The Delicate Task of Selecting Friends, Enemies

"The nuclear negotiations between the United States and Iran appear stalemated. Meanwhile Iran is on the march in the Middle East with its forces supporting the coup in Yemen, buttressing the Assad war-machine in Syria, mediating between factions in Iraq, and plotting with Hezbollah operatives on the periphery of Israel."

"Today, the American alliance system stands bruised and battered while our friends in the region perceive Iran and its resistance-front galloping across the region."

"These two simultaneous developments—the deadlock in nuclear talks and Iran’s aggressive moves in the region—are not coincidental. They are intimately linked, and that should be a lesson for President Obama: The nuclear deadlock cannot be broken unless Washington reengages in the myriad of conflicts and civil wars plaguing the region…The guardians of the theocracy will only contemplate serious nuclear concessions once they see that all the walls around them are closing."

Dennis Ross, Eric Edeleman, Ray Taykeh, former U.S. administration aides

US President Barack Obama delivers the State of The Union address on January 20, 2015, at the US Capitol in Washington, DC. (Photo credit: AFP/POOL/MANDEL NGAN)

These are not individuals speaking without the authority of experience. Mr. Ross -- formerly acting as a Middle East aide to the Obama administration, now urges punitive measures to counter Tehran's ever-rising star in Islamist Shiite terrorist circles, and its insatiable ambition toward nuclear weaponry -- knows of what he speaks. He knows malign intent when he diagnoses its purpose, and he is familiar with peace-making, having facilitated talks between Israel and Jordan in the 1990s leading to their peace agreement.

As for Mr. Edeleman, a former ambassador whose service with the United States Under Secretary of Defence for Policy, and Mr. Taykeh, formerly an official in the Obama administration, currently a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations political think tank, they as well have had ample experience on the international scene to know fairly intimately with whom the United States is dealing; they see the issues with clearer eyes than those leading President Obama to believe that handling the Islamic Republic with kid gloves of tolerance will only lead to a crisis of global proportions.

This is the background to the increasingly troubling relations between the United States and Israel over the way that President Obama is handling the Iran-nuclear file. This speaks to the Republican-led back-lash against just that issue and the March 3 invitation to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint bipartisan Congress at that time, which has so infuriated the administration. The White House has taken umbrage that the invitation was extended to the Israeli Prime Minister by Speaker John Boehmer, without the requisite coordination with the President.

In accepting the invitation from Republican sources, Prime Minister Netanyahu has spurred an even deeper descent in relations between Israel and the Obama administration. Mr. Obama has his own super-power idea of the influence he wishes to bear on Iran, and it nowhere near matches Mr. Netanyahu's vision of the way that the issue should be handled to defuse impending danger. The American President visualizes the Israeli Prime Minister spelling out for Congress once again just how vital the matter is for his country and the world at large, to ensure that Iran does not gain possession of nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately for Israel, and perhaps for posterity, Mr. Obama's resolute handling of the issue cuts against the grain of Israel's concerns, leaving it high and dry and virtually unprotected from the potential of a nuclear attack. While at the same time the American administration from the time of Ronald Reagan forward has sought to protect itself and its European allies with the foresight entailed in the Strategic Defence Initiative, in placing anti-ballistic missile defence systems throughout eastern Europe, despite Russia's rage over the U.S. treading in its near-abroad.

The United States, in an effort to assuage Moscow's concerns informed Vladimir Putin that the system he sees as so threatening to Russia was meant to prevent strikes coming from Iran, not Russia. An explanation that Mr. Putin and the Kremlin found unconvincing enough that it gradually resulted in an utter fraying of the emerging congenial relationship between Russia and the West. Which has since degenerated into a newly-bearish Russia subtly and not-so-subtly threatening the sovereignty of its former dependent-states.

"The deep disagreements between Israel and the U.S." on the Iranian nuclear talks exists as a strategic reality that leaves Israel in the lurch, leading to the situation where Prime Minister Netanyahu felt that "he must present his stance even if that doesn't suit Obama. This is a matter of substance." Israel's reaction to the "worryingly" willingness of its one-time mentor/supporter to over-compromise with Iran in the nuclear talks made it existentially mandatory for the Prime Minister to continue agitating in protest against the Obama administration's folly with Iran.

And from Davos, Switzerland, a threat by Iran that it will choose to retaliate through the parliament of Iran taking the initiative to pass a bill to authorize an increase in the enrichment of uranium, should U.S. lawmakers approve fresh sanctions on the country, as looks likely under a Republican-dominated Congress. "A sanctions bill by the U.S. Congress will kill the joint plan of action that we adopted last year in Geneva. Now the president of the United States has the power to veto it, but our parliament will have its counteraction", warned Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif.