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April 17, 2006
This article makes something explicit about the Middle East that needs to be said. It talks about the three concentric circles that have been forming for the past six years of the Bush presidency around the "Iran question". The key concern for me is that at the:
...center, at its very core, is the US agenda of dominating the region. Put another way, it is about securing Israel's dominant position in a New Middle East......Beyond these regional equations in the Middle East lies the inner core, the first circle, of the Bush administration's strategy toward Iran. It is, and has always been, securing Israel's regional dominance. Here any unfinished business is simply impermissible since it can have catastrophic effects on Israel's security.
That overlaps with the argument by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt about the effects of the Israeli lobby on US' Middle Eastern policy.
They say that:
For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread ‘democracy’ throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state..... the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby’. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of the other country – in this case, Israel – are essentially identical.
The inner core of the geopolitics of the US in the Middle East is to ensure the hegemony of Israel as a regional power. So Iran's power and influence needs to be curtailed and rolled back as it is seen as a major threat to Israel.
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Why is it so important that Israel become the most important element in the ME at the expense of the aspirations of larger Arab populations?
If as he says that Israel (read America) has largely contained it's foes there must be another reason for the US belligerence toward Iran. A desire to protect Israeli interests is only one aspect of this and I think something that is largely a smoke screen used by those seeking to obscure Americas true intentions.
It's incredible that any article mentioning the Middle Eastern dynamic vis a vis Iran does not mention energy security.
It's this that is at the core of American attempts to secure not just Israeli aspirations (as an important client state with useful and highly evolved localised strike capabilities) but their own desperate bid to control not just their own energy security, but also the aspirations of serious energy competitors in China and India.
So rather than looking out for Israeli aspirations, it's really about maintaining their own and thwarting those of their percieved competitors.