DAR AL HARB/ISLAM - U.S.A./ISRAEL/IRAN: U.S. & ISRAELI ACTIONS ARE CLASSIC "GOOD COP & BAD COP"

This flurry of Middle East activity is the product of a very real threat: Iran
The rise of Tehran has petrified Arab capitals - and intensified debate in the US and Israel about the use of force
by Jonathan Freedland

As the good book says, God loves the sinner that repenteth even if he repenteth late - so George Bush will probably win a smile from heaven for his belated call for a Middle East peace conference before the year is out. Sure, it's a bit late now for the president to be scrabbling to make amends for six-and-a-half years of at best intermittent attention towards the Israel-Palestine conflict. But something is better than nothing - even if Tony Blair is probably a bit miffed that the proposed chair for this international powwow will not be him, despite his new job, but Condoleezza Rice.

What's made Bush see the light? In a word: Iraq. With his administration losing allies by the day because of its failure in Baghdad, Bush is desperate for something that might resemble a foreign policy achievement. More interesting is why the other participants expected at Bush's meeting will be there. Of course, Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas could hardly stay away: they both want to prove that, with Hamas shoved to one side, they can move forward. But Bush also plans for neighbouring states to come along - Egypt and Jordan and perhaps others, too. Their motive is more intriguing and also comes down to a single word, a word which, increasingly, has become the critical one in the region: Iran.

The so-called moderate Arab states, those that lean towards the west, are petrified by the rise and rise of Tehran. Cairo, Amman and Riyadh fear both the Shia ascendancy and surging Islamism which Iran represents, the latter of which, were it not so thoroughly repressed in their own countries, would badly threaten their regimes. Egypt does not want to see Hamas, partner of Egypt's dissident Muslim Brotherhood movement, take over the West Bank the way it's taken over Gaza any more than Israel or Fatah does.

This emergence of a common enemy has sparked a flurry of activity in the long stagnant Israeli-Palestinian conflict, much of it positive. In a bid to boost Abbas, to show he can get results that Hamas cannot, both Bush and Olmert have turned the money tap back on. Israel is also set to release 256 Palestinian prisoners, including many who were involved in failed terror attacks. That's in addition to the new Israeli amnesty extended to 178 fugitive militants from the Fatah-aligned Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. Israel and Abbas will now cooperate on security too, all part of the strategy approved not only by Israel and the US, but also the European Union and several Arab states - of ensuring that West Bank Fatahland basks in the sunshine while Gaza's Hamastan remains in shadow. As if to ram home the message, a delegation from the Arab League will make history next week when it visits Israel for the first time.

There are other motives at work in all this, of course, but Iran is a key factor. Reluctant to let Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pose as the Palestinians' champion and anxious to prevent the Palestinian plight from further radicalising their own populations, these mainly Sunni, pro-western states want to show they can deliver too. This is the window of opportunity through which Bush is pushing his conference.

These unexpected, happy byproducts of the Iranian threat should not obscure our view of the threat itself. As the Guardian reported this week, the notion of military action to prevent a nuclear Iran is under serious consideration in the White House - with Bush apparently leaning towards Dick Cheney's view that it may be necessary to use force before they leave office in January 2009. The flock of US presidential candidates are all at pains not to rule out military action and so, strikingly, was David Miliband in his first interview as foreign secretary. When the Financial Times offered him the chance to repeat Jack Straw's view that the use of force would be "inconceivable", he repeatedly declined.

Nowhere is the Iranian peril assessed more closely than in Israel, which would, after all, be target number one for any Iranian bomb. In several conversations with Israeli policymakers, they all described Tehran as the biggest single threat to their national security, ranking ahead even of the Palestinian conflict. The latter can be contained and managed, they believe; but the Iranian threat is - and they all used this word - "existential". The way Israel sees it, the combination of a nuclear bomb and an ideology that yearns for a world without the Jewish state adds up to the threat of annihilation.

Even if Iran did not actually drop the bomb, it would still endanger Israel, argues Shmuel Bar of the country's Institute for Policy and Strategy. He dismisses the theory that crossing the nuclear threshold has a taming effect, often turning states into more responsible actors. Pakistan behaved much more aggressively in Kashmir after it got nukes than it did before. Bar reckons that newly nuclear states believe they can act with impunity; he imagines Iran bullying its neighbours in the Gulf, driving up the oil price, preventing any of them so much as talking peace with Israel. Besides even if there is only a 2% chance that the responsibility theory is wrong and that Iran will remain untamed, "that is too big a chance for Israel".

As a result, the country is not ruling anything out. The politicians will listen to the intelligence assessments, which, in contrast with the US and UK have not lost their credibility, and decide whether to strike. That decision will matter enormously, for then either Washington will block Israel or it will get out of the way - or it will act itself.

As it happens, presenting it like this suits the US quite nicely. It can go around pressing the Chinese or Russians to act diplomatically on Iran or else, if they do not, then those crazy Israelis will act instead: it is the classic good cop, bad cop.

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Pertinent Links:

1) This flurry of Middle East activity is the product of a very real threat: Iran