Let’s review the latest headlines: The US is sending an advanced antimissile system to Israel, along with troops to operate it. Iran’s foreign minister says there will be “no red lines” governing Iran’s retaliation for any Israeli retaliation for Iran’s latest missile retaliation. And reports say Iran has quietly told Arab Gulf states that if Iran is hit by Israel, Iran may respond by striking Arab oil fields.
If all of this does not terrify you, you are not paying attention.
May I make a suggestion? How about sending our savvy CIA director, Bill Burns, to meet his Iranian counterpart on neutral turf in Muscat, Oman, with a real strategy for coercive diplomacy vis-à-vis Iran that might actually work to change the Iran regime’s behavior? Burns could say to the Iranian intelligence chief something like the following:
“You have two paths: Either change your behavior or risk collapsing under the weight of your own recklessness. But when I say change your behavior, this time I mean something different from when we negotiated the nuclear agreement with you during the Obama administration.
My point is that if we want a peaceful and better Middle East, we need to sharpen the choices for Iran’s clerical leadership: restart nuclear talks, end the supplying of thousands of rockets to its proxies and be able to stay in power — or we will give Israel every weapon in our conventional arsenal, including the 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs designed to destroy their deeply buried nuclear facilities and the B-2 bombers to deliver them.
We need to confront Iran with an overwhelming, credible threat of force, coupled with a diplomatic survival pathway out — but one that this time addresses both Iran’s nuclear threat and regional behavior. Our job is to change Iran’s behavior; regime change is the job of the Iranian people. I believe the best way for that regime to lose its grip is to deprive it of the oxygen of permanent conflict with Israel and America — and all the excuses that Iran’s clerical tyrants give for why their people are so isolated and impoverished.
But I don’t stop there. We also need to sharpen the choices for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. We must not be in the business of making Israel safe so that a radical messianic government can annex the West Bank. If we are going to keep resupplying Israel with missiles and even dispatch US-run missile systems, Bibi needs to purge the settler lunatics from his Cabinet, forge a national unity coalition and agree to open talks with a reformed Palestinian Authority — with a new technocratic Cabinet led by credible leaders like former Prime Minister Salam Fayyad — on a two-state solution.
That would pave the way for the UAE and other moderate Arab states to deploy troops to the Gaza Strip and forge a security agreement with Washington.
Let me put this as clearly as I can: This crisis in the Middle East will not end until Israel clearly defines its eastern border and declares that everything beyond it is reserved for a Palestinian state in the West Bank, once Palestinians meet the legitimate security requirements Israel needs to accept a two-state solution. Israel needs to be out of the Jewish settlements business — now. Israel’s creeping West Bank annexation is destroying its legitimacy as a democracy, when its self-defense requires all the friends it can get in the region and beyond.
Even more important, though, this crisis in the Middle East will not end until Iran, in effect, defines its western border and declares that everything beyond that is for the Lebanese, Syrians, Yemenis, Iraqis, Israelis and Palestinians to decide — so long as they respect Iran’s legitimate security needs. Iran needs to be out of the Islamic imperialism business.
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