Political Realist concentrates her attention on three iterations!

stephenkmacksd.com/

Oct 18, 2024

Editor: Iteration 1 :Reader concentrate your attention, on these three paragraphs of Mr. Friedman’s latest Foreign Policy Strategizing: of 10/15/2024

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Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the former U.S. Central Command chief, who oversaw the 2020 killing of Qassim Suleimani, the leader of the elite Quds Force within the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, agrees: “Iran may seem unpredictable at times,’’ he said in The Atlantic, “but it respects American strength and responds to deterrence. When we withdraw, Iran advances. When we assert ourselves — having weighed the risks and prepared for all possibilities — Iran retreats.”

That is why we need to confront Iran with an overwhelming, credible threat of force, coupled with a diplomatic survival pathway out, but one that this time addresses both Iran’s nuclear threat and regional behavior. Our job is to change Iran’s behavior; regime change is the job of the Iranian people. I believe the best way for that regime to lose its grip is to deprive it of the oxygen of permanent conflict with Israel and America — and all the excuses that Iran’s clerical tyrants give for why their people are so isolated and impoverished.

But I don’t stop there. We also need to sharpen the choices for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel: We must not be in the business of making Israel safe so that a radical messianic government can annex the West Bank. If we are going to keep resupplying Israel with missiles and even dispatch U.S.-run missile systems, Bibi needs to purge the settler lunatics from his cabinet, forge a national unity coalition and agree to open talks with a reformed Palestinian Authority — with a new technocratic cabinet led by credible leaders like former Prime Minister Salam Fayyad — on a two-state solution.

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Iteration 2: The Patient Reader has only to wait for this from Mr. Friedman :

It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the death of the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. It creates the possibility not only of ending the Gaza war, returning Israeli hostages and bringing relief to the people of Gaza. It creates the possibility for the biggest step toward a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians since Oslo, as well as normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia — which means pretty much the entire Muslim world.

It’s that big.

But, but, but.

The death of Sinwar alone is not the sufficient condition to end this Gaza war and put Israelis and Palestinians on a pathway to a better future. Yes, Sinwar and Hamas always rejected a two-state solution and were committed to the violent destruction of the Jewish state. No one paid a bigger price for that than the Palestinians of Gaza. But while his death was necessary for a next step to be possible, it was never going to be everything.

The sufficient condition is that Israel have a leader and a governing coalition ready to step up to the opportunity Sinwar’s death has created. To put it bluntly, can Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel live up to his Churchillian self-image and go along with something that he has previously rejected? That is the participation of a reformed West Bank Palestinian Authority in an international peacekeeping force that would take over Gaza in the place of the Sinwar-led Hamas.

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Iteration: 3:

Headline: A Biden Doctrine for the Middle East Is Forming. And It’s Big.

Jan. 31, 2024

There are two things I believe about the widening crisis in the Middle East.

We are about to see a new Biden administration strategy unfold to address this multifront war involving Gaza, Iran, Israel and the region — what I hope will be a “Biden Doctrine” that meets the seriousness and complexity of this dangerous moment.

And if we don’t see such a big, bold doctrine, the crisis in the region is going to metastasize in ways that will strengthen Iran, isolate Israel and leave America’s ability to influence events there for the better in tatters.

A Biden Doctrine — as I’m terming the convergence of strategic thinking and planning that my reporting has picked up — would have three tracks.

On one track would be a strong and resolute stand on Iran, including a robust military retaliation against Iran’s proxies and agents in the region in response to the killing of three U.S. soldiers at a base in Jordan by a drone apparently launched by a pro-Iranian militia in Iraq.

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Political Realist