King Abdullah quoted today as saying Obama administration planning roll out of hugely ambitious Mideast peace initiative, which he claims a central role in and will involve all Muslim nations accepting the existence of Israel - and then states that if this plan fails war will be unavoidable. What? This sounds like pure, absolute insanity to me. One, Muslims are not going to come together and agree about anything - they can barely run an oil cartel for god sake - scratch that, they do seem to agree with some uniformity that Jews are evil and Americans are to blame for everything bad that happens in their fiefdoms; two, I assume Israel would view, as I do, any such monstrosity to be a set up if not actually designed to force them into a corner then regardless still resulting in such - in fact on the surface of it from what Abdullah is hinting at this looks intended to put maximum pressure on Israel to make concessions, big concessions or face ugly consequences - it smells like a trap; and three, absolutely nothing of this sort can happen as long as Iran is an outlier - hell, as long as Syria merely believes there's a chance Iran is going to go nuclear they will never agree to something like this - at least, make no good faith agreement.
I'm basing my opinions on a few random thoughts expressed by Abdullah, so - and realize he has a vested interest in glossing it a certain way - so who knows [although it would be logical to assume him making statements now is possibly part of coordinated attempt to put pressure on Israel ahead of Bibi's visit]. But if this actually comes about I will surrender up my little corner of the universe here and fully admit that apparently I know absolutely nothing about people and the dirty little ways of the world.
I do agree with Abdullah on one thing though - if such a Pax Obama is attempted and fails it will lead to war - of course I also believe that just the attempt will lead to war, no matter the results. This has very bad idea written all over it. [I thought you were in favour of war though? I'm not in favour of war - I maintain that wars are inevitable and carry an implied value and that it is foolishly naive to judge that value as consistently and irrevocably negative - there are good wars and bad wars and bad wars that turn good and good ones that turn bad - and there's a lot of dangerous nonsense in between - the fact remains that a conflict that results in Iran having nuclear weapons and Israel feeling backed into a corner will fall on the bad side of spectrum with an opposite result landing somewhere in the good].
