For followers of the tenuous situation in Gaza, this war was long in coming. Hamas has been in power in Gaza for the last 18 months, but it has been effectively economically and politically isolated. Gaza is probably the most densely populated geographic unit in the world, with a young population living under immense scarcity, bordering on famine. There was a window of opportunity in the last few months when Hamas declared a quasi cease-fire with the hope that this might help lift the economic embargo. Yet nothing happened. Hamas is facing the animosity of not only the Western world but also the regimes in Egypt and Jordan, who have their own axes to grind with their Islamic opposition groups. In both Egypt and Jordan, the Muslim Brotherhood, the umbrella Islamic movement from which Hamas stems, is the most effective opposition to the regime. So it is no wonder that neither Hosni Mubarak nor King Abdullah has much sympathy for Hamas. What is taking place in Gaza is a stark reminder to President-elect Barack Obama that all the problems in the Middle East are interconnected. Perhaps the biggest mistake of the Bush administration was the reluctance to convene an international conference focusing on the Arab-Israeli question after the fall of the Baathist regime in Iraq. His father, Bush Senior, had put together such a summit in Madrid in 1991 shortly after the First Gulf War, thus unleashing what later became the Oslo Peace Process during the 1990s under President Bill Clinton. Then in 2000 George W. Bush came to power and decided to focus on Iraq.
After Sept. 11, to those who argued that radical Islam finds breeding ground because of the Arab-Israeli problem, Bush had a neoconservative answer: The road to Jerusalem goes through Baghdad. Yet, the war in Iraq has changed the Middle East in ways radically different than Washington expected. When the US government toppled Saddam Hussein, it hoped the regime change would bring democracy to Iraq and the region. Instead, America's fiasco helped launch a broad Shiite and Islamic revival across the Middle East. By creating the first Shiite-led state in the Arab world since the 12th century, the US ignited aspirations among some 150 million Shiites in the greater Middle East. Not surprisingly the big winner in all this has been Iran, the Shiite regional superpower. By removing Tehran's most threatening enemies -- the Taliban and Saddam Hussein -- Washington inadvertently opened the door to an Iranian bid for regional primacy.
Today, Iran is in a very powerful position vis-à-vis Washington. In addition to its quest for nuclear power, it is in the driver's seat in the most crucial issue of the Arab world: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's seemingly irrational anti-Israel rhetoric and his ownership of the Palestinian cause marginalized the Sunni Arab regimes at the expense of Tehran's valuable clients, Hamas and Hezbollah. In adopting such tactics, Iran not only successfully challenged the West in Lebanon and Palestine but also masterfully diverted attention from its own nuclear agenda. And just in case we forget, Tehran continues to exert maximum political influence in Baghdad.
It is in such a context that Washington has to be urgently engaged in some crisis management and damage control. The Obama administration will be able gradually to reduce the number of US troops in Iraq and shift responsibility to Iraqi forces. The improved situation in Iraq will allow Washington to shift its focus to Iran and the Arab-Israeli process, where the clock is ticking. The decision to offer direct official engagement with the Iranian government, without preconditions, along with other diplomatic, energy, economic and security incentives, is the right one.
Obama should lay the groundwork for an international effort to impose harsher sanctions on Iran if it proves unwilling to change course. Sanctions will have more bite now that the price of oil has dropped below $50 a barrel. But the Iran issue cannot be dealt with in isolation. The US president should expend political capital trying to promote peace agreements between Israel and Syria. Damascus is currently allied with Tehran, so an Israeli-Syrian deal would dilute Iran's regional influence and reduce external support for Hamas and Hezbollah. The right place to deal with all these problems is an international Middle East peace conference like the one in Madrid. This time Iran will also have to be at the table. Here is the opportunity for Turkey: Ankara should waste no time and declare that it wants to launch an "İstanbul Peace Process" in 2009. Washington may very well decide that İstanbul and Turkish diplomacy could provide the right venue for such multilateralism.
