Israel and the 'New' US Congress: "Thwart Palestinian reconciliation ... Cut off funding to the PA ... Continue arming the GCC ...Indifferece on Iraq"

Via Friday-Lunch-Club

Oxford Analytica: Excerpts:

"Presidents traditionally have considerable leeway in foreign policy, which may tempt President Barack Obama to concentrate on policy abroad, circumventing a potentially obstructionist Republican House of Representatives. However, the new House will constrain the president's choices on some of his most cherished Middle Eastern priorities.

• Obama has lost the ability to coordinate his international sanctions strategy on Iran with Congress, but will press on; military action is unlikely in 2011.
• The administration will no longer be able to prod Israel in negotiations with Palestinians; funding for the Palestinian National Authority may be in doubt.
• US arms sales to GCC states will go forward, with tacit Israeli backing, as a measure to counter Iran.
• Obama may find that the new Iraqi administration wants a longer-term US troop presence than he would wish.....

1.        Tehran's intransigence. Efforts at face-to-face negotiations have produced only sporadic talks, and those talks have not yielded much. Iranian nuclear enrichment proceeded apace in 2010; equally worryingly, many regional players see Iran ascendant in the Middle East. For sceptics of the president's approach, his premise that negotiating with the Iranians produces results has run aground on the realities of the current Iranian regime.....

Increasing numbers of reports out of Tehran suggest that technical efforts to squeeze Iranian trade have begun to have an impact, and -- perhaps not coincidentally -- the Iranian government has signalled its interest in resuming negotiations with the West in 2011. ......

2.        Hostile House. Left to its own devices, the Obama administration would continue apace, offering Iran a stark choice between negotiations and financial costs. Yet it will not be left to its own devices:

• Diplomacy-policy coordination. Congress strengthened the president's hand in the spring of 2010 when it adopted additional unilateral US sanctions on Iran -- then delayed final passage until UN Security Council Resolution 1929 was passed. By coordinating congressional action with the White House, the House helped strengthen the president's hand in negotiating with the Security Council, then helped lead many of the world's largest economies in passing additional sanctions in its wake.
• Undermining Obama. The incoming House is unlikely to give the president the same support. Instead, the conservative incoming chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, is likely to question the Obama's every gesture towards Iran, and towards the international community. Where the Democratic House of the last Congress was willing to support the president, the incoming Republican House will feel an urgent need to keep the president from 'caving in' to foreign tyrants. A drumbeat of hearings and criticism from the new majority will complicate the quiet, patient diplomacy Obama favours.
• 'Soft' Democrats. While the enduring Democratic majority in the Senate will insulate Obama from bills that cut off funding for certain activities, Republicans will almost certainly use their new position in 2011 to accuse the president of being 'soft' on Iranian proliferation ambitions. They will seek to distinguish what they would describe as a 'robust' Republican effort to head off a nuclear Iran from an 'ineffectual' Democratic policy.

Israeli/Palestinian policy. For all of his problems with Iran policy, Obama will have an even harder time pushing forward his desired policy towards Israel and the Palestinians: 

1.        No pressure on Israel. Whereas the president had sought simultaneously to push Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu towards negotiations and strengthen Palestinian security forces, the new Congress is likely to make it more difficult to do both. Netanyahu has close ties to the new Republican majority (one of his three closest aides is a former Republican political consultant), and strongly pro-Israel views have become an article of faith among much of the Republican Right. The House will certainly act to block any presidential effort to squeeze Israel in 2011. 

2.        PNA funding cuts. Furthermore, the House will almost certainly seek to make it more difficult to aid the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in 2011, which many Republican members see as being 'soft on terrorism'. Funding for Palestinian security services, which has been a major effort in the last three years, is now vulnerable. 

Even more consequentially, the new Congress will make it almost impossible for the United States to fund the PNA if Gaza is brought back into the fold. Current US law bars funding to any government that includes Hamas, and it is hard to imagine how Palestinian unity might be brokered without its inclusion in some form (although, to be sure, such a change would be have difficult for the last Congress, as well). 

3.        Ineffectual talks. Palestinian-Israeli negotiations will almost certainly resume in 2011, but be ineffectual. With the new Congress blunting the president's efforts to prod Israel, Netanyahu will be more willing to engage in negotiations, confident that Obama will not be able to strong-arm him into concessions..... Meanwhile, PNA President Mahmoud Abbas has little alternative than to rely on the United States -- negotiating when Washington feels is it appropriate to negotiate. 

Who will lead US negotiations in 2011 appears to be in flux. Rumours that former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell will resign in late 2010 are rife in Washington, perhaps cementing the primacy of White House insider Dennis Ross's role as the president's key Middle East adviser. 

Indifference on Iraq. Iraq will remain a much lower priority in 2011, where the president is unlikely to have much opposition, and which has faded almost completely from US headlines. With a spiralling deficit and crises brewing at home and abroad, Obama will likely attract little congressional opposition to his plan to pull almost all US troops out of Iraq. Indeed, the opposition he is more likely to encounter is from an Iraqi leadership that, assuming it can overcome opposition from the anti-US Sadrists in the likely eventual government, is counting on a decade-long US presence to help stabilise the country..."

GCC policy continuity. Efforts to arm the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states are likely to go through the new Congress in 2011, if only because Israel quietly supports the policy as a means to deter the Iranians. Under the new deals, Israel maintains its qualitative military edge over any and all surrounding armies, while Iran's conventional capabilities slip further and further behind its neighbours. 

Iran. Obama's Iran policy has been a mixed success thus far -- though it is likely that if the president could start afresh, he would proceed along precisely the same path: 

Strategic summary

Posted by G, Z, or B at 4:32 AM

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