Iran nukes out. Palestinian State in. No problem.

Struggling with a Middle-East Peace Process that seems to have bogged down in a matter of months, President Obama is probably thinking he needs Iran’s nuclear ambitions like a he needs a Republican filibuster.

But looking a little deeper, it’s possible that Iranian nukes and creating a Palestinian state could be connected, and each helps the other problem go away.

How come?

We’re told that President Obama is a chess grandmaster when everyone else is still getting a handle on checkers. So let’s get some moves going and find out.

There’s no chance an Iranian nuke could be lobbed at the USA, but it’s totally unacceptable to both Israel and Saudi Arabia that Iran gets to nuclear “breakout”.

Neither of these countries has a chance of knocking out Iran’s nuclear facilities alone.

The Saudis are militarily weak and let other people do their dirty work.

Israel acts belligerently, but would have to overfly US controlled airspace to strike Iran, at maximum range, against advanced surface-to-air missile systems, and against hardened underground targets. It’s a stretch that they’d do anything more than enrage the Arab world, and make us Great Satan all over again. People try to suggest that Israel could do the job on Iran just like they did on Saddam’s nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981. But Osirak is a first-grade spelling test next to attacking Iran’s hardened bunkers.

The only nation that can stop Iran from reaching nuclear break-out is the USA. From our bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf and other long-range bases, the US could bring to bear overwhelming air and naval power, to protect air-delivered special forces that could knock out Iran’s nuclear facilities and then get the hell out of Dodge when the job’s complete.

Are we going to reach that point? It’s not unlikely, it’s probable.

President Ahmadinejad wants nukes. His power base in the Revolutionary Guard requires it. He must continue the Iranian weaponization program at full speed in order to please the hardliners who prop him up.

Initially, Iran will politely block and obfuscate the international community. Frustrated, the world will apply UN authorized sanctions against Iran, which will cause nothing but a hardening of attitudes in Tehran. The sanctions will fail to deter Iran from moving closer to weaponization.

At the eleventh hour, Iran will be forced to expel the IAEA nuclear inspectors in advance of completing their bomb, triggering a serious US response that will begin by lobbying the UN Security Council for “tougher action” against Tehran.

Ultimately the UNSC will not authorize a military strike on Iran, because either or both China and Russia will veto, wary of US action against Iraq, nearly a decade before. The US will therefore have no choice but to stand down or strike Iran unilaterally. Politically, the former will be unacceptable to the President.

All this may even happen before the end of Obama’s first term, only a couple of years after President Obama was awarded his Nobel Peace Prize.

But if the US attacks Iran it will be doing so on behalf of Israel and Saudi Arabia, and therefore it should extract a price from both. That price is peace in the Middle-East. In other words a viable Palestinian State.

The following is a run-down of the high-level but top-secret discussions that will have to take place:

The President ask Israel a simple question. Which is a greater security threat to Israel. An Iranian nuclear weapon or a Palestinian State? The answer is clearly the former. So the President tells the Israeli Prime Minister, we’ll deal with Iran and help you develop an anti-missile shield for added security if you agree to a Palestinian State. Terms set by the United States. Simple as that. If Israel tells us where to go. We say fine. Enjoy living with those nukes.

While Jerusalem is hating us and thinking about it, Obama calls Riyadh and asks Abdullah what he wants least.  Iranian nukes within 300 miles of his Presidential Palace or normalized relations with Israel.

King Abdullah will mumble something non-committal but we’ll make the issue clear. If Saudi Arabia thinks it can say no to the deal and engage in a nuclear arms race with Iran, we’ll treat its nuclear ambitions the same way we’re treating Iran’s – as an unacceptable threat to regional security, and the cozy relationship between Washington and Riyadh will be over. Not to mention the fact that Saudi oil fields and shipping lanes will be under the threat of a nuclear cloud which will drive the markets crazy and totally destabilize the Saudi oil economy. The alternative? Normalize relations with Israel.

There’s a good chance both sides will agree to our terms.

And if they do, the world could witness a historical peace summit brokered by the US – probably in Geneva – where Israel and the Palestinians, backed by Saudi Arabia (and most likely other regional Arab states) would sign off on an agreement to create a new Palestinian state. We’d let them take full credit for the deal of course.

Six months later, after Iran has thrown out the IAEA inspectors, and deliberations in the UN have ended in the usual stalememate, Iran will assume they’re out of the woods.

At which point the attack begins.

Maybe this is all just a good yarn. But it’s a story that might, just might come true.

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how can we help them? by being bold and brave.

“I don’t accept the term “Jewish Lobby”,  tweeted William Daroff, Vice President for Public Policy at the United Jewish Communties. The American Jewish community is incredibly powerful, economically, and politically, but wisely doesn’t want that power to be categorized in easily pejorative terms.

At the heart of the mission of Jewish organizations that have a political presence in Washington is strengthening US-Israel relations, but as Mr. Daroff makes clear that mission remains limited for the most part to what happens Stateside. The American Jewish Community doesn’t have favorites between the left, center or right of Israeli politics. “It’s up to the Israeli electorate. It’s not my role in the Diaspora to tell them who their leaders should be”,  says Mr. Daroff.

There has always been a sharp cultural divide between Jews who live in Israel, and those who live in the rest of the world, (known as the “diaspora”), and Mr. Daroff makes clear that Diaspora Jews shouldn’t have a say in how Israel is run. “We don’t interfere in the elections of others, just as I don’t want them interfering in American elections.”

But in many respects American Jews already do have an undue influence. Home to more Jews than in Israel itself, about six and a half million, American Jews care deeply about defending the State of Israel and their votes, and financial contributions, in Presidential and Congressional elections increasingly reflect that concern. Nobody denies that representatives from the US Jewish community watch the White House and Congress very carefully and try to maintain firm US support for Israel. That support comes in the form of an aid package worth $2.5 billion in 2007, mostly in the form of a military grant, and cements the single most important strategic alliance in the Middle East.

Despite White House concerns over the years that Israel is not doing its part to push forward the Middle East peace process, the idea of removing or substantially reducing the aid package is a third rail. Doing so would unleash an uproar against the incumbent President and would never be sanctioned by Congress. Which is unfortunate, because it’s the only bargaining chip the US has that Israel really cares about.

The idea that American Jewish groups would support or not oppose a US move to remove aid from Israel seems laughable now, but there may be more to the idea than meets the eye. And here’s why.

Israel is at a historical crossroads. It has three choices.

Firstly, to maintain the status quo, occupying the West Bank, holding a hard line on peace negotiations while containing Hamas in Gaza, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. This is the position that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu takes.

The second approach, “The Two State Solution”, calls for the creation of a sovereign Palestinian State alongside Israel, most probably to include East Jerusalem. Variations of this deal have been offered to and rejected by the Palestinians at various times in the last decade or so, usually because they did not include the “Right of Return” of Palestinian refugees to Israel proper.

The third trajectory is the “Single State Solution” whereby Jewish and Palestinian populations merge into a single state. This idea is starting to gather currency among Palestinians who believe they have a long-term demographic advantage (a thesis disputed by some Demographers in Israel who don’t see the Jewish population becoming the minority anytime soon). It is totally unacceptable to the Israelis. Over time Palestinians might move to a “long-game” continuing their rejectionism in the hope of forcing a single-state solution on what they hope will be a Jewish minority, with the support of the International community. Over time, as calls for a single-state approach among Palestinians increase, their appetite for a side-by-side arrangement may dwindle even further. This may happen in a matter of two decades or so.

By far the best approach for Israel and the United States is the two-state solution, and everything but the Right of Return should be on the table. For Israel, the two-state solution would achieve a number of goals. Firstly, after a period of fierce independence, the nascent Palestinian state would rapidly lose Arab state support and become reliant on Israel. Secondly, the new state would mean Arab populations would start looking inwards at injustices in their own non-democratic countries, destabiliizing Israel’s potential foes. Thirdly, a rejuvenated Palestinian population, supported by Israel and the International community may embrace peace. And fourthly, Israel would be able to take advantage of the new stability to build its economy, infrastructure, and society.

To suggest that Diaspora Jews should be mere spectators as this drama unfolds is naive. They are involved and should be involved.  It’s in the interests of American Jews to make their voices heard through their Community leaders in Washington, not with the same tired policies of retrenchment that lead to a continuation of an ultimately destructive status quo, but by proactively influencing the US Government to “go outside the box” and catalyse a desirable two-state solution before it’s too late.

It’s also in the interests of United States to listen to the newer, bolder entreaties of American Jews, to break the log-jam of a habitually frustrating Middle-East Peace process that, right now, it refuses to control.

Both the Palestinians and the Israelis must know that American interests demand peace in the Middle East, and that the US is prepared to apply meaningful financial and other diplomatic pressure to both sides (and in the case of the Palestinians to their allies too) in order to get it.

That pressure can come in the form of sticks, and carrots. The carrot could be more civilian aid to facilitate – for example – new homes and communities for current West Bank settlers moving back to Israel proper, ahead of the declaration of a new Palestinian state.

But the stick would have to come first. And although it may sound crazy, the best way for the American Jewish Community to support Israel is to make clear to the US Government that it would not oppose a threat to cut off Israel’s aid package if it doesn’t hold up its side of the bargain.

I can hear Mr. Daroff laughing now.

Will he still be laughing in twenty years?  We shall see.

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it's got to the point that israel needs to project raw power to secure a two-state solution.

From now on, it’s no more Mr. Nice Guy in Israel. Promising “a disproportionate response” to Hamas for rocket attacks signals a new direction for Jerusalem. For years they have been on the wrong end of one of the most successful PR juggernauts of recent history – the Palestinians.

Nothing seems to dent the Palestinian love-bubble. The fact that Hamas has been targeting innocent Israelis for years through suicide bombings and rocket attacks seems to mean nothing, the fact that they use human shields means less, the fact that they brutally murder anyone remotely seen as an informer, irrelevant. Hamas has maintained lock-tight control on Gaza in order to further its longstanding total war against Israel. It gets as close as it can to starving its own people into hatred. The constant portrayal of Gazan as victim is incongruous with the fact that most of Hamas leadership has nothing to do with the place. To them maintaining the degradation of the world’s largest refugee camp is a means to an end. 

Meanwhile, Israel, a liberal democracy, gave Hamas plenty of time to stop the missile attacks before they became politically unacceptable. IDF policy is very clear on trying to minimize civilian casualties, and when there are abuses, IDF soldiers are disciplined and tried in closer accordance with the rules of war than in any other democratic country. Israel supplies Gaza despite the hatred coming from there towards the Jewish state. Meanwhile Egypt does nothing, locking down its borders, and providing precious little aid, as it imagines in terror what the Islamist threat from Gaza would mean for their authoritarian government. The rest of the Arab world also talk a good game, but deliver nothing.

The list goes on and on, but nothing that Israel seems to do gets any traction with the world community, and overturn their constant moral equivalency. There are numerous reasons for this. Latent anti-semitism, large Muslim communities in Western States, the disproportionate power of various petro-states keen on stoking the fire of Israeli-Palestinian conflict for their own ends. The Arabism of European diplomatic corps plays a big role too. Israel has made blunders, but the bar is set so high for them, and the scrutiny so great by sniping British and French journalists that it’s hard not to.

There’s nothing new about this – but there might be something very new about Israel’s approach to the barrage.

Olmert and Livni, two pretty moderate polticians, seem to have decided that Israel will no longer compete for goodwill from Europe. And if that’s true, they’re right. Courting Europe is a lost cause. As long as Israel doesn’t engage in independently verifiable rather than Palestinian-only reported excesses, then with America’s constant support, Europe is simply not a relevant part of their equation. They can do without it.

Israel’s future is on the line, and strategically the ‘no more Mr. Nice Guy’ approach makes far more sense. The demographic clock is ticking there, and in fifty years or so, they will have to abandon democracy in its purest form, unless they have created a two-state solution. It is more imperative than ever. This was the realization that created the new Sharon, who’s untimely departure from the scene led to a major strategy vacuum, until now.

Palestinian power is a chimera. All they have is PR. The Palestinians go with their strength (and don’t get me wrong, rocket attacks are part of the PR machine), and so should Israel. To get that two-state solution Israel must be seen as an immovable force, negotiating from a position of raw power rather than weakness. Unless the Palestinians become afraid that Israel will never relinquish control of its own state to an Arab majority, they will never opt for a two-state solution.

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