New threat, old perceptions

US intelligence chief John Negroponte recently presented an updated situation assessment regarding the Middle East. Its essence: Strategic change needed due to Iran's growing influence in the region over and beyond the threat inherent in Tehran's nuclear project.

Saddam's and the Taliban's fall; the rise in oil revenues; Hamas' victory in Palestinian Authority elections; and Hizbullah's sense of victory in the war against Israel – all of the above, according to Negroponte, boosted Tehran's growing shadow in the region.

Indeed, in recent years we have seen revolutionary changes in the Middle East that require a renewed, serious assessment of various subjects.

During most of the 1990s, the common perception among many circles was that the key for stability in the region was to be found in the resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. As a result of this, the diplomatic efforts of Western countries focused mostly on this area.

This traditional paradigm was combined with the assumption that the conflict could be resolved within a relatively short period of time. The hope was that diplomatic efforts spread over a few years would ultimately bear a comprehensive, regional peace treaty that would include Israel, the Palestinians, and Arab nations.

However, today it is increasingly harder to argue that the Arab-Israeli conflict is the genuine reason for regional instability. The immediate historical roots for the rise of radical Islam can be traced back to two events that have no connection to the Arab-Israeli conflict: The 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran and the USSR's defeat in Afghanistan in 1989 that gave rise to al-Qaeda.

Tehran's shadow

With the establishment of a Shiite regime in Iraq for the first time, Iran's Islamic republic sensed a historic opportunity to emerge as the Middle East's top superpower, spread its influence to neighboring Shiite communities, and reach Sunni Arabs as well, above the heads of current governments. It would be a fundamental error to approach the rise of Sunni and Shiite militancy as two separate developments that have no influence on each other.

Back in the 1990s, Iran attempted to infiltrate the Islamic regime in Sudan. For years it supported Sunni organizations such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and has now been exposed as Hamas' most significant source of support.

The Iraq war worsened tensions between Sunnis and Shiites across the Middle East and led Sunni leaders, such as Jordan's King Abdullah, to speak out about the inherent dangers in the "Shiite Crescent" that will be surrounding the heart of the Middle East.

In light of America's expected withdrawal from Iraq, the Saudi leadership expressed its concern over the possibility that Iraqi Shiites would resort to ethnic-cleansing with Iranian-backing against the minority Sunni population in Iraq.

As a result of this, we can assume the Sunni-Shiite rivalry will emerge in the coming years as the central axis of the Middle Eastern conflict. In light of the threat faced by Arab Sunni countries, their dependence on the United States and its Western allies will grow. The West, for its part, does not have to pay for this cooperation with concessions at Israel's expense.

Despite all this, it is amazing to see that while these revolutionary changes are taking place, many policymakers in the West are still locked into conceptions and notions decade-old regarding ways to stabilize the Middle East. The time has come to reshape Western policy based on new principles that will reflect the changing regional reality:

1. The main threat to Sunni Arab states currently comes from Iran, and therefore, the Arab-Israeli conflict is no longer at the top of the Sunni agenda. In fact, Israel and Sunni Arabs currently share many threat perceptions.
2. Today no diplomatic option exists for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as long as the current wave of Islamic radicalism continues. On the other hand, we can assume that unilateral Israeli withdrawals, without a Palestinian side that can engage in negotiations, will only serve to boost the success of radical Islam in the region, as happened in wake of the disengagement.
3. Stabilizing the Middle East requires the neutralization of all of the current radical Islamic wave's components. In this regard, the defeat of any such radical organization, be it Sunni or Shiite, is extremely important, as each such failure will weaken the other components as well.
4. Israel needs defensible borders. We can assume that withdrawing from the Jordan Rift Valley, for example, would lead to wide-scale infiltration of terrorists into the West Bank, including the smuggling of weapons and even global jihad volunteers. Hence, Israel will find itself coping with a difficult reality, as is the case on the Philadelphi Route in the wake of the Gaza withdrawal. At the same time, the vacuum to be left behind by every Israeli withdrawal will draw more and more global jihad organizations to Jordan itself and undermine the Hashemite Kingdom's stability, and ultimately, the entire region.
   

Dr. Dore Gold is Israel's former UN Ambassador and currently serves as the President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. The above appears in a new book published by the Center and will be presented at the Herzliya Conference