An increasingly emboldened Iran is both complicating and giving promise to the Obama administration’s efforts to forge peace in the Middle East. President Barack Obama and his team are reaching out to Iran. At the same time, the Islamic Republic’s hostile rhetoric, nuclear activities and missile testing could drive a wedge between America and its closest Mideast ally, Israel. But Iran’s disjointed actions appear to be uniting the region against it. The administration hopes to capitalize on what it sees as an unprecedented coalescence of opinion in the Jewish state and its Arab neighbors on Iran. The U.S. wants to use that convergence as leverage to press ahead with Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts as well as seek a broader Arab-Israeli accord.
