Neo-cons turn up the heat on Iran

Last February, Daniel Pipes, a pro-Israel American writer and an advocate of the notorious neoconservative movement, wrote a provocative article in the National Review Online. Under the title "How to Save the Obama Presidency", Pipes had this to say: "I do not customarily offer advice to a president whose election I opposed, whose goals I fear, and whose policies I work against. But here is an idea for [US President] Barack Obama to salvage his tottering administration by taking a step that protects the United States and its allies: bomb Iran". For Pipes and Co. in the neoconservative movement, going after Iran is a second necessary step in a process that began under the previous administration and its major goal was to protect Israel and secure its regional hegemony.

The invasion of Iraq in 2003 signalled the success of a coordinated effort they launched at the end of the Cold War to set in motion a collision course between the West and Islam, whose only beneficiary was Israel. Hence, it was not difficult to trace in the first days of the conflict the sense of euphoria reflected in the writings of Charles Krauthammer, William Safire, Daniel Pipes and other advocates of hawkish Israeli policies. They all welcomed the prospect of an Arab-American war which would turn the Palestinian intifada into a sideshow. They also hoped that the war would remove a formidable threat to Israel and enhance its military and technological superiority over the entire Arab world.

But why do Pipes and other neo-cons not hesitate to shed American blood or endanger basic US interests in order to ensure the security and well being of Israel? The answer, probably, lies in the historical and intellectual background of neoconservatism.

The neoconservative movement was founded in the early 1960s by a group of New York-based Jewish intellectuals, mostly academics and journalists. Loyalty to Israel was the single most important issue that brought them together. Their movement emerged as a response to what they had portrayed as an "anti-Israel" drift in the Democratic party.

Although many of them had little interest in Judaism as a religion, Israel's victory in the 1967 war turned most of them into born-again Zionists. They came to view the Jewish state as a "strategic asset" in the fight against communism and its regional allies, Arab nationalists. This view was later reduced to a dogmatic slogan that is "what is good for Israel is good for America" and vice-versa. Any questioning of this dogma was treated as an expression of "anti-Semitism".

The cause of neoconservatism was strengthened dramatically by the appointment of Henry Kissinger as Secretary of State in the Nixon administration. The ascendance of Kissinger and the mild criticism of Israeli policies by the more pragmatic elements in the Democratic party hastened the neoconservative drift towards the Republican party.

It was, however, the Carter administration's foreign policy agenda, which included the establishment of a comprehensive, just and durable peace in the Middle East that accelerated the political transition of the neoconservatives from the Democratic to the Republican party. Hence, many of them joined the Reagan administration and shaped its foreign policy agenda in the Middle East.

Under Reagan, US-Israeli relations were developed to a near strategic alliance status and Israel got some of the most sophisticated weapons in the US arsenal. Not unexpectedly, the Arab-Israeli conflict was seen through Cold War lenses and Palestinian aspirations were described as terrorism.

The end of the Cold War was catastrophic for the neoconservatives, now at risk of being deprived of their favourite enemy and the justification for the strategic alliance between the US and Israel. Neoconservative intellectuals, hence, hastened to fabricate a new transnational threat and they found it in "Islamic fundamentalism". For them, the new enemy would shore up Israel's position as a "strategic asset" and ensure its long-term utility as a shield against Islamism.

Although Israel remained a cornerstone in US policy during the Bush Sr. administration, the case against Islam did not find receptive ears. The role of the neoconservatives further diminished under Clinton, where most of them were excluded from policy circles. The ascendance of George W. Bush to power presented a golden opportunity for the neoconservatives to make a comeback. Most of them regained the positions they once occupied under Reagan and after the September 11 attacks they hijacked US foreign policy and moulded it in a way that served Israel's interests more than US interests.

After succeeding in dragging the sympathetic president Bush into conflict with the Islamic world in Iraq, remnants of the neo-cons attempt to drag the less sympathetic Obama into another round of conflict with Iran this time. Will they succeed? Given the very complicated US-Iran relations, they may very well do.

Dr Marwan Al Kabalan is a lecturer in media and international relations at the faculty of Political Science and Media, Damascus University, Syria.