A Smart/Clever Dreamer Faces a Lot of Nightmares!

Is Iran so concerned about Hamas they are about to unleash Hizballah? (See 1 and 1a below.)

Next week an enigma becomes president. We know very little about our soon to become president other than he is eloquent, inexeperienced and has a lot to learn about the position he is soon to assume. We also know he believes government solutions are preferable to market ones, plans to close Gitmo in the hope that it will restore luster to our nation, intends to negotiate directly with nations that are sworn to our destruction, believes we need a 'heap of change' and sees himself as Lincoln's clone.

Mr. Obama was elected because some voters felt guilt, some hated our current president, some believed we should never have gone to war in Iraq, some were distraught over the economy, some blamed Republicans for the way they mis-managed our affairs, some were turned off by McCain and Palen and some bought the press and media's sound bites and protection of the candidate the press and media wanted to see win.

All legitimate and understandable reasons.

I suspect we are going to experience change and but I believe it is our new president who will do more changing as rubber meets the road and reality begins to narrow his options. Mr. Obama appears to me to be a smart and clever dreamer who is facing a lot of nightmares.

Good luck President Obama. (See 2 below.)

Sprayragen - a clear thinker! (See 3 below.)

Barak better military tactician than political one? Is he conducting the campaign with an eye on the polls?

Another example of why Israel's political structure is askew. Olmert is the fading head of one party and Barak is a critical Minister from another. Who is in control, who sets policy, who has the final word?(See 4 and 4a below.)

The world after Gaza. Will the child save the parents once again or will Obama step up to the plate? More importantly =how the withdrawl from Iraq is allowed by Iran may determine everything. (See 5 and 5a below.)

Dick


1)Israel's northern forces on high alert after rocket attack on Kiryat Shemona


Hizballah's Al Manar TV reports that Israel fired back. Additional Lebanese sources described Israeli helicopters hovering over southern Lebanon and five missiles fired at the rocket sites.

Five Katyusha rockets were apparently fired early Wednesday, Jan. 14, from two places in S. Lebanon - 3 from Arqoub and two from Himariyeh near Hazbaya. The latter fell short and exploded inside the Lebanese border.

At 8:30 a.m., the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shemona heard four explosions and saw plumes of smoke rise over the Galilee Panhandle. They headed for bomb shelters and cancelled classes at school. Two women went into shock.

Last Thursday, Jan. 8, Nahariya on the Mediterranean coast came under rocket attack from Lebanon and a nursing home was destroyed. Israel responded with cross-border artillery fire to what was officially described as a one-off attack. Hizballah spokesmen warned then that further Israeli "provocations" would be met with reprisals.

Military sources report that the second rocket attack from Lebanon in less than a week indicates that Hizballah is supplying its terrorist allies with rockets for a systematic assault on northern Israel in support of Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

2)Even Arabs Will Benefit if Israel Finishes the Job in Gaza
By Joel J. Sprayregen
It is in everyone's interest -- including the Arabs -- to let Israel finish the job in Gaza. The U.N. Security Council decreed that the arsonist should remain free to pile incendiaries next to his neighbor's house. The arsonist insisted he would continue to try to set ablaze the house. This was the illogic of last week's non-binding Security Council Resolution 1860, calling for "immediate" ceasefire in Gaza without demanding an immediate halt of Iran's supplying missiles.

Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan said on al-Arabiya TV that the group "is not interested because it does not meet the demands of our movement." Those demands include destruction of Israel in accordance with Hamas' Charter, unrestricted firing of rockets at Israeli civilians and continued smuggling of arms. Israel rejected the resolution as "unworkable" because it would not stop arms smuggling.


The text of this Alice in Wonderland resolution would merit an emphatic "F" in any law school class. There is no mention of the 7000 Hamas rockets which necessitated Israel's response. Nor is there mention of Hamas or Israel. Hamas of course is not a country or U.N. member. It won 2006 elections in Gaza supervised by (who else?) Jimmy Carter. It murdered its way over the Fatah forces of Palestinian President Abbas to absolute power in Gaza. No fair observer need waste time on the U.N.'s text, recalling Justice Holmes' maxim that "the life of the law has not been logic, it has been experience." The experience of the past two weeks teaches several important lessons:


Hamas can be defeated

If calm is to be restored, Israel must finish degrading Hamas' power so the missile barrages cease. Edward Luttwak of the Center for Strategic Studies wrote last week:


"What Israel can do is weaken Hamas further in its current ground operations by raiding targets that cannot be attacked from the air -- because they are in the basements of crowded apartment buildings -- and by engaging Hamas gunmen in direct combat."


The focus must be on destruction of the complex of hundreds of tunnels through which Iran and Syria supply Hamas. This is why the IDF has been concentrating on the Rafah region in south Gaza. Brig. Gen. Yossi Kuperwasser of Israeli Intelligence says: "We can not afford to let the tunnels continue." Any end-game that does not interdict weapons smuggling to Hamas means that Iran will supply missiles which eventually place Tel Aviv and Ben-Gurion Airport under terrorist fire. Tony Blair, EU envoy to the Palestinians, agrees "the only way this is going to stop is if there is a genuine plan to end the smuggling into Gaza." 300 Hamas gunmen have been killed; many have been captured. Desertions are increasing.

1a) Hezbollah seeking to change the rules of the game
By Yoav Stern


The firing of Katyusha rockets from Lebanon into northern Israel on Wednesday, for the second time in one week, is the result of Hezbollah's desire to alter the balance of power that has existed between the militant organization and Israel since the Second Lebanon War.

Hezbollah seeks to lay the foundation for a situation in the future in which the group can freely fire Katyushas at Israel, or use proxies to do so, without this constituting an all-out declaration of war, as occurred in the summer of 2006.


No group has yet taken responsibility for last Thursday's rocket fire and, in the meantime, no one has claimed Wednesday's attack, but it is clear that little happens in southern Lebanon without being coordinated in advance with Hezbollah.

Ibrahim al-Amin, an associate of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and the editor of al-Akhbar, wrote on Wednesday that, "The actions in the field are ongoing, the ones out in the open and the ones that remain hidden in southern Lebanon, especially in the area in which UNIFIL operates south of the Litani River." Al-Amin was referring to the United Nations peacekeeping force deployed to monitor the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah.

In other words, Hezbollah has been extremely active, apparently also in areas where it has been forbidden to do so militarily. And looking ahead, when will Hezbollah have a better opportunity to change the regional rules of the game than it does now, during Israel's offensive against Hamas in Gaza, when cross-border fire receives greater legitimacy than during quiet times?

This should not be taken to mean that Hezbollah is interested in opening a new front, at least not at this stage. Lebanese commentators assert that the scenario in which a Palestinian group, probably Ahmed Jibril's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, does the dirty work for Hezbollah, is the one that we are seeing now and are likely to see more of in the coming days, although not a confrontation of a greater magnitude.

Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, an expert on Hezbollah, wrote this week on the Electronic Intifada Web site that the defense of Hamas is central to Hezbollah's ideology, but that should not be interpreted as meaning that the organization is ready to pay the price for opening a second front in the north.

Saad-Ghorayeb said that Hezbollah only would consider military intervention against Israel if it believes Hamas is about to be crushed either militarily or politically.

He wrote: "Based on the centrality of the Palestinian cause to Hezbollah...it cannot allow Hamas to be crushed militarily on the battlefield or politically, by means of a humiliating cease-fire arrangement."


2) Four Traps for Obama
By James Lewis

2010 is do-or-die time for the Obama Administration. Bill Clinton lost a majority in Congress two years after he came into office. Enough voters switched against the Democrats to bring the Gingrich-led GOP Congress into majority status for the first time in 40 years. Voters wanted to restrain the Clintons' socialist ambitions.


Two fiascos punctuated the first Clinton years.


First, the Democrats' drive for openly practiced homosexuality in the military. The voters didn't like the idea of US Marines openly sleeping together.


The second fiasco was HillaryCare, which looked like a massive power-grab, not a modest medical insurance program.


Barack Obama is preparing to step into those two hornets' nests even now.


But there's more.


Trap Number Three: Obama wants to make his mark domestically, and keep foreign policy stable and at a distance, at least in the first few years. That's why he brought in Hillary and her merry band to run foreign policy. But this won't work. Foreign challenges started to emerge as soon as Obama was elected. Vladimir Putin is threatening Ukraine's gas supplies. He has no compunction about invading neighboring countries, as he did with Georgia. The Europeans, in their usual shameful and cowardly way, will immediately call on the US to respond.


Ahmadinejad will explode his first nuke in the next two years. The Arabs oil countries will look to the US to protect them. Add the North Koreans and lots of pressure from Arabs who have apparently invested money in the Obama campaign.


Obama will have to respond, or back down.


Trap Number Four. The economy is the worst trap of all, because it affects every voter's well-being. We are in an unprecedented debt crisis, with no clear way out. What gets us out of trouble -- the Carter Malaise, the Great Depression, the business cycles -- is improved productivity. The productive sector of the economy creates goods and services that people want. The computer revolution has immensely increased productivity. The Green Revolution in crops and the coming biotech revolution will improve genuine productivity.


But none of those are under Federal control. They happen at their own pace, as products, opportunities and markets open up.


Obama's Green supporters are fanatically blocking the most obvious improvements in economic productivity: nuclear power plants and better use of domestic oil supplies.


All four Traps for Obama interact. Thus a market-based Health Savings Account for the uninsured is a sensible investment, with minimal impact on the health care sector. But a central planning authority, ObamaCare instead of HillaryCare, will create even more uncertainty in one-seventh of the US economy. It will depress the economy as long as things remain unpredictable, which will be years.


Likewise, if we cannot protect the oil-producing countries and navigation channels -- like the Persian Gulf -- the Saudis will not use their reserve production capacity to at least partially stabilize oil prices. If it were up to Iran and Chavez, oil would be four times what it is today, and the world economic crisis would be much, much worse.


The media will be full of excuses for Obama in 2009 and 2010. But the voters likely will be hurting. Obama either has to shaft his supporters -- the Gay Left, the anti-military, the corrupt Democrat city machines, the Greens -- or he will lose in 2010.



3) Even Arabs Will Benefit if Israel Finishes the Job in Gaza
By Joel J. Sprayregen


Thwarting Hamas' "CNN Strategy"

What Hamas calls its "CNN strategy" must be thwarted. Professor Alan Dershowitz reminds: "The number of civilians killed by Israel is almost always exaggerated. By any objective account, the number of genuinely innocent civilians killed by the Israeli Air Force is lower than the collateral deaths cause by any nation in a comparable situation." While every death is regrettable, Hamas rockets only Israeli civilians while firing from schoolyards and hiding explosives in mosques and hospitals, thus using Gaza civilians as human shields. Israeli Intelligence Chief Yuval Diskin reports that Hamas' leadership is headquartered beneath Shifa Hospital, Gaza's largest. Dershowitz concludes that the "government of Gaza declared war against Israel" and that under self-defense provisions of the U.N. Charter "Israel is entitled to take whatever military action is necessary to repel that attack and stop the rockets."

Steadfastness by the U.S.

The U.S. astigmatically abstained rather than veto Resolution 1860. Secretary Rice explained that she is awaiting the outcome of Egyptian mediation with Hamas. Dr. Rice -- whose blunder in insisting that Israel cede control of the Egypt-Gaza border is a prime cause of the crisis -- is trying to salvage a success from her failed Israel-Palestine diplomacy. Vetoing this feckless resolution would have been more consistent with Americans' readiness to recognize terrorists when we see them. Congress reflected American sentiment last week by passing resolutions -- unanimously in the Senate, 390-5 in the House -- supporting Israel's military campaign. Speaker Pelosi urged the world community to "lay blame precisely where blame belongs, i.e., on Hamas."


Arab Hopes For Defeat of Hamas

While Arabs fume at deaths of Palestinians, responsible Arab opinion understands that Iran seeks to dominate the region through its Hamas and Hezbollah proxies. Michael Young, editor of the Beirut Star, wrote in Forbes: "America's Arab partners, Palestinian President Abbas leading the way, will try to contain Hamas...and by so doing also contain Iran. It may not look that way, but Israel's ground incursion is the muscle behind that effort." Tom Friedman, frequently an acerbic critic of Israel, adds: "Nothing has damaged Palestinians more than the Hamas death-cult strategy of turning Palestinian youths into suicide bombers." The precision of Israeli intelligence about Hamas suggests that Gazans are providing information to end Hamas misrule (Hamas two weeks ago authorized crucifixion as a judicial punishment). The Egyptian government daily Al-Gumhouriyya blames Hamas and its Iranian-Syrian masters for Gaza casualties:


"Must we defend lunatics who have butchered their own people and held the wounded hostage? We have before us a well-planned conspiracy, devised by Damascus and Teheran, to pin the Palestinian problem to Iran's and Syria's interests by using Hizbullah and Hamas. Hamas's actions are characteristic of a group that is trying to bring destruction upon its people." (Translated by Memri.Org).

The Washington-based Reform Party of Syria is circulating a remarkable editorial by veteran Egyptian-born journalist Youssef Ibrahim, asserting that "a sense of reality among Arabs is spreading though commentary by Arab pundits, letters to editors, and talk shows on Arab TV" based on realization that "The war with Israel is over-and they won." Ibrahim challenges Palestinians to abandon terrorism which compels "your children to play in the sewers of Gaza" and instead to "let a new future begin."

The Need for Patience

Israel, drawing lessons from the 2006 Lebanon war, is proceeding methodically. Its ground forces are poised outside Gaza's cities, ready for the perilous end-game. Hamas rocket fire has been reduced from 200 to 20 per day. There is increasing friction between beleaguered Hamas gunmen and leaders urging them to martyrdom from the safety of Damascus or underground hideouts. In the interests of achieving durable and sustainable peace, and inflicting a signal defeat on Iran, Israel should be given time to do what the diplomats have failed to do, i.e., smash Hamas terrorism. Notwithstanding manipulation of world public opinion by Hamas' "CNN strategy," Israel deserves support from everyone who believes that terrorists must be resisted.

4) State officials: Barak encouraging Hamas
By Roni Sofer

Senior sources in Jerusalem slam defense minister over outspoken support of Egyptian ceasefire initiative, statements suggesting Gaza campaign nearing its end. Hamas interprets move as weakness, they say



Defense Minister Ehud Barak's statements regarding the nearing end of the Israeli offensive in Gaza have earned him harsh criticism from top Jerusalem officials, who have said that Hamas interprets such statements as Israel trying to find a way out of the fighting.



"Leaking details of ministers' private initiatives is irresponsible and regrettable," said a state official.

Inconsistencies


During visit to IAF base defense minister says that while Israel respects UN chief's appeal for calm, Egyptian truce initiative, fighting in Gaza goes on



Other top Jerusalem sources said that such private initiatives, which are not sanctioned but the limited cabinet – namely Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni – are detrimental to the future success of Operation Cast Lead.


"Such media reports are infuriating," a top source told Ynet. "Senior ministers making such public statements serve only to encourage Hamas and boost its activist, and that affects a million Israelis in the south and thousands of IDF soldiers deployed in the Gaza Strip.



"Any and all ideas pertaining to operational activities should be discussed behind closed doors, not through media headlines ."



Total ambiguity as to Israel's future moves must be maintained, added the source. "It is the only way to fully achieve our operational objectives."


Olmert, said another source, seems to subscribe to a similar sentiment. "We can only regret that certain political interests have resulted in certain notions (regarding the offensive) are discussed in the media, instead of by the small forums, where they belong."

Barak's outspoken support of the Egyptian initiative for a ceasefire, claimed the sources, have harmed Israel's stance in any possible negotiation, since intelligence reports presented to Jerusalem indicated that Hamas sees them as a sign of weakness.

4a) Analysis: Heavy losses haven't broken the Hamas regime
Khaled Abu Toameh

Despite the severe military blows that it has been dealt since the beginning of Operation Cast Lead, there were still no signs on Tuesday that the Hamas regime was even close to collapsing.

Palestinian sources in the Gaza Strip said Hamas lost several hundred of its fighters in Israeli air and ground attacks over the past 18 days. At least 2,500 Hamas gunmen were wounded during the same period, the sources told The Jerusalem Post.

But, the sources pointed out, these are only a tiny percentage of Hamas's armed wing, Izzadin Kassam, and other security organizations belonging to the Islamist movement. Altogether, Hamas is believed to have more than 25,000 militiamen and policemen in the Gaza Strip.

And Hamas is not alone on the battlefront. Dozens of Fatah gunmen belonging to the faction's armed wing, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, are reportedly participating in the fighting alongside Hamas gunmen.

The Fatah group on Tuesday claimed that one of its members had launched a suicide attack against IDF soldiers in the northern Gaza Strip. The group has also claimed responsibility for firing several rockets at Israel in the past two weeks.

Hamas is also being aided by other groups such as Islamic Jihad, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Popular Resistance Committees.

These groups have also suffered heavy losses since the beginning of the military offensive. Palestinian reporters in the Gaza Strip estimated that at least 150 gunmen belonging to these groups had been killed by the IDF.

In addition to the heavy casualties, Hamas has lost all its government installations in the Gaza Strip, including police and security facilities, military training centers and ministry buildings.

Israel has also destroyed scores of Hamas-linked charities and organizations that were providing the Palestinians with a vast network of social, economic, health and education services.

Moreover, the IDF operation has sent the entire Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip into hiding. When and if Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and senior leader Mahmoud Zahar emerge from their hiding places, they are likely to face criticism for abandoning their people during war.

The fact that Haniyeh and Zahar chose to hide out of concern for their personal safety has severely undermined their prestige.

Only days before the operation began, the two appeared in public to mock Israel's failure to respond to the rocket attacks. They also warned Israel against attacking the Gaza Strip, saying Hamas had prepared "surprises" for the IDF.

The military offensive has not only sent Haniyeh and Zahar into hiding, but has also succeeded in driving a wedge between them and their Hamas colleagues in Syria.

While the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip has been repeatedly signaling its readiness to accept an immediate cease-fire, Khaled Mashaal and other Hamas officials in Damascus believe that Hamas must continue to fight until it can claim achievements.

This schism explains the contradictory statements that have been coming from Hamas leaders over the past few days.

On the one hand, Haniyeh and his friends in the Gaza Strip are so desperate for a cease-fire that they have been sending messages to some Arab capitals to put pressure on Mashaal to accept the latest Egyptian truce proposal. On the other hand, the Iranians and Syrians are continuing to exert pressure on Mashaal not to accept the Egyptian initiative.

Among the Hamas leaders in both the Gaza Strip and Damascus, there is a growing sense of disappointment with the Syrians and Iranians for failing to come to the movement's aid during the war.

As a Hamas representative in Gaza City said on Tuesday night, "We feel that our brothers in Teheran and Damascus have betrayed us, as have the rest of the Arab and Islamic governments."

The military and political setbacks, nevertheless, have thus far failed to bring Hamas to its knees. Buoyed by the support of the Arab and Muslim street, Hamas appears determined to cling to power regardless of the heavy price.

Although Hamas has been hit hard, not a single Palestinian in the Gaza Strip has raised his voice against the movement and its leaders. Hopes that the massive IDF operation would encourage Palestinians to revolt against a weakened Hamas have not materialized.

If anything, many Palestinians agree, the Israeli offensive has actually boosted Hamas's popularity and undermined the so-called moderates in the Arab world.

5) The world after Gaza
By Yossi Klein Halevi



Even as the international community remains focused on the heartbreaking images emerging from Israel's confrontation with the jihadist Hamas in Gaza, the countdown has begun for a far more devastating tragedy that could lead the Middle East toward apocalypse.

According to Israeli intelligence estimates, the time remaining before Iran is capable of producing a nuclear bomb may now be measured in months, not years. A nuclear Iran would end hopes for the eventual emergence of a sane Middle East. And if economic sanctions and diplomatic efforts fail to dissuade the mullahs from abandoning their nuclear program, Israel is likely to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. And some Arab leaders may well be hoping that Israel will do precisely that.

Shared dread of a nuclear Iran has helped create the first tacit alliance between Israel and Sunni Arab states. So desperate are some Arab leaders to forestall an Iranian bomb that they have in effect sided with Israel against Iran's proxies in the Arab world. Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak has condemned Hamas for instigating the current conflict. Two years ago, during the Second Lebanon War, Jordan and Saudi Arabia joined Egypt in condemning Iran's Lebanon proxy, Hezbollah, for provoking Israel. And in 2007, when the Israeli air force destroyed a Syrian nuclear facility, reportedly intended as a future bomb factory for Iran, the silence in the Arab world was overwhelming. What was inconceivable just a few years ago - that some Arab states would side with Israel against fellow Muslims - has now become a pattern in regional politics.

Arab countries fear Iranian hegemony, fulfillment of the ancient Persian ambition of dominating the Middle East. Israel's fear is even more primal: that a lunatic regime in Tehran, driven by messianic theology and hatred of Zionism, might be tempted to launch a nuclear attack on the Jewish state. Iranian leaders have called for Israel's destruction so often that those incitements to genocide scarcely make news any more.

The argument over whether or not Tehran's leaders are rational was resolved for the Israeli public in December, 2006, when Iran hosted a world conference of Holocaust deniers. Only a lunatic regime, Israelis concluded, would summon a gathering of crackpots to prove that the most documented atrocity in history never happened. Still, however demented, there was a strategic logic behind Iran's promotion of Holocaust denial: The mullahs are convinced that the West supports a Jewish state only because of guilt for the Holocaust. If the Holocaust can be unmasked as a Zionist lie, then support for Israel will disappear. The mullahs, then, weren't really interested in disproving the past destruction of the Jews, but in preparing the way for their future destruction.

What keeps Israeli strategists awake at night is fear that a new strain of apocalyptic Shia theology - positing that the Hidden Imam will return when the faithful use sufficient military force to wipe out evil - has emerged within the Iranian leadership. To be sure, not all of Iran's leaders subscribe to the new theology, which reverses the traditional Shia quietism that has relied on prayer rather than force to summon the redeemer. But the circle around President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has passionately embraced that politicized messianism. And while Mr. Ahmadinejad is not the ultimate authority in Tehran, he may well be positioned to gain access, say, to a nuclear suitcase.

Some Israeli strategists believe Iran can be deterred from launching a nuclear attack against the Jewish state by Israel's own nuclear capacity. But even those optimists worry about a nuclear suitcase passed on to a terrorist proxy. Imagine a scenario like this: After months of rocket attacks launched by Hamas against Israeli towns and villages, Israel threatens to invade Gaza again. But then a previously unknown terrorist group announces that it has planted a suitcase with a nuclear device in a European capital and will detonate the bomb if Israel retaliates. Would Israel be able to protect itself against such terrorism? Would any Western state, for that matter, dare to militarily confront a jihadist threat if it risked nuclear terrorism in return?

Even if the worst-case scenarios turn out to be exaggerated, the very fact that a regime committed to Israel's destruction would now possess the means to fulfill its threats would have a chilling effect on the self-confidence of Israelis in their country's ability to protect itself. Confronting a permanent genocidal threat would effectively end the promise of Zionism to provide the Jews a safe refuge. In a poll taken last year, 7 per cent of Israelis said they would emigrate if Iran developed a bomb; another 20 per cent said they would consider leaving. The effects of a nuclear Iran on the Israeli economy would be devastating. Why would foreign investors, who are currently attracted to Israeli high-tech companies, risk investing in a country living under a death sentence?

No less worrying, the prospect of a nuclear Iran has triggered a process that could lead to a nuclear arms race in the world's least stable region. Several Arab countries, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have declared their interest in acquiring nuclear power, ostensibly for peaceful purposes, but in fact timed as a response to Iranian nuclear ambitions. Mr. Mubarak has stated explicitly that Egypt may feel a need to protect itself against Iran's nuclear threat. Although Israel's nuclear arsenal has been the region's worst-kept secret for four decades, most Arab countries didn't feel impelled to enter a nuclear arms race. Even Israel's enemies understood that it is a rational state and wouldn't launch an unprovoked nuclear strike. Few in the Middle East hold such an assurance about Iran, however.

A nuclear Iran can still be stopped by peaceful means. The decline in world oil prices has badly undermined the already fragile Iranian economy; intensifying sanctions could encourage opposition to a widely detested regime. But given the continuing opposition of Russia and China to further sanctions, and the extensive trade that Western countries such as Germany and Austria engage in with Iran, an effective sanctions effort is unlikely to emerge in time. If the sanctions efforts fail, the thankless task of militarily preventing a nuclear Iran will fall, by default, to Israel.

Israeli leaders are acutely aware of the potentially devastating consequences of an Israeli strike against Iran - devastating most of all to Israel itself. Iran has threatened to launch retaliatory missile attacks against Tel Aviv, and Hezbollah and Hamas would almost certainly join the assault. For the first time in Israel's history, the entire country is exposed to missile attack. During the Persian Gulf war of 1991, when Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein launched Scud missiles against Tel Aviv, Israelis sought refuge in Galilee in the north. When Galilee was attacked by Hezbollah in 2006, residents there fled southward to Tel Aviv. If Israel is attacked by both Iran and its proxies, there will be nowhere to run.

Nevertheless, a rare consensus exists among Israeli leaders - from left-wing Labour to centrist Kadima to right-wing Likud - that the Jewish state must thwart a nuclear Iran, even at the risk of all-out war against the Israeli home front. As one Labour politician who is dovish on the Palestinian issue but hawkish on Iran told me, "No one knows if Iran would use the bomb or not. But I can't take the chance."

Barack Obama, the U.S. president-elect, is committed to preventing a nuclear Iran, but there is potential disagreement between Washington and Jerusalem over tactics and time-tables. Although they won't say so openly, Israeli leaders are deeply skeptical of Mr. Obama's intention to diplomatically engage Iran. Israelis fear that diplomacy would only buy the Iranians time as they approach the nuclear threshold. Mr. Obama says he will back up his diplomatic overture with the threat of intensified sanctions if the Iranians persist in their nuclear efforts.

Mr. Obama's first test on the Iranian crisis will be how he responds to the Gaza crisis. Israel's operation against Iran's ally Hamas will provide the new president with an unexpected opportunity. If he backs Israel and makes sure that Hamas achieves no diplomatic gains in exchange for a ceasefire, he will deliver a strategic defeat to Iran and enter negotiations from a position of strength. If, on the other hand, he pressures Israel into easing the siege against Hamas and allows the jihadist organization to proclaim victory, the Iranians will rightly conclude that the inexperienced president poses no real obstacle to their nuclear goals.

Perhaps Mr. Obama's most compelling argument with the Iranians is that, if negotiations fail, Israel will act. And if the Israeli air force is compelled to save the Middle East from a nuclear Iran? Those likely to most vociferously condemn the Jewish state will be the very Arab leaders most grateful to it for eliminating their greatest fear.

5a) Obama's Iran: Why Obama might bomb Iran."
By Robert Dreyfuss"


Flynt Leverett looks restless. Washington is preoccupied with the presidential transition, but Leverett's mind is thousands of miles away, in the tangle of conflicts that embroil Iraq and Iran. Impishly intellectual, with a wisp of a beard, Leverett looks every bit like the Central Intelligence Agency analyst that he was for years before becoming the chief Middle East officer on President Bush's National Security Council (nsc). Now a fierce Bush critic, Leverett is worried about how President Obama will pull off his promised withdrawal from Iraq.

Bringing the troops home might be the easy part, he suggests. The hard part? Making sure violence doesn't erupt worse than before. And the key to that lies not in Baghdad or Washington, but Tehran. "In terms of day-to-day influence, Iran has more influence inside Iraq than any country, including the United States," he says. "They've played a huge role in reducing violence levels there."

Iran's power is so extensive that there isn't any fix for Iraq without a simultaneous deal with Iran. "It's really hard to see how the United States can extricate itself from Iraq without some kind of understanding with Iran about what those arrangements might look like," says Leverett. "There can't be a settlement without an Iranian buy in." The problem, of course, is that Iran has its own issues with Washington—and chances are good it would use Iraq as leverage to get what it wants, setting up perhaps the most dangerous dilemma for the Obama administration.

So far, especially since 2007, Iran has exercised restraint in Iraq, even using its influence among various Shiite parties to tamp down violence. Should it choose to take the lid off, the new president will face a brutal choice: forestall civil war by accepting a deal on Tehran's terms, or send US troops back into Iraq and prepare for a military showdown with Iran.

Behind the scenes in Washington, these risks are being taken very seriously. "Iran's leverage would be extraordinarily high," says Chas Freeman, the portly, gray haired, and husky voiced former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia and one of Washington's most informed observers on the Middle East. "If things in Iraq are going okay, and the Iranians have power to disrupt things and do, then Obama's goose is cooked."

Even worse, says a former State Department official, Tehran might push its luck too far—with catastrophic consequences. "Iran would have to be careful not to overplay its hand," says this expert, who worked closely with the Iraq Study Group, the 2006 commission led by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Indiana Rep. Lee Hamilton. "And if they overplay it, frankly, Obama would use the military instrument, and it won't be a pinpoint attack. It will be a massive one."

Already, there are signs that the relative calm in Iraq might be short-lived. Both General David Petraeus and the 2008 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq have warned that a new explosion of violence could well reverse recent gains. An even blunter take comes from Wayne White, who until 2005 was one of the top Iraq watchers at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. "As president-elect, when Obama gets a look at the real intelligence reports, he's going to be saying, 'Oh shit, look how bad this is,'" he told me. "'That stuff about the surge—it's phony. It's not sustainable. And if I leave Iraq and it blows up, it'll be all my fault.'"

Via a crackling telephone connection to Amman, Jordan, I asked for an assessment from one of the central players in Iraq's drama—Abu Azzam al-Tamimi, an accomplished businessman, tribal leader, and former insurgency leader who is now the commander of the US-allied Awakening movement in western Baghdad. His view was grim. Hundreds of the men under his command have been assassinated in recent months, he said, by death squads linked to Iran's intelligence service or to the Iraqi ministry of the interior. In response, he predicted, many of his forces would go underground and join the resistance again. "Look around," he said. "It's already come back. It's getting stronger. Look at what's happening in Baghdad."

If the Shiite-led government continues shutting out the minority Sunnis, agrees Freeman, things could get worse in a hurry. "It's very explosive," he says. "One missed step by the Shiite authorities and the insurgency resumes." And that, according to Ali Allawi, who served as Iraq's first minister of defense in the post-Saddam Hussein era, would set off a lethal response from the government. "The army will fire all of its Sunni officers, and they will attack without any of the qualms that the Americans have had," he told me. "If there are attacks, say from Ghazaliya [in western Baghdad], they will just depopulate the area."

The only way to defuse the insurgency over time, according to many of the experts I spoke with, is for Iraq's government to strike a power-sharing deal with the Sunnis. And although Obama has proposed an international effort to facilitate such an accord, it's increasingly clear that the United States has less leverage over the ruling Shiite religious parties than does Tehran.

Many of the Shiite exiles installed by the US invasion in 2003 lived for decades in Iran, where they built close ties to the religious establishment. The ruling Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and its Badr Brigade militia were created by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and commanded by Iranians, and the council still receives much of its funding from Iran. Iran also has strong ties to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who lived in Tehran for part of his exile years, and to Moqtada al-Sadr, the rebel cleric whose 60,000-strong Mahdi Army is a potent force in Iraq's civil strife. "When you tell the Americans about this, they don't believe it," Aiham Alsammarae, who served as Iraq's minister of electricity from 2003 to 2005, told me. "They've created a monster."

Iran also maintains a large network of covert agents and armed gangs inside Iraq. US military officials have started to uncover a paramilitary network called the Kata'ib Hezbollah, modeled on the Iranian-backed group in Lebanon, that they believe is getting support from Iran. Tehran, according to many sources, also supports death squads that have targeted former Baathists, military officers, and leaders of the Awakening movement. "If we were to attack Iran today," says the ex-State Department official, who visits Iraq often, "we would lose thousands of people in Iraq. They could slit a thousand throats in one night."

To deal with Iraq and Iran simultaneously, Obama will have to seek not one, but two grand bargains. Even in normal times, pulling off one would be exceedingly difficult. Doing two at once might be asking the impossible. Grand bargain No. 1 is the reordering of Iraq's political system in a way that empowers forces that have so far been shut out of Iraq's ruling coalition, including nationalist Sunnis, former Baathists, partisans of Sadr's movement, and dissident Shiites unhappy with the Maliki regime. Such a deal would also have to blunt the Kurds' expansionist aims and bring Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds into a lasting accord—all of which would require Iran's full support. Grand bargain No. 2 would be a comprehensive settlement of the US-Iran conflict, perhaps starting from a proposal Iranian officials reportedly made back in 2003: In exchange for a US promise to take regime change off the table and acknowledge Iran's strategic interests in the region, they would end Iran's support for terrorism, including Hamas and Hezbollah; work with the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan; and find a solution to the nuclear issue. The offer, which conservatives doubt was genuine, was dismissed out of hand by the administration. But Leverett and his wife, Hillary Mann Leverett (also a former nsc official), believe it could be the foundation of a comprehensive approach to Iran. "Too many people view Iran as incapable of calculating its own national interests," says Mann Leverett.

To accomplish both of these grand bargains, Obama will need an enormous amount of international support, as well as consummate diplomatic skill and steely resolve. He'll also need a near-improbable run of good luck. "The Iranians are sitting pretty," concludes Joost Hiltermann, an Istanbul-based analyst with the International Crisis Group. "They have a lot of cards to play."