November 18, 2013 | Quote
The Axis of Hope?
It is a measure of how little respect the Obama administration commands that the best hope for heading off a nuclear-armed Iran may be the Israeli-Saudi-French axis. Unfortunately, the world’s sole superpower seems bent on coming up with excuses (including a flimsy interim deal) not to act. As Aaron David Miller is quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying, “When the U.S. and Israel are at fundamental odds, it weakens U.S. power in the region and sends very bad signals to America’s other allies. . . . Israel has more in common now with Saudi Arabia.”
The same might be true of Israel and France. Israel gave a hero’s welcome to the French President François Hollande over the weekend. Unlike President Obama, Hollande spoke to the Knesset, promising not to allow Iran to get the bomb. Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies tells me, “Hollande appears genuinely determined to prevent the West from entering into a deal that would allow Iran to maintain some of the more dangerous components of its illicit nuclear program. As a result, the Iranians are already warning that the next round of talks in Geneva may be ‘difficult.’” This is all the more remarkable insofar as the French are very vocal about their objections to Israel’s settlements. “In other words, France’s opposition to the West’s apparent willingness to enter into a bad deal with Iran stems from its broader concerns about Tehran’s threat to international security,” remarks Schanzer.
As we should be doing, the Israeli-Saudi-French team is deploying two basic strategies.