The Palestinian decision to apply for full United Nations membership at the Security Council, announced Friday by President Mahmoud Abbas, was the most viable of the only options possible: surrender, return to violence or appeal to the international community, a senior Palestinian official said Saturday.

I think this sentiment has been grossly misinterpreted in the media. We all understand what a “return to violence” would mean. It would mean another intifada. The last one failed to achieve anything at all for the Palestinians. Intifada is not going to lead to a state.

“Appeal to the international community” obviously means bringing to the United Nations demands that could not be achieved through violence.

The real question is what “surrender” means. I think that many people who support the creation of a Palestinian state believe wrongly that this means give in, not have a state, and continue to be occupied forever. Thus, their gut reaction is to say, “No, we don’t want you to surrender!” However, I do not believe this is what “surrender” means at all.

What is meant by “surrender” is giving up the goal of winning the war of 1948, of eventually eliminating the Jewish state. By not asking the proper question which is “Surrender what exactly?” the supporters of a two-states for two-peoples solution end up preventing exactly that. Instead of telling the Palestinians “Yes, we want you to surrender and to make peace with a Jewish state that will continue to exist for generations to come,” they say, “No, we don’t want you to surrender; fight for your right to self determination.” They say this naive to the fact that the goal is neither statehood nor peace, but a step forward on a path designed to eliminate the Jewish state.

I know there are plenty of supporters of the Palestinians who would advocate for the elimination of the Jewish state. I do not make this argument for their benefit. I write this for those who believe in a two state solution and who wish to help the Palestinians achieve statehood. They need to hear the words, “Yes, you need to surrender. Yes, you need to make peace with the Jewish state.” Nothing other than those words will make a difference.

The Palestinians insist on pre-conditions for negotiations to resume. Since those conditions are not acceptable to Israel, it won’t accede to them. Right now, this is the primary reason why there are no talks. However, if there were talks, they would go nowhere because of something else. The Palestinians insist that new negotiations begin where prior negotiations stopped. This is what is being ignored.

I have written about the fact that there is no “status quo” in the peace process. There is in fact constant change. Some of that change has been massive. How can negotiations proceed as if no changes have occurred? This is an absurdity, yet you need not look far to find people arguing this point of view, that negotiations should begin where they left off, among them Meretz USA.

So, let’s say for a moment that you were applying for a job. You got to the point of negotiating salary and benefits when you decided that they weren’t good enough for you and you storm out cursing. You then protest the business even going so far as to spray paint hateful slogans on its walls, something for which you were suspected but not caught. A couple of years later, you decide you wish to apply for that job again and now there is a new manager in place who is less fond of you than the first. In the interim, you have been arrested several times for financial related crimes and the manager went ahead and filled the position to which you are applying. Should negotiations begin where they once left off? Of course not.

How about this one? You agreed to sell me 100 oz. of gold at $300 an ounce a few years back. I thought I could do better. Gold is now over $1800 per oz. I now want you to start off by offering it to me at $300 per oz. like you did before. Make sense? Of course not.

Negotiations should never begin where they left off. They should always begin with the reality of the moment. How is it that anyone expects Israel to happily accept what was a risk in 2000, when events since have proven that the hopeful assumptions at the time were woefully incorrect? The Palestinian Authority could not prevent Hamas from taking over in Gaza, could not prevent thousands of rockets from being launched from there, could not prevent Hamas from winning the only free election to take place in the past decade and refuses to acknowledge that Israel is a state for the Jews. The United Nations refuses to defend Israel from attacks from Lebanon, allowing Hizballah to arm itself to the teeth, attack Israel in 2006, and rearm. The United Nations also condemned Israel acts of self defense in Operation Cast Lead in Gaza and to an extent in the Mavi Marmara incident as well. How can Israel rely on it to stand up to breaches of any peace agreement? Israel is to pretend that nothing has changed and negotiate from the point of past refusals when what was refused is beyond what could be offered today?

That the Palestinian negotiating position has worsened since 2000 is not to simply be disregarded. That it should not be able to expect what it was once offered because of its actions over the past decade should be obvious. Yet, it is not. That problem is not only the cause of previous failures in the peace process but will be the cause of future ones until it is remedied.

As a stand alone statement, it is problematic for a number of reasons.

• First, the pre-1967 lines are actually armistice lines, not borders. This means that they were simply where the armies were when the previous conflict ended. These were not necessarily reasonable, much less defensible, borders.
• Second, the situation on the ground has changed substantially since 1967 and hundreds of thousands of Jews now live on the other side of the lines.
• Third, this statement automatically places the vast majority of Jerusalem and all of the holy sites on the Palestinian side and makes Israel offer concessions from pre-1967 Israel in exchange for any of it to be agreed upon by the Palestinian side.

How can this possibly be acceptable to Israel?

We can discuss whether or not the “rough outlines” of a future Palestinian state would be mostly along the 1967 lines, but the President’s stated outline at this point is not that. Here is what he said at AIPAC Policy Conference on May 22, 2011 in clarification of his earlier statement:

Now, it was my reference to the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps that received the lion’s share of the attention. And since my position has been misrepresented several times, let me reaffirm what “1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps” means.

By definition, it means that the parties themselves – Israelis and Palestinians – will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967. It is a well known formula to all who have worked on this issue for a generation. It allows the parties themselves to account for the changes that have taken place over the last forty-four years, including the new demographic realities on the ground and the needs of both sides. The ultimate goal is two states for two peoples. Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people, and the state of Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people; each state enjoying self-determination, mutual recognition, and peace.

What is implied here is that the Palestinians have the ability to negotiate not from the status quo, but from the assumption that the entire West Bank including all of the Old City of Jerusalem with all of the holy sites is theirs to swap if they so choose. In other words, the President has de facto granted the Palestinians the West Bank including the Old City and told the Israelis to negotiate with them in exchange for what Israel wants to keep from it.

I am not sure how this can possibly be interpreted any other way. From the above statement, it is up to Israel to offer the Palestinians compensation (swaps) in order to account for the “changes” that are agreeable to the Palestinians. Now add on top of that the issue of Palestinian refugees!

Israel cannot negotiate from this position.

Regarding any hope for progress in the peace process, one needs to answer the following question:

What would the Palestinians accept in exchange for Israel maintaining control over most, if not all, of Jerusalem, maintaining the major settlement blocs, denying the “right of return” of the vast majority if not of all of the Palestinian refugees and maintaining security of the border with Jordan?

What could Israel offer? I cannot think of anything. This situation is untenable. It is even untenable if Jerusalem were to be negotiated separately as the President seemed to imply in his State Department speech.

The peace process cannot advance with these assumptions which is why the Palestinians are trying to go around the process and go to the UN. Meanwhile, having forced Israel into a position from which it cannot negotiate, literally having nothing that it is able to put on the table (since the assumption is that all of the West Bank belongs to the Palestinians and that none of it can be used by Israel as a concession), the US is also preventing the Palestinians from acting in the UN by exercising a veto.

Basically, the US is strongly enforcing the status quo while saying that the status quo cannot be maintained, blaming Israel for being unwilling to make concessions that it cannot possibly make, and blaming the Palestinians for avoiding negotiations in which they have nothing that they could possibly gain.

It is possible, if not highly likely, that this policy of enforcing the status quo in this manner is in response to Saudi Arabia which continues to insist on the entire West Bank being part of the Palestinian state and upon which the US remains overly dependent for its oil needs. It is hard to imagine that anyone seeking a swift solution to the peace process would strengthen the intractability of the process while also fortifying barriers to progress.

The impact of all of this is that President Obama’s rhetoric promotes a process in which it is not possible to achieve peace. This path also ratchets up criticism of Israel while granting Israel no possible way to alleviate it or counter it. Fortunately for Israel, sticks and stones can break bones, but words get vetoed in the UN. There is also a concern about delegitimization and that is the great task of Israel advocates, a challenge posed by the current situation.

Meanwhile, so long as the American President, now and into the future, supports the security of Israel with deeds, the real impact of words will be limited. Thus far, President Obama has vetoed anti-Israel measures in the UN and not only maintained, but increased military aid to Israel, including granting extra funding for the Iron Dome anti-missile systems that have already proven effective in Israel’s defense.

One can certainly criticize other aspects of the President’s policies and deeds in the Middle East and their impact upon Israel is also potentially problematic, but in this article I only wanted to address the specific issue of the 67 lines.

While criticism of the President’s words is certainly appropriate (just FYI, I have criticized every President’s words to some extent regarding Israel since Bush 41 and was too young to do so before that), we need to remember that under this administration America continues to stand by its staunch ally in the Middle East and that in spite of public disagreements between the leaders of the nations, the relationship between Israel and the United States on the whole is extremely strong. The Congress is quite possibly more strongly supportive of Israel at this point in time than it ever has been before.

Now, if only we could fix the economy and break our dependence upon foreign oil…

The time has come to realize that the old habits, the old arguments are irrelevant to the challenges faced by our people.

Conclusions drawn from history and experience are often ignored in favor of the exploration by trial and error of new approaches or even previously tried and rejected ones. The belief that it is the Jews, and specifically the Jewish state, who are intractable in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is exactly such a previously tried and rejected approach. Israel has agreed to final peace agreements at the negotiating table three times, since 1967. Three times!

1. With Egypt
2. With Jordan
3. With the Palestinians at Camp David

The Palestinians have never agreed to peace once, only to interruptions in violence for negotiations through which they might pursue gains that they were unable to obtain through violence. Current attempts to utilize the United Nations to obtain gains are the result of the failure of both violence and negotiations to advance the goal of eventually eradicating the Jewish state, the unrealized goal of the violence.

That reasonable people argue for the creation of a Palestinian state roughly along the 1967 borders has allowed the Palestinian leadership legitimacy in pursuit of a goal not limited to the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, but in fact to pursue the destruction of Israel with the creation of a Palestinian state that substantially weakens Israel’s security and viability being a step in that direction.

This is why it is Israel’s security and not the borders of a future Palestinian state that must be discussed first. For those truly pursuing peace, the coexistence of the two states in peace and security must take precedence over the land which they control and it must be clear that all belligerent claims, much less actions, must end with whatever peace agreement is made.

As I wrote recently for We Are For Israel, American advocacy must support Israel in achieving this goal, in achieving security, opposing efforts in the UN advancing territorial claims by the Palestinians without negotiating a permanent peace.

This political blunder comes on the heels of what amounts to disgraceful incompetence in the foreign intelligence arena, with the DNI arguing that the Muslim Brotherhood is “a largely secular organization!” And of course, that after this administration appears to have been completely blindsided by the events in Tunisia and Egypt. Let’s not forget whole host of issues related to Iran. There are certainly many more issues that could be raised.

Why does this administration seem to be blindly blundering in the Middle East?

My own answer to this question is that this administration is full of people who feel that a certain type of foreign policy had never been given a real chance, namely reaching out to the Arab world as a friend instead of as a power. Further, that in spite of the dismal failure of this policy thus far, the administration is being urged to go “all in” by its proponents.

To answer my question specifically, people in this administration understand that traditional foreign policy has not brought them what they wish for, which is peaceful coexistence (something they actually deeply down believe is possible). In their minds, traditional foreign policy has promoted hatred of the United States as exceptional (which of course it is).

Their goal with what I would call “Naive Foreign Policy” (literally a foreign policy lacking in experience) is to experiment with alternatives to the tried and true. This is a generation whose actions throughout life have been sheltered by parents and by society. They’ve been able to experiment with drugs. They went through the sexual revolution. They treat religions like they do their cars, trading them in for new ones when they go out of style. And for all of their experiments, they have suffered very little that they can see. Thus, they see no real problem in experimenting with new foreign policies. What real harm can be done? We can always trade it in for a new model later. Worse, they believe not only in microwaving food, but in microwaving societal transformations and even global ones. They actually believe that peace is possible tomorrow, if only the necessary actions were done today.

Reason and rationality are not the basis of this foreign policy. Hope in the common humanity of their fellow men and women is the basis.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one in which both sides violate this utopian ideal. Historical fact violates this ideal and we therefore cannot use history as the basis of our actions now. The President has not used those exact words, but he might as well have. Remember what President Obama said in his speech to the UNGA in September of 2009? I will never forget it:

The time has come to realize that the old habits, the old arguments are irrelevant to the challenges faced by our people. They lead nations to act in opposition to the very goals that they claim to pursue and to vote, often in this body, against the interests of their own people.

They build up walls between us and the future that our people seek. And the time has come for those walls to come down. Together, we must build new coalitions that bridge old divides, coalitions of different faiths and creeds, of northern and south, east, west, black, white, and brown.

The choice is ours. We can be remembered as a generation that chose to drag the arguments of 20th century into the 21st, that put off hard choices, refused to look ahead, failed to keep pace because we defined ourselves by what we were against instead of what we were for. Or we can be a generation that chooses to see the shoreline beyond the rough waters ahead; that comes together to serve the common interests of human beings and finally gives meaning to the promise embedded in the nation given to this institution, the United Nations.

That is the future America wants; a future of peace and prosperity that we can only reach if we recognize that all nations have rights but all nations have responsibilities as well. That is the bargain that makes this work. That must be the guiding principle of international cooperation.

We have a foreign policy in which history is irrelevant. Anyone find that frightening?

A young man was procrastinating turning in his term paper for a class.

“Why don’t you finish it?”, I asked.
“It’s finished already”, he said.
“But I need to do some more work on it”, he said.
“But I thought you said it is finished”, I remarked.
“It is”, he said.

Using this thought process doesn’t necessarily mean that one is an addict, but it is found more often among addicts. This contradictory thinking is Addictive Thinking.

Now, lets look at the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. I can slightly change the words in this paragraph and you will recognize the arguments. For example:

“Why won’t the Israelis agree to a peace agreement with the Palestinians?”, I asked.
“They already did”, he said.
“But they need to stop settlement construction in order for the Palestinians to come to the negotiating table so that Israel can make peace with them”, he said.
“But I thought you said Israel already agreed to a peace agreement with the Palestinians”, I remarked.
“They did”, he said.

Or let’s try this one on for size:

“How can peace be achieved?”, I asked.

“The Israelis need to make peace with the Palestinians right now because the region is stable and Israel is surrounded by friendly governments,” he responded.

“But the region is changing. What if the region becomes unstable and Israel is surrounded by unfriendly governments?”, I asked.

“Then the Israelis need to make peace with the Palestinians right now because they may not get that chance later,” he said.

“But the Israelis are worried about the West Bank becoming like Gaza”, I noted.

“So they need to make peace now to stop that from happening,” he stated.

“But if the Palestinian Authority makes the concessions necessary for the process to move forward, they will be overthrown by radicals who support Hamas and oppose the peace process”, I remarked.

“The Israelis need to be forced to make concessions so that peace may be achieved,” he concluded.

What??? This makes no sense because it is addictive thinking. There is no logic to the argument. No matter what the circumstances, the argument is that Israel must make concessions and that it is Israel’s fault that peace has not already been achieved. Pressuring Israel to make concessions now that the Palestinian Authority may not even appear to be yielding on any of the core issues for fear of facing an uprising is about as ridiculous a conception as any heretofore applied to the peace process. No possible good may come of such pressure. In fact, if a strong Palestinian Authority is necessary to achieve peace, then those seeking peace must avoid encouraging it to come to the negotiating table now in its weakened state. Additionally, with the Palestinian Authority in a weakened state and potentially being toppled in favor of a much more radical regime, Israel cannot possibly make any concessions on borders or security.

While the addictive thinkers will no doubt argue that if only Israel had made concessions earlier it would have achieved peace already, those thinking clearly will readily understand that if the Palestinian Authority was in control over the entire West Bank today, an uprising could rapidly bring Hamas to power there with an abrogation of any peace treaty along with it.

The only reasonable solution is to allow the Palestinian Authority the chance to survive the onslaught of radical sentiment by giving it the ability to avoid having to make unpopular concessions now. Those who wish to pressure Israel to make concessions in order to bring the Palestinian Authority to the negotiating table must both seek to weaken Israel without achieving peace and to strengthen Hamas in its attempts to remove the Palestinian Authority from leadership over the West Bank. Why? Because these will be the primary results if the act of urging Israel to make concessions in order to bring the two sides to the negotiating table were to be successful.

For the peace process to move forward, the region must stabilize first.

It has been argued that the release of the documents present Israel in a bad light, namely as rejecting reasonable Palestinian offers. Therefore, some have suggested that the documents may have been released in order to bring condemnation upon Israel. J Street’s Ben Ami, in a rush to condemn Israel, seized on them to proclaim that the Palestinians are a peace partner and that Israel has refused to negotiate. Yet, this scenario for the release of the documents does not make sense because the PA has already stated flatly that they did not make the offers in question. One could make the case that any organization utilizing these documents to blame Israel is one that would condemn Israel anyway. J Street is clearly among them. My colleagues who continually try to explain why they are supportive of J Street, clinging to the conception that J Street is supportive and not overly critical of Israel, are finding themselves tiring of presenting a weakening, if not failing, argument.

The release of the documents has definitely done harm to the Palestinian Authority. As the PA faces both internal criticism (Hamas as well as no small part of Fatah) and external criticism (from most, if not all, of the Arab world) for its theoretical willingness to compromise on key issues, to suggest that it made such compromises in negotiations can only do it harm. So what is the origin of these papers?

Well, certainly there are those who will argue that they were created in an Israeli attempt to do harm to the PA by weakening it. This is absurd. Al Jazeera would certainly be much more willing to promote Israeli attempts to harm the PA than it would be to criticize the PA. Additionally, Israel has nothing to gain by weakening the PA and strengthening Hamas.

No, the most likely scenario is one in which Hamas, a supporter of Hamas such as Iran or Hizballah, or an opponent of Abbas among Fatah supporters (Dahlan) created the concession documents and placed them among some legitimate documents in order to make the fabricated ones look real and to weaken the PA and to undermine its ability to represent the Palestinian people in negotiations. Now we can talk about whether or not the PA has a reasonable claim to that status in the first place, having lost the only election held in recent years, but this at least is a reasonable option. I think that an attempt to undermine or even oust Abbas is a reasonable guess as to why these documents were released to the press by whomever chose to do so.

Why? Israel wouldn’t accept it and Abbas knows that.

The alternatives to PA control of the West Bank are Hamas control of the West Bank which would be worse for Abbas and the PA than they would be for Israel (that’s really bad) or anarchy which would endanger even Hamas. In either situation, Israel would be much more likely to engage militarily and then withdraw than it would to remain in full occupation. In other words, Abbas is stuck in power while lacking even the power to abdicate. He has one real choice which he is doing everything in his power to avoid making, namely to concede enough to Israel in the peace process that Israel can help him and the Palestinian people as a whole out of the current predicament. No one else can help. The process is stuck not because of Israeli refusal to make concessions, but because of Abbas’s refusal to make the concessions that must be made.

This isn’t rocket science. There is an obvious need for a paradigm shift in the thought process of the Palestinian Leadership from one of “How do we achieve what we failed to achieve in 1948?” namely to eliminate Israel or even “How do we achieve what we all rejected in 1949?” namely a state based upon the pre-1967 borders to “How do we create something resembling a state today based upon the changes that have occurred since 1948, 1967, 1973, 1993, 2000, 2005 and 2009?” which is what must be done.

The following are basic realities that have been rejected by the Palestinians thus far and will need to be taken into account for a state for the Palestinians to have a chance to come to fruition.

1. The “Right of Return” to Israel for Palestinians to Israel isn’t an option. It isn’t an act of peace, but is an act of war. Restitution is the only option for those refugees. In fact, restitution is the only option for the vast majority of refugees who would theoretically be able to return to a Palestinian state, but not to Israel (refugees from the 1967 war). Any future Palestinian state could not possibly support a dramatic increase in population for decades, if ever, so even a “return” to a Palestinian state post negotiations isn’t a viable option. To be honest, Israel couldn’t support such a bump in population either, even if it didn’t result in an immediate civil war, which it would. There will be no substantial return of refugees to either Israel or to a future Palestinian state.

2. The western, northern, and southern borders of the West Bank are not really issues, as they could be solved easily with territorial exchanges, with the exception of two issues. First, Jerusalem and second, other large Arab population centers currently within Israel. I’ll address those in a moment.

3. There is no chance that Israel could or would concede a large portion of the Old City to the Palestinians and there is little doubt that most of the residents of the Old City would NOT wish to become citizens of a Palestinian state. They are far better off as citizens of Israel and have said as much. A UN vote granting the pre-1967 border would go against their wishes. Yes, they want a Palestinian state to be created, but they do not want to live in it. This is much like those American Jews who are strong advocates for Israel but have no desire to make aliyah any time soon.

4. There is no chance that Israel could concede free and secure access to the Western Wall and the City of David for Jews which essentially means that it must maintain control over the vicinity of Temple Mount and Silwan as well as maintaining security control over the Mount of Olives to the East of the Temple Mount.

5. Israel is not going to allow the Mount Scopus Campus of Hebrew University to once again become cut off from Jews, which means that Israel will maintain a contiguous territory connecting an area North and East of the Old City with West Jerusalem, no matter what other areas it might consider allowing to become part of a future Palestinian state.

6. Places such as Um-al-Fahem, the large Arab village in the Galilee on the Israeli side of the Green Line would make some sense to place on the Palestinian side of the border after a peace agreement, but just as in #3 above, most of its residents would rather maintain Israeli citizenship than to become Palestinian citizens even though they might advocate for the creation of a Palestinian state. The PA might want this village, a prosperous Arab center, as part of the Palestinian state and no few Israeli Jews would be happy to oblige, but if the residents’ opinions matter, it will remain an Israeli city.

7. There will be significant shifts of populations after any peace agreement as settlements in the midst of a future Palestinian state will likely be abandoned. Compensation will need to be made in these cases as well. Restitution for Jews from Arab lands will be a consideration, but unless the discussions expand and become one between Israel and the Arab world, this issue would not be relevant as the Palestinians as such would have no responsibility to offer compensation to those refugees.

8. Israel cannot possibly allow either the Palestinians or an international force to control the Eastern border with Jordan. International forces have proven grossly and dangerously ineffective at stopping weapons smuggling in Lebanon, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, etc…. No Arab forces could be trusted to prevent the importation of weaponry to those whom they would almost certainly consider their allies. Hence, Israel will need to maintain supervision over the Eastern border of the West Bank indefinitely or it will not be able to make any other concessions.

9. There is no desire on the part of the Arab world to increase its Jihad, its struggle, against Israel and in fact there is significant impetus to improve relations with Israel without it resolving the conflict with the Palestinians. This is demonstrable from the Wikileaks documents.

10. Gaza cannot be a part of discussions until Hamas is removed from power because the Palestinian Authority does not speak for the people of Gaza. Current discussions should involve the West Bank alone.

11. The 1967 border was considered “noticeably insecure” and all previous discussions of UNSC Resolution 242 indicate that whatever border results from a settlement of that conflict must be secure. The understanding from the Western perspective, notably not from the Arab perspective, is that UNSCR 242 meant that Israel would not be asked to turn over all of the land captured in the 1967 war. The Arab world has always interpreted UNSCR 242 to mean exactly that Israel must turn over all of that land. The US does not believe Israel must do so, but also does not wish to define the border because to do so would undoubtedly upset the Arab world or Jewish and many Christian voters in America depending upon which side the administration chose to support. An abstention is the same as a vote in favor of the Arab side on this issue. Hence, the US has no choice but to veto and to demand that borders be settled by the two sides through negotiations. This is exactly what the US is currently doing.

12. While they may make pronouncements in the United Nations, in Arab League meetings, or to the press in general to the contrary, a final settlement of the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is not in the interest of the United States or that of many of the Arab League nations either because of positions they would need to take at that stage or because of consequences that would almost certainly follow such as turning hundreds of thousands of refugees into citizens of their states.

There are certainly more considerations that could be listed here. I simply came up with twelve significant ones. Any discussion of peace or of the creation of a Palestinian state that does not take these factors into account, if not many others as well, is not realistic.

From the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi:

Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ) said he would be surprised if Iran accepted the P5+1/IAEA proposal and warned that Iran was already acting like a nuclear power. Further, and more dangerously, Iran is establishing “emirates” across the Muslim world, including South Lebanon and Gaza, sleeper “emirates” in Kuwait, Bahrain, and the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, the mother of all “emirates” in Southern Iraq, and now Saada in Yemen. MbZ suggested that the U.S. is misreading the situation in Yemen and failing to recognize strong evidence of Iranian support.

In response to the US State Department briefing on the nuclear enrichment deal with Iran, MbZ responded:

The Crown Prince said he would be “very surprised” if a deal was possible, as Iran’s nuclear program is not an issue of internal conflict but rather one of national pride for the vast majority of Iranians. He stressed that Iran is not North Korea, because 1) it is looking to reestablish a Persian empire in the 21st century, 2) Iran has resources and lacks neighbors, including the UAE, who can pressure it, 3) the leadership has not changed (it is the same people who seized Embassy Tehran in 1979) , and 4) Iran believes itself to be a superpower.

This is among the milder arguments made by Arab diplomats. The King of Saudi Arabia has repeatedly urged, practically begged, the United States to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities and leaders of many other Arab nations have as well.

What these documents reveal is that US policy vis-a-vis Iran is not supported by our allies in the region, any of them. The United States is going it alone in its belief that sanctions will work. Wasn’t this administration supposed to be one seeking to work with our allies? As far as Syria is concerned, again our Arab friends completely reject the narrative put forth that Syria may be swayed from association with Iran as did Asad himself in discussions with American diplomats.

This leak of documents does three things:

1. It greatly harms our ability as a nation to have candid conversations in secret with foreign leaders, something that does immeasurable harm to our ability to conduct diplomacy going forward and
2. It proves that the United States is not only becoming weaker diplomatically (no few of these cables involved the US attempting to pressure foreign governments only to fail to accomplish goals) but also
3. It demonstrates that US policy for some years regarding the Middle East has been conducted without allies in the region, across administrations, and continues to be conducted in that manner.

All of these points demonstrate what amounts to a crisis level problem that has been exacerbated in the past few years, both at the end of the Bush administration and during the Obama administration thus far. The US has been and continues to be going it alone in the Middle East, focusing way too much attention on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and way too little on Iran, radical Islam which seeks to expel Western influence from the region, and, as noted by at least several Arab leaders, North Korea, which is shipping arms into the region while aiding Iran and Syria in nuclear aspirations.

We can only hope that the recent leak of documents does not do massive harm to our ability to alter this situation by disrupting candid discussions about how Arab leaders really feel. Then again, if we are going to ignore their opinions offhand, it doesn’t really matter whether or not we hear them. It also does not matter if we find an insane amount of evidence (an earlier Wikileaks release) that Iran is actively supporting and supplying those who are fighting against the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, if we have no intention of ever threatening Iran over that evidence. The Wikileaks documents exposed that we have evidence of exactly that, a profound and significant presence of Iranian military intervention against the United States likely resulting in the deaths of scores of American troops and countless deaths among our allies. Our government has never mentioned it: not during this administration or during the previous one.

There are no few who believe that the Bush administration was war hungry. Yet, the only possible excuse for the failure to respond strongly to the evidence presented in countless places against Iran is an absolute desire to avoid confronting it. The Great LIE (the 2007 NIE concerning Iranian pursuit of nuclear weapons) has done immeasurable harm to the region. It may well go down as the worst foreign policy decision made by a US administration regarding the region in decades. One can only believe that the US government at the time was so opposed to confronting Iran that it refused to see the truth as demonstrated by ample evidence, refused to listen to our allies in the region, and refused to consider the consequences of being wrong in its assessment. Meanwhile, that LIE was promulgated in direct contradiction to evidence provided by at least two of our allies with profound knowledge of Iran’s nuclear program, both Israel and Germany. The link to Israel’s perspective comes from December 10, 2007.

Meanwhile, in addition to exposing that America’s current policy regarding Iran is supported by not a single ally in the region, it also confirms my contentions concerning the absence of Palestinian leverage in the peace process regarding the Arab world. Israel is on the same side vis-a-vis Iran as most of the Arab world, the part that does not support Iran, Syria, Hizballah and Hamas. There is no linkage between support for strong action against Iran and any settlement of the peace process. In fact, Arab leaders are urging immediate action against Iran while only making scant or passing references to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at all. Having seen the diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks, it is abundantly clear that any suggestion of linkage is an outright fiction.