A brilliant Brooks bit on Hamas/Iran

OP-ED: "The Confidence War: New rules for an old conflict," by David Brooks, New York Times, 6 January 2009.

The land-for-peace game is long gone. The new game is Iran + Hezbollah + Hamas creating maximum mayhem and pushing for Israel's destruction.

In truth, IMHO, Iran wouldn't really benefit from Israel's departure. It needs the local devil to mask its regional ambitions vis-à-vis Sunnis and to keep radical Sunnis in the mood for cooperation against the distant devil. Take away Israel and Iran's ambitions are simply naked and vigorously opposed.

That is the hope subtly implied in a piece like this: the roll-back of Iran must begin at the edges (proxies), not at the center (nukes). Deal effectively with the proxies and you kill the truly legitimate scenarios re: the nukes anyway.

Comments

[Javaid Akhtar]

I disagreeIran's involvment with Palestine is a way of out-chessing the Sunnis ( Gulf Arab states bar none) who really are ready to make peace with the Israelis.By making mischief in Israel/Palestine it has a lever that turns to a rod to beat the backs of those Sunni States that despise the Shia superstate ..Iran.Nobody is that stupid in the middle East to believe that a nuclear weaponised , US backed Israel can ever be destroyed.Give them a little credit...they really are not that stupid.The Shia's that constitute Hezbollah did'nt stir trouble with Israel for years and can do again.Every thing is political calculation , nowhere is there stupidity.The Palestinians in desparate straits, can't play any type of regional strategic gamesmanship but all the other players do.

[large]

Obviously, one of the greatest underlying problems is the fact that all of the states involved in the area, are Theocracies in disguise, and while diplomacy is the best tool perhaps, when dealing with religious differences, very little of anything works . . There's too much emotion involved, and too little rationale.