Reordering the Middle East

A few days back Bush termed Ahmedinejad as the next Hitler. The statement came six months after the Iranian hardliner vowed to free the world of Zionism. I ain’t sure if in hindsight Ahmedinejad would have regretted saying that but he undeniably gave the strong Jewish lobby in the US the perfect excuse to pressurize Bush into bullying Iran not that they needed a pretext to do so. Ahmedinejad’s provocation couldn’t have come better for the Jewish backed foreign policy hawks in Washington whose clout was on the decline following the outcome of the Iraqi war. In a quest to reorder the Middle East, they would now go all out against the nuclear craving Islamic Iran.

If you ask me I would sympathize with Mr. Bush clearly because he can only act as he is told to. Unfortunately for the US, such is the weight the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) throws around in matters of US foreign policy in the Middle East that America’s own security and broader interests in the region could be compromised in the process. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, faculty from two reputed US universities have undertook an in-depth analysis of the forces that drive the US foreign policy in the Middle East in their paper titled THE ISRAELI LOBBY and published in the London Review of Books.

The paper goes to the extent of dubbing America’s relationship with Israel as a strategic liability and a case that is morally weak. The authors have castigated the grounds on which this relationship stands – ideas like Israel is the underdog faced by hostile Arabs, a democratic institution, a nation that needs compensation for war crimes of the past and morally superior to the evil Arabs. It also throws light on the composition of the lobby and its source of strength. Interesting to note is that the Israeli lobby, the strongest in the U.S., contains a large proportion of non American Jews like the Christian Evangelicals and the Neo Conservatives. The lobby succeeds in shaping the US foreign policy by commanding a huge influence in the Congress and the Executive, manipulating the media, policing the academic institutions and silencing any candid attempt at a debate on Israel’s alleged role by branding it as anti- Semitism.

A biased foreign policy adopted by the U.S in the Middle East has wider ramifications for the world due to the region’s strategic importance and its hydrocarbon production. With resentment in the Muslim world already running high with Iraq and the cartoon episode, the world would become even more insecure if Iran is to be attacked. Iran definitely poses a much more serious challenge to the U.S. due to its sheer size and dispersion of its military and so-called nuclear facilities and its distance from Israel. In a bid to enhance their energy security and find a suitable alternative to the unreliable middle east, the U.S. and West have over the past decade managed in diverting the huge hydrocarbon reserves of the Caspian Sea (most of it yet to be exploited) towards the European markets through the South Caucasian – Black Sea corridor away from Russia and China. These oil facilities would be the softest targets of an Iranian retaliation and would deal a severe blow to the oil and gas exploration in Central Asia. With oil prices already $70 a barrel and the lobby's unrelenting pressure, one can just hope that Bush keeps his calm and so does Iran.