Annapolis, Iran & Realpolitik

With every major Middle East country but one represented at Annapolis today, the ostensible agenda is to discuss peace between Israel and the Palestinians. But, as Bernard Lewis pointed out in yesterday's WSJ, any major breakthrough in the peace process is unlikely. So what is under the surface that has driven all of these parties together? In a word, Iran.

The Khomeinist Shia theocracy in Iran has been the single greatest destabilizing agent in the Middle East virtually since its inception nearly 30 years ago. Now with a nuclear program that seems all but assured to begin producing a nuclear arsenal in the very near future, the threat Iran poses to the entire Middle East is growing exponentially. And while the rest of the Middle East countries are at Annapolis, Iran is hosting its own Middle East "peace" summit for all of the other parties espousing concern with the Palestinian question - i.e., Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. The participants are expected to unanimously agree to a final solution.

Israel does not scare Saudi Arabia, nor any of the other Middle East countries. Iran does. It keeps them up at night. And they are at Annapolis because of it.

This today is a perceptive analysis from Stephen Erlanger of the NYT:

The Middle East peace conference here on Tuesday was officially about ending the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. But there was an unspoken goal just below the surface: stopping the rising regional influence of Iran and Islamic radicalism.

That is why, despite enormous skepticism about the ability of the Israelis and Palestinians to reach a final peace treaty, there is enormous relief among the many Sunni Arab countries in attendance that the United States has re-engaged in what they see as the larger and more important battle for Muslim hearts and minds.

“The Arabs have come here not because they love the Jews or even the Palestinians,” said an adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team who spoke on condition of anonymity. “They came because they need a strategic alliance with the United States against Iran.”

Hovering over Annapolis are deep anxieties over the challenge from a resurgent Shiite and non-Arab Iran, with its nuclear program and its successful allies and proxies in southern Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territories. Those Arab nations fear that the tide of history is moving away from them, and that they are losing their own youth to religious militancy.

“There is a genuine concern and fear among political classes in the Arab world that the Islamic trend hasn’t reached its plateau,” said Hisham Melhem, the Washington bureau chief for Al Arabiya television. “They worry that Iran and its allies act as if this may be the beginning of the end of America’s moment in the Middle East.”

. . . “They’re very worried about militancy and their public’s great sympathy with Hezbollah and Hamas,” Mr. Telhami said, speaking by telephone from Cairo. “They were all stunned by the Hamas takeover of Gaza” in June.

. . . Representative Gary L. Ackerman, Democrat of New York, put it pithily. “Everybody at Annapolis has something in common,” he said. “It’s not love of Israel or the Palestinians. It’s fear of Iran. Everyone needs a relative to protect them from Iran.”

Read the article here. And Tom Friedman's column today is of a similar vein. He sees fear of Iran and radicalism driving the agenda, but notes that it will take more courage than fear to succeed in achieving something akin to a peace at the Annapolis summit.

(H/T israel matzav)