of $400 
million in the past two-year period).

The regional implications are equally significant. Saudi Arabia and Egypt 
are backing Arab League mediation efforts, distancing themselves from the US 
denunciations of Iran and Syria. The two Arab heavyweights would be uneasy 
about the lengthening shadows of Iranian influence on Lebanon, but they 
realize at the same time that Iran is a regional power with which they need 
to come to terms.

To quote well-known British author and Middle East scholar Patrick Seale, 
"The Arab Gulf States in particular trade briskly with Iran and are home to 
a large Iranian population. They do not want to isolate Iran or undermine 
its economy, as the United States and Israel would like them to do. It seems 
clear that greater understanding and confidence between Saudi Arabia and 
Egypt on the one hand and Iran and Syria on the other - free from US and 
Israeli interference - would do much to ease Lebanon's path to peace and 
security."

In sum, the Bush administration has no Plan B on Lebanon, either. The Arab 
League mediation coolly ignored Washington's keenness to open a Lebanon file 
in the United Nations Security Council and to pillory Syria and Iran. All 
that the US officials could do was to keep mumbling skepticism concerning 
the prospects of the intra-Lebanese talks in Doha under the Arab League.

However, the US's failure in rolling back Syrian and Iranian influence in 
Lebanon pales in comparison with the withering away of the US-sponsored 
Arab-Israeli "peace process". The latter hung like an albatross's cross on 
Bush's Middle East tour. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' credibility 
has greatly suffered; Fatah has been eliminated from Gaza; Hamas is 
significantly gaining ground in the West Bank after its consolidation in 
Gaza. Thus, there were no takers when Bush told the Arab audience in Sharm 
el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Friday, "All nations in the region must stand together 
in confronting Hamas, which is attempting to undermine efforts at peace with 
continued acts of terror and violence."

The Arabs knew that at any rate, there is an air of unreality in Bush's 
anti-Hamas rhetoric. Hamas had announced only a couple of days ago that it 
would send a delegation to Egypt on Monday for a new round of talks with 
mediators. The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported on Sunday that several 
former Israeli military and security officials - including ex-Mossad head 
Ephraim Halevi, former army chief Amnon Lipkin-Shahak and the former 
commander of Israeli troops in Gaza, Shmuel Zakai - wrote to the government 
a month ago supporting indirect talks with Hamas and expressing opposition 
to any large-scale military assault on Gaza.

They wrote, "Recognizing that ending the Hamas regime in Gaza is not a 
realistic goal and reinstating Fatah in the Gaza Strip by means of Israeli 
bayonets is not desirable ... non-public negotiations should take place with 
Hamas through Egypt or anyone else acceptable to both sides."

Time and again during Bush's Middle East tour, what emerges is this palpable 
sense that the US has been all but marginalized from a new Middle East that 
is taking shape. All of Bush's rhetoric couldn't hide the fact that even by 
adding 300 million Americans to 7 million Israelis, he failed to disprove 
the erosion in Israel's regional supremacy.

In a brilliant article recently, former German foreign minister Joschka 
Fischer underlined that the center of gravity of the regional power and 
politics in the wake of the Iraq war has shifted to the Persian Gulf. To 
quote Fischer, "Indeed, it is now virtually impossible to implement any 
solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without Iran and its local 
allies - Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine."

The point is, the historic failure of the Iraq war is yet to be fully 
grasped. On a regional plane, as the Iraq war interminably rolls on, the 
situation is fraught with the immense consequence of the unraveling of the 
entire system of states that was created in the Anglo-French settlement 
after the fall of Ottoman Empire in 1918. The Iraq war has triggered Shi'ite 
empowerment and unleashed historical forces that lay chained for centuries. 
Its geopolitical significance is yet to sink in as winds of change sweep 
across the entire region.

Fischer underscored that the Iraq war has conclusively finished off secular 
Arab nationalism, which was, historically speaking, European-inspired. In 
its wake has appeared political Islam, which cultivates "anti-Western" 
nationalism and taps into social, economic and cultural grievances and 
combines them with a revolutionary fervor to confront the authoritarian, 
corrupt, unjust regimes lacking popular legitimacy. Islamists pilot this 
trend of "modernization", while the future of political Islam itself remains 
far from clear.

Equally, China has appeared on the Middle Eastern chessboard, which would 
make the decline in the US dominance of the region increasingly difficult to 
be arrested. Curiously, on the eve of Bush's arrival in the Middle East, a 
prominent Chinese scholar, Weiming Zhao, professor at the Middle East 
Studies Institute of the Shanghai International Studies University, 
assertively wrote: "China has a significant interest in the Middle East, and 
any changes in the situation there will affect China's energy security ... 
Therefore, it will remain a basic posture of China's diplomacy for a long 
time to come to pay more attention to the development of the situation in 
the Middle East, to be more concerned with Middle East affairs and to 
establish closer relations with Middle East countries."

Bush's tour exposed that, alas, the US doesn't have a Middle East strategy 
to address these manifold trends. It seems all the while, the Bush 
administration was only pretending it had one. A formidable challenge awaits 
the next US president.

M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service 
for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan 
(1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).