I think that C.G. is hitting the nail on the head here. I think the big news story of the next few years will be the developing rapprochement between the US and Iran. The US does not want to get into a shooting war with Iran (a war which the US does not want and which it is not prepared for). That's why the US has apparently nixed several attempts by Israel to attack Iran and so provoke a US/Iran war. Even the Bushies were not so crazy as to allow Israel to drag them into such a war.
Furthermore, as C.G. points out US and Iranian interests converge on several issues that are of great interest to the US, including especially, Iraq and Afghanistan.
C.G. is correct about Walt & Mearsheimer. The main significance of their book is that its publication signaled that a significant portion of the US ruling class wants to see a recalibration of the US/Israel relationship. Apparently, President Obama perceives the need to triangulate between this growing current of ruling class opinion and the Israel lobby, which is a most significant event in itself IMO.
Jim Farmelant
-- "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote: For fifteen years in the 1950s and '60s America's chief client in the Mideast was Iran, not Israel. The replacement of the former by the latter, which began in the late sixties, was not complete until the overthrow of the US puppet in Iran in the seventies.
The overriding goal of US policy in the Mideast for more than fifty years has been and continues to be control of Mideast energy resources -- not the support of Israel. (It's because Mearsheimer and Walt ignore the former point that they get the latter wrong.) Of course the US doesn't need Mideast oil for domestic purposes -- only about 10% comes from there, and that's a fairly recent development.
Control of Mideast energy -- what the State Department called in WWII "a stupendous source of strategic power and the greatest material prize in world history" -- provides what Zbigniew Brzezinski recently called "indirect but politically critical leverage on the European and Asian economies that are also dependent on energy exports from the region."
It may happen, and soon, that a new alliance with Iran, like that which existed for a generation, will serve this constant American interest.
It's been suggested that if the new Netanyahu government in Israel shows itself recalcitrant in following orders, the USG may move towards a rapprochement with Iran (which will soon have a new government too). A friendly Iran will (a) add its own energy resources to those influenced/controlled by the US; (b) aid in the administration of a pacified, Shia-governed Iraq; (c) supply logistic, diplomatic, and even military aid in the geopolitical control of Afghanistan and hence Pakistan; (d) solidify the alliance with India via the Iran�Pakistan�India gas pipeline ("Peace pipeline"); and (e) prevent the incorporation of the region into the Asian energy and defense grid promoted by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. It will also dampen the much-trumpeted concern about Iranian nuclear power (which the US supported under the Shah).
Obama has 'balanced' the Freeman appointment with the long-delayed elevation of the awful pro-Israel hack Dennis Ross to (a strangely ill-defined) position regarding Iran. These actions seem to argue a debate within the foreign policy establishment as to how to proceed -- including the possibility that US stances toward both Israel and Iran could alter in pursuit of its settled policy. --CGE
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