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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subtlety? that's the other guy's problem

To say that the Obama administration is all over the place on Iran is an understatement.

During the campaign, President Obama assured us that he would work hard to start a dialogue with Iran. His view remains, apparently at least, that engagement is the best way to deal with Tehran, their sponsorship of Hezbollah and Hamas, and most importantly the thorny issue of their nuclear ambitions.

Take today’s diplomatic shuffle on Iran. During her flight from Ramallah to Brussels after meeting Mahmoud Abbas, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton made the mistake of holding court with the press during which she gave Tehran a piece of her mind with rhetoric that was straight from W’s dusty old “axis of evil” playbook. HRC suggested that Iran seeks to “intimidate as far as they think their voice can reach.” She went on to say “It is clear that Iran intends to interfere with the internal affairs of all of these people and try to continue their efforts to fund terrorism, whether it’s Hezbollah or Hamas or other proxies.”  Yeah, Hil, we’ve heard this about fifty thousand times before.

During the same in-flight interview, probably after a whisper from an advisor, she remembered that she was working for Obama, not still campaigning against him, and went on to reassure the press corps that the President was in fact still seeking to engage Iran in a dialogue, “but wanted to make sure it’s constructive”.

First Hilary lambasts the Iranians then she wants our negotiations with them to be constructive.  Uhh.  Okay, what’s the best way to put this? 

Let’s start with the dictionary definition of the word “diplomacy”.

According to Merriam-Webster diplomacy is defined as…

1 : the art and practice of conducting negotiations between nations
2 : skill in handling affairs without arousing hostility (my italics)

Hilary Clinton’s a giant of an American in many, many ways, but as a diplomat, she’s still got those training wheels very firmly on. If you’re looking to change the way you deal with a hostile nation, you don’t trot out the combative and misguided spiel the last guys used, because that’s guaranteed to make your negotiating partner, the Iranians in this case, very mad. Maybe it’s too much to ask of America’s chief diplomat, but could a little diplomacy be in order?  Sadly, it seems to be a lost art in Washington. Here’s why.

Firstly, we seem to have have developed a tendency (learned over the past few Republican administrations) that diplomacy is the same thing as policy. It isn’t. Diplomacy is a means of achieving policy.

Secondly, we’ve forgotten the art of the back-channel. Remember the days when the Presidents of the US and ye olde Soviet Union would take long walks through the winter woods to talk about nukes with just a couple of frigid translators to keep them company? Well, we need to get those days back, because far too much diplomacy is played out in public, and not enough behind closed doors. Public diplomacy has too much baggage. Diplomats from democratic states become accountable at home for what they say around the table, leaving one hand tied behind their backs when they’re in negotiations with autocratic countries where democracy, a free press and public accountability are not things on the worry list. More communiques, less chit-chat.

Thirdly, for years now, thanks partly to the Neo-cons, we’ve confused diplomacy with honesty. They’re actually two sides of the same coin. Honesty is something you employ with your friends, whereas diplomacy is something that’s more useful with your enemies. In short, Hilary Clinton would be great dealing with the Israelis or Europeans, who need a little straight talk. But the Iranians? Not so good.

Fourthly, we seem to have forgotten that golden rule. Don’t arouse hostility. Negotiations don’t tend to go very far when you begin them by slapping the other guy’s face with a Neo-conservative gauntlet. But that’s exactly what Hilary just did.  She aroused hostility. A whole darn planeload of it. To Tehran, her rhetoric is an outrageous affront that naturally must be trumped by even more outlandish rhetoric, for example, Israel is a “cancerous tumor”, and Obama is just a Bush retread, etc etc. This stuff is just posturing that’s not worth the hot air it rode in on. And so the confusing standoff goes on, and all that engagement talk? More hot air. Iran likes it that way. They don’t want to talk, at least not until after they get their nukes, when the price for their compliance rises by at least two orders of magnitude.

Fifthly, we stopped doing our homework. The art and practice of conducting negotiations means knowing who you’re dealing with. Iranians are very hospitable and polite, and respond to hospitality and politeness with even more hospitality and politeness. It’s just who they are. We’ve tried the axis of evil concept and that got us nowhere. So why not go with something different. Let them think they’ve ground us down. Why not gush endlessly about how much we’re looking forward to opening up trade with the great nation of Iran, how much we admire its people, and marvel at its ancient civilization. Why not thank the Iranians profusely for their help in stopping cross-border arms supplies to the Sadrists in Iraq (even though they did diddly squat), or for the gracious way they worked so closely with humanitarian teams from the West when overcoming this or that earthquake. Iranians love a compliment or ten. If we hold out the hand of friendship, they simply won’t be able to help being nice back. Why? Because a vast swathe of the Iranian public doesn’t hate America, because they want the world to think they’re just fabulous, and because their trading partners in Europe, who have been asking us to play nice for years, will expect Tehran to respond in kind.

Sure they might still blab on about Israel being a carbuncle on the face on an ancient babylonian whore, but it’s a sure thing that the insults against President and the US would come to a swift halt.

And then we could actually make some progress towards actually engaging with Tehran, and dealing with the very real dangers that they pose to world peace.

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the russian bear likes a good bargain.

President Obama’s not so secret letter to his counterpart in Russia, President Medvedev, seems like a strong beginning to a new, more robust and directed diplomacy. Applying an unspoken quid pro quo that the serious application of pressure by Russia on Iran to stem Tehran’s nuclear ambitions could mean the removal of the US nuclear shield in Eastern Europe draws a big lesson from history. During the missile crisis, Khruschev seriously overreached when he planted missiles in Cuba. Kennedy didn’t back down, but instead offered to give up some obsolete missiles in Turkey in order to save the world from Armageddon.

Okay, we’re not quite on the edge of the nuclear abyss just yet, but Obama’s clearly done his homework on dealing with the Russians. He shrewdly realizes how important ’saving face’ is to in the machismo world of Moscow foreign policy, rightly regards the missile shield as an expensive boondoggle, and understands why Moscow is less than enamoured of Bush’s feeble remonstrations that the shield was primarily in place to protect against Iranian missiles headed for the US or Europe (about a thousand times less likely than a briefcase bomb which would bypass the shield altogether). Add to that the very strong likelihood that the shield won’t work even if challenged and the prospect of canning it isn’t exactly a stretch.

The President is also fully aware that America’s decision to remove the planned shield from Poland and the Czech Republic will play very well on the Russian Street, allowing the Kremlin to do its little nationalistic strut to ameliorate the lament that the motherland’s sphere of influence is shrinking fast. In short, Obama’s giving away nothing and getting in return an assurance that Russia will do what’s in its interests anyway, which is to prevent a potentially hostile nuclear power from developing on its Southern border.

This notion is a good example of a neo-liberal response to a diplomatic issue. Neo-liberalism is about America gaining influence by showing largesse where possible. It looks like we’re taking the hit here, but actually Obama’s letter sets up a win-win for the US. First, we get a very good reason to bargain away the useless missile shield, and divert the freed-up resources into solving America’s most challenging problems at home. Second, we build a new and more honest relationship with Russia, based not on Bush “I see into his soul” nonsense, but on a strong and negotiated diplomatic basis, just like in the good old days. Putin and Medvedev want two things. To make Russia look good, and to get a good deal. A positive response to Obama’s diplomatic foray gets them both.

But the core of the diplomatic move is dealing with the seemingly intractable issue of Iran. All this may come to nothing and the collision course with Tehran that we appear to be on may yet become critical, but Washington is taking a much more proactive and frankly intelligent approach, searching for serious alternatives to military confrontation either by the US or by Israel seeking to remove Iran’s nuclear weapons as an existential threat. Obama is asking Moscow to rethink its frankly reckless stance on helping Iran build its nuclear infrastructure with a solid diplomatic overture. Both sides get to put the heat on Iran, increasing the chance that China will be the only Permanent Member of the Security Council abstaining or voting against meaningful United Nations-driven sanctions against Iran, if and when the time comes for a resistant Iran to face the music. And finally, as the pressure on Tehran grows, the US gets more traction for its peace offensive with the world’s most noisy theocracy. US overtures to Syria further increase pressure on Iran to negotiate.

As of early this morning, Moscow has yet to respond to the American overtures. That is a very good sign. If they didn’t like it, they would have got back to us by now. And the response wouldn’t even have feighned secrecy. It would have been very, very public indeed.

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