Netanyahu, Obama and the Iranian Danger

Without partners to negotiate in Hamas’s Gaza, under the surveillance of Hezbollah’s fanatic Shiite guerrilla group in the south of Lebanon, and after two complex wars against both groups, the Israeli society stands lost in thought about the threat of a nuclear Iran: An Iran whose president has proven to be unscrupulous with his own compatriot dissidents and to be a compulsive liar, hiding the existence of a nuclear reactor.

Although Israel has plenty of reasons to give priority to Ahmadinejad’s threats of “erasing it from the map,” it is not less important that the conflict with the Palestinians threatens its future as a democratic state in the long run.

For Netanyahu, the Iranian danger serves as an excuse not to set out a serious peace plan for the Palestinians of the West Bank and to press negotiations with Syria. On the contrary, Obama’s advisers consider that the Shiite radicalism of the Iranian regime, in its intent to convert itself into a nuclear power, creates an unusual strategic coincidence that brings together the stance of Israel and the Sunni Arab countries; since all have been equally threatened by the Islamists of Tehran.

While Netanyahu strives to maintain the political stability of his coalition, Obama’s government leans toward a complete diagram of peace based on the Saudi Plan, which calls on recognition and full Arab world relations with Israel in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from the 1967 borders when Gaza and the West Bank were occupied by Egypt and Jordan, respectively, and the Golan was controlled by Syria.

The permissive position of Netanyahu with respect to the Israeli settlements in the West Bank threatens the geopolitical interests of all those that should confront the hegemonic Iranian project. If this attitude has ideological roots, it will be impossible to move forward on the path suggested by Obama, but if it is distrust (justified by the violence that came after the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005) that detains Netanyahu, the members of the quartet – the United States, Europe, the U.N., and Russia – are entitled to present a plan that offers guarantees.