New Policies and Old Realities in the Middle East.

• Author: Jones, David T.

New Policies and Old Realities in the Middle East

By Harvey Sicherman, President, Foreign Policy Research Institute

http://www.fpri.org/enotes/200901.sicherman.newoldmiddleeast.html

Dr. Harvey Sicherman's early December review of the Middle East (tweaked to incorporate the Israeli incursion into Gaza), part of the Foreign Policy Research Institute's Robert A. Fox Lectures, provides a useful tour d' horizon of three baseline issues: Iraq, Iran, and Israel-Palestine. And as an added incentive for the reader, he includes judgments on the Obama national security team and proposals for action in the region.

Taking a historical perspective, Sicherman notes that overall U.S. regional objectives are being met: Israeli security, Western access to oil, and preventing outside domination are not the overriding concerns of a generation ago. Turning to current issues, Sicherman sees reasonable success in Iraq, notably preventing al-Qaeda control and creating the potential for a Sunni-Shite-Kurd power balance that could be interpreted as democracy. In Iran, he recounts a litany of failures to transform Iran from an "arsonist into a fireman," but does not believe Iran would immediately employ a nuclear weapon. He is mildly sanguine that serious economic sanctions during the current global recession could prompt...