During the last U.S. presidential campaign a longtime friend of mine had become obsessed with then candidate Obama. She could never stop talking about how once in the White House he would fix most everything starting with the mess in the Middle East.
The other day I was having a conversation with her when out of the blue for failing to deliver on his promise to rein in the Israelis she began venting her frustration with President Obama. She said, and I’m paraphrasing; but of course there would be peace in the ME if Israel was not there to begin with.
Since I know she is not alone in thinking this way, I like to pose three questions:
1-Is she right?
2-Historically speaking how accurate is she, that is, was everything in the ME hunky-dory prior to the reestablishment of the modern state of Israel?
3-Lets assume Israel or her much used alias, Zionism, has magically disappeared. Wouldn’t that intensify the historical Anti- Iranian sentiment of the lovely Arab neighbors with long tradition of needing a unifying enemy?
4-Besides Israel what other regional country could be classified as Iran’s strategic ally?
