WarSclerotic

Review & Outlook: Obama’s Turn Against Israel – WSJ.com.

In recent weeks, the Obama Administration has endorsed “healthy relations” between Iran and Syria, mildly rebuked Syrian President Bashar Assad for accusing the U.S. of “colonialism,” and publicly apologized to Moammar Gadhafi for treating him with less than appropriate deference after the Libyan called for “a jihad” against Switzerland.

When it comes to Israel, however, the Administration has no trouble rising to a high pitch of public indignation. On a visit to Israel last week, Vice President Joe Biden condemned an announcement by a mid-level Israeli official that the government had approved a planning stage—the fourth out of seven required—for the construction of 1,600 housing units in north Jerusalem. Assuming final approval, no ground will be broken on the project for at least three years.

But neither that nor repeated apologies from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prevented Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—at what White House sources ostentatiously said was the personal direction of President Obama—from calling the announcement “an insult to the United States.” White House political chief David Axelrod got in his licks on NBC’s Meet the Press yesterday, lambasting Israel for what he described as “an affront.”

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Associated Press

Since nobody is defending the Israeli announcement, least of all an obviously embarrassed Israeli government, it’s difficult to see why the Administration has chosen this occasion to spark a full-blown diplomatic crisis with its most reliable Middle Eastern ally. Mr. Biden’s visit was intended to reassure Israelis that the Administration remained fully committed to Israeli security and legitimacy. In a speech at Tel Aviv University two days after the Israeli announcement, Mr. Biden publicly thanked Mr. Netanyahu for “putting in place a process to prevent the recurrence” of similar incidents.

The subsequent escalation by Mrs. Clinton was clearly intended as a highly public rebuke to the Israelis, but its political and strategic logic is puzzling. The U.S. needs Israel’s acquiescence in the Obama Administration’s increasingly drawn-out efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear bid through diplomacy or sanctions. But Israel’s restraint is measured in direct proportion to its sense that U.S. security guarantees are good. If Israel senses that the Administration is looking for any pretext to blow up relations, it will care much less how the U.S. might react to a military strike on Iran.

As for the West Bank settlements, it is increasingly difficult to argue that their existence is the key obstacle to a peace deal with the Palestinians. Israel withdrew all of its settlements from Gaza in 2005, only to see the Strip transform itself into a Hamas statelet and a base for continuous rocket fire against Israeli civilians.

Israeli anxieties about America’s role as an honest broker in any diplomacy won’t be assuaged by the Administration’s neuralgia over this particular housing project, which falls within Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries and can only be described as a “settlement” in the maximalist terms defined by the Palestinians. Any realistic peace deal will have to include a readjustment of the 1967 borders and an exchange of territory, a point formally recognized by the Bush Administration prior to Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza. If the Obama Administration opts to transform itself, as the Europeans have, into another set of lawyers for the Palestinians, it will find Israeli concessions increasingly hard to come by.

That may be the preferred outcome for Israel’s enemies, both in the Arab world and the West, since it allows them to paint Israel as the intransigent party standing in the way of “peace.” Why an Administration that repeatedly avers its friendship with Israel would want that is another question.

Then again, this episode does fit Mr. Obama’s foreign policy pattern to date: Our enemies get courted; our friends get the squeeze. It has happened to Poland, the Czech Republic, Honduras and Colombia. Now it’s Israel’s turn.

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs.

By Spengler The chess-masters of Tehran have played a single combination for the past five years: threaten America’s flanks in Iraq and Afghanistan in order to gain control of the center of the board, that is, by pushing on with a nuclear program that many suspect is designed to acquire nuclear weapons. Iran has sufficient assets in the territory of its troubled neighbors to make a shambles of America’s Potemkin village. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki may be able to govern Iraq with a third of the seats contested in the March 7 parliamentary elections, provided that Iran’s allies such as Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr permit him to do so. And the appearance of Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad in Kabul on March 10 to declare hissolidarity with Afghanistan’s beleaguered President Hamid Karzai planted Iran’s flag in the midst of Afghan politics. Iran will succeed, unless another player kicks over the chessboard. Israeli officials report that American officials are visiting Jerusalem – including Vice President Joseph Biden last week – to warn Israel against launching an attack on Iran. “They’re not talking about the Palestinians, they’re only talking about Iran,” commented the head of one Israeli political party. That explains the exceptionally harsh, even adversarial tone that Washington has taken towards Israel, supposedly in response to last week’s go-ahead for 1,600 apartments in East Jerusalem, but evidently in anticipation of an Israeli attack on Iran. Reuters quoted an unnamed American official warning that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s position was “perilous” because of alleged divisions in his government over negotiating with the Palestinians. United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s March 12 statement seemed disproportionate that the East Jerusalem construction was “a deeply negative signal about Israel’s approach to the bilateral relationship and counter to the spirit of the vice president’s trip”. And the Israeli news site Debka.com, which frequently carries intelligence community leaks, reports that Washington is threatening to withhold weapons from the Israelis. Considering that Obama faces congressional elections in five months and well may lose control of both houses, the lady may protest too much. Obama may be in a lot more trouble than Netanyahu. The Obama administration’s shrill tone towards Israel reflects its domestic political weakness as much as its strategic problems. According to a March 7 poll by The Israel Project, Americans take the Israeli side against the Palestinians by a margin of 57% to 7%, with the rest neutral. A Gallup Poll released February 28 gives the margin at 63% to 15%, with 23% neutral. Only 30% of respondents told Gallup that they expect a peace agreement between Israel and the Arab states. More to the point, 60% of respondents in a March 2 Fox News poll said they believed force would be required to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, while only 25% believe that diplomacy and sanctions will work. Fifty-one percent of Democrats and 75% of Republicans polled favored the use of force. Obama’s job approval for handling Iran was at only 41%, with 42% disapproving. An Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities would polarize American opinion. And if the Obama administration attempted to punish Israel for doing what most Americans seemingly want to do in any event, the balance of American sentiment – if available polling data are any guide – would shift away from Obama and to Israel. Obama’s party would pay at the polls in November. No one cares about the Palestinians; to the extent that the charade of Israeli negotiations with the weak and divided Palestine Authority comes into consideration, it is because Washington still hopes that a show of progress might be helpful in addressing more urgent concerns in the Persian Gulf and Central Asia. Obama’s investment in rapprochement with Iran is not a sentimental gesture: it is the pillar on which American regional policy rests. Despite the enormous difference in outlook between the last administration and the present one, there is an underlying continuity in Washington’s stance towards Iran, due to the facts on the ground put in place by Iran itself. I wrote on this site in October 2005, shortly after Ahmadinejad came to power: I do not believe any formal understanding is in place, but the probable outcome is that Washington will refrain from military action to forestall any Iranian nuclear arms developments, while Tehran will refrain from disrupting Washington’s constitutional Potemkin Village in Iraq. Tehran thinks strategically, as befits a country with a government newly elected by an overwhelming majority, while Washington thinks politically. President George W Bush is struggling to persuade the American public of the wisdom of his nation-building scheme in Iraq, and badly wants the Iranians to keep their hands in their pockets. Iran is prepared to do so as long as America keeps its opposition to its nuclear program within the confines of the diplomatic cul-de-sac defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency. (See A Syriajevo in the making?, Asia Times Online, October 25, 2005) Nation-building in Iraq is the tar baby that has entrapped American foreign policy. The notion that the United States should take responsibility for the political evolution of a country cooked up by British cartographers with the explicit purpose of keeping Sunni Arabs, Shi’ite Arabs and Kurds at each others’ throats, ranks as one of the great political delusions of the past century. Since the American invasion in 2003, it always has been in Iran’s power to make the country ungovernable. More important to Iran, though, is the potential acquisition of nuclear weapons. Should it become a nuclear power, Iran could set its cats’ paws in Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan to whatever task it chose with far less fear of American retribution. The Obama administration’s abortive opening to Iran always aimed at obtaining Iranian help in stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan, among other things by soliciting Tehran’s good offices with the Shi’ite Hazara minority in Afghanistan. Iran has ties both to the Hazara as well as to their mortal enemies, the Sunni Taliban, and keeps its options open. Its prospective influence in Afghanistan is potent enough to panic the US – Secretary of Defense Robert Gates arrived in Kabul unannounced on March 8, the same day that Ahmadinejad was expected in the Afghan capital, prompting the Iranian president to postpone his trip by two days. Gates’ unexpected trip was interpreted as a pre-emptive action against Iranian influence. Karzai embraced his Iranian counterpart as a friend and ally. As Asia Times Online’s M K Bhadrakumar wrote on March 13: “Karzai can hope to tap into Iran’s influence with various Afghan groups, which traditionally focused on the Persian-speaking Tajiks and Hazara Shi’ites but today also extends to segments of the Pashtun population. Significantly, Ahmedinejad was received on Wednesday at Kabul airport by the Northern Alliance leader Mohammed Fahim, who has become the first vice president in Karzai’s new government despite strong opposition from the US and Britain.” (See A titanic power struggle in Kabul, Asia Times Online, March 13) The United States responded to Ahmadinejad’s Afghan visit by paying obeisance to Iran’s influence. “The future of Afghanistan has a regional dimension and we hope that Iran will play a more constructive role in Afghanistan in the future,” said US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley. He added in the past, the US and Iran have “cooperated constructively” and hoped that they would do so again, given that Iran has “a legitimate interest in the future of Afghanistan”. The answer to the question: “What is Obama’s exit strategy from Afghanistan?” – is a Great Gamelet in which Iran and Pakistan work out a power-sharing arrangement in Afghanistan and establish a miniature balance of power between Sunnis and Shi’ites. All that is missing is Johnny Depp in Mad Hatter makeup replacing Richard Holbrooke as AfPak czar, distributing 3-D glasses to the diplomatic corps. Just as delusional is the idea that an Iraqi government formed by either of the two front-runners in the March 7 elections, Maliki or Iyad Allawi, would free Iraq of Iranian influence. That is the conventional wisdom in Washington, however. The Washington Post editorialized March 13: A government headed by either Mr Maliki or Mr Allawi would offer the Obama administration an opportunity to forge a vital strategic relationship with Iraq even as US troops depart in the next two years. Mr Maliki signed a strategic framework with the Bush administration and has already demonstrated his capacity to resist Iranian influence. Mr Allawi is even more interested in an alliance with Washington and has good relations with Arab Sunni governments that have shunned Mr Maliki’s administration. The precise opposite is the case: Iraq’s elections took place without crippling violence because Tehran understands well the chess maxim: “The threat is mightier than the execution.” Iran is content to allow America to keep its Potemkin village in place for a while longer, and push on with its nuclear program which carries with it possibility of a nuclear weapon. What the Bush administration might have done under present circumstances is a hypothetical question. But the fact is that Bush built the Potemkin village in Iraq, and Obama inherited it. The difference lies in the Bush administration’s desire to project American power, and the Obama administration’s desire to diminish it. One might speculate that a Republican administration – at least one headed by Senator John McCain – would have encouraged Israel to extricate the US from its present Zugzwang (imperative to move when any move is damaging) by attacking Iran’s nuclear program. That, after all, is what allies are for. There is no Obama administration as such; there is only Obama, who appears to run the entire show out of his Blackberry. As David Rothkopf wrote in his Foreign Policy blog March 12, Obama’s is “an administration in which seeking the favor of the president has taken on an importance that is in fact, much more reminiscent of the historical czars than is the role being played by anyone with this now devalued moniker”. As I wrote on this space February 18: “Israel has a strategic problem broader than the immediate issue of Iran’s possible acquisition of nuclear weapons: it is an American ally at a moment when America has effectively withdrawn from strategic leadership. That leaves Israel at a crossroads. It can act like an American client state, or a regional superpower. Either decision would have substantial costs.”(See The case for an Israeli strike against Iran, Asia Times Online, February 18) The best thing that Israel can do for the United States in its time of befuddlement is pursue its own interests, for American and Israeli security concerns have one overriding commonality: the need to prevent rogue states in the region from acquiring nuclear weapons. In the the present test of wills between Washington and Jerusalem, the smart money is on David rather than Goliath.

U.S.-Israel crisis: This time, it’s serious | JTA – Jewish & Israel News.

By Ron Kampeas · March 15, 2010

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Last summer, when the relationship between the Obama and Netanyahu administrations was getting off to what appeared to be a rocky start, Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren was at pains — twice — to deny that he had been “summoned” to the State Department for a dressing down.

One such “meeting” was actually a friendly phone call, he said, and the other was a routine getting-to-know-you meeting. The distinction was key, he told journalists: When the State Department actually “summons” an envoy, “That’s serious.”

Welcome to the serious zone: Oren’s spokesman, Jonathan Peled, confirmed to JTA that the ambassador had indeed been “summoned” for a meeting last Friday with James Steinberg, the deputy secretary of state, as the controversy engendered by Israel’s announcement of a new building start during last week’s visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden shows no sign of abating.

“It wasn’t a meeting,” Oren told the Washington Jewish Week in an interview at a fund-raiser for a DC-area school on Sunday night “It was a summoning. I was told it was the first time that any ambassador had been summoned at that level.” Oren said he was “working hard to avert an escalation. We’re working very hard to get back to what we need to do to make peace and stop Iran from making the bomb. We have apologized publicly and privately profusely.”

Israeli media reported Monday that in a conference call Saturday night with other Israeli diplomats, Oren — a New Jersey-born historian who has gone out of his way to talk up the relationship — said that ties were at a 35-year nadir. He was presumably referring to the Ford administration’s threat to “reassess” the relationship with Israel because of perceived Israeli reluctance to make the necessary concessions to achieve peace with Egypt.

Israeli officials and leaders of pro-Israel organizations are asking the administration to dial it down, in tones ranging from the pleading to the berating — sometimes in the same statement.

“The Obama Administration’s recent statements regarding the U.S. relationship with Israel are a matter of serious concern,” the American Israel Public Affairs Committee said in a statement Sunday night, a rare direct broadside from an organization that generally operates behind the scenes. “AIPAC calls on the Administration to take immediate steps to defuse the tension with the Jewish State.”

The statement comes just a week before the start of AIPAC’s annual policy conference, widely seen as the most important pro-Israel event in Washington.

Like an array of other Jewish groups, AIPAC wants the matter kept quiet: “We strongly urge the Administration to work closely and privately with our partner Israel, in a manner befitting strategic allies, to address any issues between the two governments.”

That echoed a plea Sunday morning from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to his Cabinet as much as to the Obama administration.

“I suggest that we not get carried away — and that we calm down,” he said. “We know how to deal with these situations — with equanimity, responsibly and seriously.”

But Obama administration officials, who accepted Netanyahu’s explanation that he had been blindsided, were nonetheless not ready to let the matter go.

In addition to Friday’s summons of Oren, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley described a conversation the same day between Netanyahu and Hillary Rodham Clinton, the secretary of state, in exceptionally blunt terms. Clinton objected to the announcement “not just in terms of timing, but also in its substance,” Crowley said.

The Netanyahu-Clinton phone call reportedly lasted 45 minutes — and by most accounts sounded less like the “conversation” Oren says he had with Steinberg and more like a lecture.

Ha’aretz reported that Clinton, who is scheduled to speak at the AIPAC conference next week, wants three demands met beyond Netanyahu’s offer to check into how the announcement was made in order to ratchet it back to normal: reverse the Ramat Shlomo decision; make a substantive gesture to the Palestinians, such as a prisoner release; and agree to peace talks that encompass not only borders but final status issues such as refugees and Jerusalem.

On Monday, Netanyahu told a Likud Party meeting building in Jerusalem would not stop. However, his defense minister and Labor Party leader Ehud Barak said more needed to be done to assuage the Americans. Barak, a potential rival to Netanyahu in elections, hinted at a Labor Party meeting that a failure to do so could lead his party to pull its support for the government. “Peace talks are a first priority for Israel and for the entire region,” Ha’aretz quoted Barak as saying. “The political process is in the interest of the state and it is a subject in which the Labor party believes. It is one of the things that anchors us in the government and drives us to work within it.”

The controversy erupted last week with what both sides agreed was the humiliation handed last week to Biden, considered to be Netanyahu’s best friend in the Obama administration. The vice president had come to allay Israeli concerns that Obama’s outreach to Muslims would come at Israel’s expense; just as he was getting ready to meet with Palestinian officials as part of the administration’s push to restart peace talks, Israel announced plans to build 1,600 housing units in Ramat Shlomo, part of disputed eastern Jerusalem.

Biden, furious, condemned the announcement — several times — but went ahead with a speech that affirmed the unshakeable U.S.-Israel bond. Netanyahu apologized for the timing and said he would probe how the announcement was made without his knowledge.

“There was a regrettable incident, that was done in all innocence and was hurtful, and which certainly should not have occurred,” Netanyahu said in his statement. “We appointed a team of directors-general to examine the chain of events and to ensure procedures that will prevent such occurrences in the future. Beyond this, I think we should suffice with the foregoing.”

And that was that, or so the Israelis hoped. But then came the continuing U.S. criticisms and demands.

In the past, the pro-Israel community has been able to rally push-back against such initiatives, and as the unusual AIPAC statement made clear, this is no different. The Ford administration backed down from the 1975 “reassessment” after AIPAC garnered more than 70 signatures from the Senate signaling that Congress would override any presidential attempt to cut back funds. That was the lobby’s first signal victory, accruing to it the “don’t mess with us” reputation it maintains until now.

Now, however, the president can count on a Democratic Congress less likely to break ranks with him in a Washington that has become much more partisan. Notably, Republicans — including Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), the minority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives — have sided with Israel in the matter, but as of Monday the only Democrat to speak out has been Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.), perhaps the most-pro-Israel stalwart in her caucus. Other more powerful pro-Israel reliables — like Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs committee — have yet to speak out.

It’s unclear, however, what impact they would have if they did: Unlike President Ford in 1975 or President George H.W. Bush in 1991, Obama is not threatening any cut in assistance, rendering Congress’ “purse strings” powers superfluous. By holding back on such threats, the Obama administration can ignore Congress and continue to reproach Israel.

In fact, it is Obama’s stated commitment to “tachles” — increased assistance to Israel in the realm of military cooperation, such as missile defense, and ramped up pressure on Iran to make its nuclear intentions transparent — that has made the latest flap particularly upsetting to the president’s circle, particularly among those with intimate Israel ties, such as Dennis Ross, who handles Iran policy at the White House, and Martin Indyk, a Clinton confidante who maintains an informal advisor role.

In a posting on the Daily Beast Web site, Indyk recalled that the last time Netanyahu led Israel in the late 1990s, his boss, Madeleine Albright, then the secretary of state, was similarly embarrassed during a visit. She called Indyk, then the ambassador to Israel, and shouted: “You tell Bibi that he needs to stop worrying about his right wing and start worrying about the United States.”

It’s time to heed that advice, Indyk said. “There is one way to repair the damage to U.S.-Israel relations and to his own standing with the Israeli public,” he wrote. “He could immediately declare that in order to boost the chances for negotiations, he is calling a halt to all provocative acts in Jerusalem—including announcements of new building activity in east Jerusalem, housing demolitions, and evictions. He should also establish a mechanism in the prime minister’s office to ensure that his decision is implemented.”

The State Department sounded an Albright-sounding note on Friday, when Crowley stated that Clinton wanted to make clear to Netanyahu that “the United States considers the announcement a deeply negative signal about Israel’s approach to the bilateral relationship — and counter to the spirit of the vice president’s trip; and to reinforce that this action had undermined trust and confidence in the peace process, and in America’s interests.”

“The secretary said she could not understand how this happened, particularly in light of the United States’ strong commitment to Israel’s security,” Crowley said. “And she made clear that the Israeli government needed to demonstrate not just through words but through specific actions that they are committed to this relationship and to the peace process.”

There are signs of a push-back strategy among Israel and its Washington supporters: frame Palestinian provocations as more damaging than the building starts announcement.

Headlines in Israel on Monday focused on calls by the Palestinian leadership to protest the rededication of the “Hurva,” an ancient Old City synagogue destroyed by Jordanian forces. P.A. officials reportedly have said that the building threatens the integrity of the Al Aksa mosque, although the synagogue is nowhere near the compound.

“If the Obama Administration is pressing Israel these days over an untimely, but at bottom bureaucratic, step toward construction in Jerusalem, they must press the Palestinians harder over inciting their people with an inflammatory, but false, threat to their mosque on the Temple Mount,” the Orthodox Union said on its Web site. “This is a present call to violence and danger.”

Berkley listed Palestinian violations in her release: “Where, I ask, was the administration’s outrage over the arrest and monthlong incarceration by Hamas of a British journalist who was investigating arms smuggling into Gaza? Where was the outrage when the Palestinian Authority this week named a town square after a woman who helped carry out a massive terror attack against Israel? It has been the P.A. who has refused to participate in talks for over a year, not the government of Israel. Yet once again, no concern was lodged by the administration.”

In fact, the Obama administration routinely condemns Hamas terrorism and has chided the Palestinian Authority for dragging its feet on talks; the State Department’s most recent human rights roundup cited Palestinian incitement as an ongoing problem. It is true that Obama officials have not pronounced on the naming of the square after a Dalal Mughrabi, a woman who died leading a 1978 terrorist attack that killed 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children. The Palestinian Authority postponed the official dedication until after Biden left to avoid embarrassing him, though less formal ceremonies reportedly did take place.

Meanwhile, the Israeli Cabinet appeared to get Netanyahu’s message about the need to avoid future embarrassments of U.S. officials (and, for that matter, of the prime minister himself); the mistimed announcement of the Ramat Shlomo building was believed to be part of a “more right wing than thou” contest of wills between two ministers of the religious Shas Party, Interior Minister Eli Yishai and Housing Minister Ariel Attias. For his part, Attias was cowed, pleading on Israel Radio on Monday morning to “look forward” and asking “experienced and wise people” in the United States and Israel not to let matters further deteriorate.

Final destination Iran? – Herald Scotland | News | World News.

Exclusive: Rob Edwards

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Published on 14 Mar 2010

Hundreds of powerful US “bunker-buster” bombs are being shipped from California to the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean in preparation for a possible attack on Iran.

The Sunday Herald can reveal that the US government signed a contract in January to transport 10 ammunition containers to the island. According to a cargo manifest from the US navy, this included 387 “Blu” bombs used for blasting hardened or underground structures.

Experts say that they are being put in place for an assault on Iran’s controversial nuclear facilities. There has long been speculation that the US military is preparing for such an attack, should diplomacy fail to persuade Iran not to make nuclear weapons.

Although Diego Garcia is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory, it is used by the US as a military base under an agreement made in 1971. The agreement led to 2,000 native islanders being forcibly evicted to the Seychelles and Mauritius.

The Sunday Herald reported in 2007 that stealth bomber hangers on the island were being equipped to take bunker-buster bombs.

Abbas: Iran hampering unity talks.

Photo by: AP

By RACHELLE KLIGER / THE MEDIA LINE
14/03/2010 17:01

PA leader says Iran is impeding efforts to reach a deal between Fatah and Hamas.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has blamed Iran for impeding reconciliation between his Fatah faction and its archrival Hamas.

“Iran doesn’t want Hamas to sign the Cairo reconciliation document,” Abbas said during a visit to Tunisia on Friday.

Abbas said Hamas objected to signing an Egyptian-brokered deal with Fatah because of opposition from Teheran, and argued that the Palestinians should be “free from Iranian tutelage.”

The Media Line News Agency

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast denied the accusations on Saturday, claiming Iran’s position regarding the Palestinian issue involved “unity and solidarity of Palestinian factions in face of the Zionist regime.”

“Both Fatah and Hamas are unable, for whatever reasons, to reconcile at the moment,” Dr. Samir Awwad, a professor of international relations at Birzeit University told The Media Line. “President Abbas would want to come up with reasons to justify why the national reconciliation has failed after so many months of disagreement. He’s pointing to possible involvement of regional powers, and this time he’s naming Iran.”

Abbas’s statements come in the run-up to the Arab League summit in Libya starting March 27.

Analysts have suggested the accusations might be an attempt by Abbas to garner more support from Arab countries against Iran and Hamas.

Sunni Arab countries are anxious over the prospect of Iran becoming a regional nuclear power in the Middle East as Tehran continues to defy international demands to abandon its nuclear program. Regional powers, including Egypt, are concerned Iran is gaining political clout, which might tip the local balance of power.

“Iran is trying to create a coalition with Hizbullah, Syria and Hamas and that’s how [Abbas] interprets many of Hamas’ positions,” Awwad said. “There is regional support for Hamas from that coalition.”

Awwad said that despite coalition attempts, he does not believe Iran carries much weight in internal Palestinian politics, rather that Hamas itself wants to hamper the talks in order to defer a reconciliation deal and buy time before setting a date for elections, at a time when opinion polls suggest Hamas’s popularity is waning.

But Israeli intelligence sources claim there are close ties between Iran and Hamas, and supporters of Abbas’s position say Iran has an interest in involving itself in local Palestinian issues in order to show Egypt that it is a dominant power in the region.

Egypt’s recent efforts to bring about an agreement between the Palestinian factions have so far failed, despite going on for more than a year.

“Political hegemony in the region is the prime goal of Iran, not the liberation of Palestine,” Naji Shurab, a political science professor at the Gaza-based Al-Azhar University told The Media Line. “Iran is not ready to engage in a war for Jerusalem or for Palestine or Hamas.”

“Iran realizes that the US and Europe are calling for sanctions on Iran,” he said. “For this reason Iran wants to signal to the US that it’s the only regional power in the area capable of settling the issues. Iran is seeking to play the sole regional actor in the area and it wants the US to recognize this role.”

Iran and Egypt cut diplomatic relations in 1979, following both the Islamic Revolution in Iran and Egypt’s signing of a peace agreement with Israel.

Tensions between political rivals Fatah and Hamas heightened after Hamas won the legislative election in the Palestinian Authority in January 2006, but the situation worsened after Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in a violent coup in June 2007.

The coup caused a de facto split between the West Bank – currently governed by Abbas’s US-backed government, and the Gaza Strip, governed by an ousted Hamas government, which lacks international support and is largely isolated, politically and economically.
The reconciliation efforts collapsed last year when Fatah signed a proposal, which was later rejected by Hamas. Abbas said Hamas was looking for excuses to avoid signing the deal after its leaders initially approved it.