The forces aligned against peace in the Middle East are formidable. Virtually all the hawks have a stake in discrediting Obama’s diplomacy.
Obama’s peace offensive not only threatens the anti-American world view of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, but the political and economic monopoly of criminal cartels plundering Iran in the name of Islam. Resurrecting the Great Satan is the only way the ayatollah and his revolutionary guards can unite the Iranian people behind their odious coup. Even if Iran’s nuclear arsenal were nothing more than Ahmadinejad rattling a tin can, exchanging the illusion of power to secure peace and prosperity would further undo his pretenses.
The Arab world also has an interest in war. Having funded Saddam, the Saudis and other Gulf states view the United States military as their new warhorse against Iran. As long as the United States views shia Iran as a threat, it will ignore the toxic role its ally, Saudi Arabia, plays in exporting their intolerant brand of Wahhabi Islam into Afghanistan, Pakistan and East Africa through proxies such as the Taliban, al-Qaida and Pakistan’s ISI.
Having used the manufactured threat posed by Iraq’s nuclear weapons program as casus belli, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli right wing also have an interest in a clash over Iran’s nuclear program. Netanyahu has granted Iran’s hardliners a veto over the Arab-Israeli peace process — he has linked Israeli concessions on settlem… >>>
