The Loves Hate Series

The Bush administration is making rosy-eyed claims that the Arab world is unified behind its anti-Iran campaign. One of the White House spin shops last week bragged about "growing agreement among regional leaders regarding Iran's challenge to peace and security." But in fact, the Middle East is far from unified behind White House positions, and the U.S. is losing. U.S. allies are refusing to toe Washington's dangerous line of "no negotiations with anyone we say is a bad guy."

From Baghdad to Beirut, from Ramallah to Ankara and Cairo to Tel Aviv, U.S.-backed governments are talking to, even signing agreements with those Washington loves to hate - those allied with Iran. The occupation-backed Iraqi government is rebuffing the Bush administration's anti-Iran crusade. The Gulf Cooperation Council - the Saudi-led union of pro-U.S. Arab petro-states - welcomed Iran as a neighboring participant and potential trading partner at their annual meeting last month. The pro-U.S. Palestinian Authority in Ramallah is engaged in backroom unity talks with Hamas, and Israel is quietly negotiating a ceasefire with Hamas, with both processes led by the U.S.-backed government of Egypt. The U.S.-backed government in Beirut just signed a formal agreement with the elected Hezbollah-led parliamentary opposition, giving Hezbollah significant new power and allowing the election of a new president not known for pro-U.S. views. Bush's high-profile "talking equals appeasement" speech in the Israeli Knesset failed to persuade Tel Aviv not to talk to Syria, and Turkey announced it has been hosting Syrian-Israeli negotiations. One unnamed Bush administration official called the new peace talks "a slap in the face."

The impact of all these developments remains uncertain. Some of these new initiatives may fail, and some (particularly the current version of an Israeli-Syrian rapprochement) may create serious dangers even if they succeed. But what is clear is that it hasn't been a good season for the war buffs of the Bush administration. Perhaps in response to this increasingly public Middle East repudiation of the U.S. "isolate Iran" strategy, some key Bush administration officials are for the moment backpedaling away from some of their earlier rhetoric. Even as Hillary Clinton speaks of "obliterating" Iran (presumably including its 70 million people), Bush's favorite general David Petraeus now claims that in dealing with Iran, he favors diplomacy as a first choice. At least for the moment.

Read further the article Middle East still at war: the US is losing but the winners are unclear