The Reality of Linkage between Iran and the Palestinian Issue

Writers at the usual outlets are up in arms over national security adviser James Jones’ assertion yesterday that “there are a lot of things that you can do to diminish that existential threat” of Iran to Israel “by working hard towards achieving a two-state solution.While Jones certainly could have phrased this better and more clearly, the idea behind the policy is sound: The Palestinian issue continues to be an extremely salient issue for many in the Middle East, and the U.S.’s unquestioning support for Israeli policies a deep source of anti-American sentiment. While making progress in Israeli-Palestinian talks won’t in and of itself diminish Iran’s nuclear

aspirations, it will help facilitate U.S.-led attempts to confront and contain those aspirations. It’s quite true that hostility toward Israel in the Middle East will not simply dissipate upon the end of Israel’s occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state. Nor will anti-Americanism disappear even if the U.S. is seen as having played a major role in producing such an outcome. But I’m not aware that anyone has ever made such claims — apart from conservatives producing straw arguments against the U.S. putting “pressure” on Israel to stop doing things like bulldozing Palestinian neighborhoods to make way for new parks.

We shouldn’t be inappropriately optimistic about the prospects for changing Iran’s behavior, but neither should we simply assume that it’s hopeless. And we certainly shouldn’t credit those who insist that the behavior of the U.S. or its allies has no bearing on attempts to change the behavior of others.Original article and comments(05/11/2009 Mon 1:50pm)The strength of Hamilton's approach is to distinguish between NATO's "home" and "away" roles, then further distinguish between where it should lead, where it should support, and where it should selectively do one or the other on all of the core missions on both sides of the ledger (p. 3).

That's followed by a section on institutional reforms to help implement the core missions more effectively. Whether you believe that the end-state goal should be a progressive decoupling of U.S.-EU out-of-area operations -- and security in general -- or the opposite, Hamilton's prescription is an effective and necessary first step in either direction. If I have a quibble, it's with his hedge on missile defense, which he thinks is necessary to begin preparing for now, given the lead time necessary for deployment. But all in all a sound The United Nations Secretariat upped its rhetorical heat as carnage continued in Sri Lanka over the weekend.

The military resumed shelling the last densely populated 2.5 square mile sliver of land still held by LTTE separatists. In the process, as many as 1,000 civilians trapped in the conflict zone may have been killed. This morning, the United Nations spokesperson in Sri Lanka called the killing there a 'bloodbath.' From the New York Times.“The U.N. has consistently warned against the bloodbath scenario as we’ve watched the steady increase in civilian deaths over the last few months,” Gordon Weiss, the U.N. spokesman in Sri Lanka, said Monday. “The large-scale killing of civilians over the weekend, including the deaths of more than 100 children, shows that that bloodbath has become a reality.” [emphasis mine]

Reporting on this conflict has been exceedingly difficult as the Sri Lankan military has prevented the media from accessing both the conflict zone and internment camps that hold many tens of thousands of civilians who have managed to escape. However, through ingenuity and at great risk to its reapproach to recalibrating the alliance's strategic vision over the next ten years.