America in the Middle East: blind man's buff

America in the Middle East: blind man's buff

Summary: as Washington’s Palestine and Iran assumptions change, it is taking less of a leadership role, and in the prevailing Sunni/Shia conflicts finds itself on both sides.

An assessment issued by Stratfor the US consultancy close to the Pentagon and the CIA immediately after the Saudi attack on Yemen ends with the presumably sarcastic sentence "welcome to the new reality of the Middle East!" What do they mean?

The assessment describes the role given to the US in the Saudi-led Sunni operation in Yemen, "logistical and intelligence support", on the same day that the US provided air support to an Iranian-led operation in the Sunni bastion of Tikrit in Iraq. "The United States is no longer the first responder to crises in this region, although it continues to play a critical logistical role from the back seat."

Behind the hot issues of which the new Yemen war is one are two long-term issues in which fundamental changes are taking place. The first is the Palestine problem. Benjamin Netanyahu's flip-flop over the acceptance of a Palestine state has accelerated and exacerbated a change in relations between the US and Israel, for decades described as America's most reliable ally in the region. This change follows Netanyahu's speech to the U.S. Congress, regarded by the administration as out of order, and is confirmed by a flow of new stories: one is the decision by the White House chief of staff Denis McDonough to address the moderate US Zionist organisation J Street for the first time and tell them that the United States expects the next Israeli government to end nearly 50 years of occupation and clear the way for a Palestinian state. A second is the revelation that Israel has not only been spying on US negotiations on the Iran nuclear issue but using the product to brief US congressman to oppose their own government. A third is the release by the Pentagon of a 1987 report which for the first time includes information about the world's worst kept secret, Israeli nuclear weapons.http://us7.campaign-archive1.com/?u=2820afb1fbae0c99e88fb6f52&id=23cdfaba53&e=672f0b89c4