Just a hint of what awaits the next U.S. president

Just a hint of what awaits the next U.S. president

Regardless of who the next president of the United States may be, a mixture of news from the Middle East in the first half of this week indicates just how daunting a challenge the new president will face, And it looks more and more certain that virtually none of the problems will be addressed by the Bush White House.

And we’re not even talking about whether the surge can be maintained in Iraq (with the present state of readiness of the U.S. military, it can’t) or whether NATO allies can be prevailed upon to provide more forces in Afghanistan (which is unlikely).

We’re looking at news stories reporting:

The complicated relationship between Iraq and Iran.

The arming of an increasingly belligerent Hamas in Gaza with more powerful rockets, presumably supplied by Iran.

The rebuff Tuesday by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas of an appeal by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to resume peace talks with Israel.

Taking the last of those three first, President Bush put the happiest possible face on the news, saying: “This is a process that always has two steps forward and one step back. We just need to make sure that it’s just one step back.”

Bush said there is “plenty of time” to get a Mideast peace deal in the 10 months before he leaves office. That’s difficult to believe.

For one thing, Abbas is putting the burden on Israel to “halt its aggression” in Gaza before talks are resumed.

But Israel is responding to the rocket fire from Gaza into Israeli territory. And is becoming increasingly clear that Hamas is patterning itself after Hezbollah in Lebanon. And Hamas is sharing more than ideology and tactics with Hezbollah. It is receiving similar weaponry. The source of most of the rockets being smuggled into Gaza is almost certainly Iran.

And Iran is the elephant in the room that the next president will not be able to ignore or dismiss, as tempting as that may be given Iran’s megalomaniacal leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

State visit to Iraq

Ahmadinejad was in Iraq the other day, where he declared that Iran is now a rival of the United States in terms of influence. To prove his point, Ahmadinejad came armed with $1 billion in low-interest loan guarantees. He should know that in the real world, a billion dollars between the United States and Iraq is something akin to pocket change. Just as Ahmadinejad might want to remember that in the real world, his nation fought Iraq for eight years to a bloody stalemate. In 1991, the U.S. military defeated the Iraqi army in just over four days, and in 2003 conquered the whole country in six weeks. But as the United State learned, there is a difference between being a conqueror and a conquering hero.

The United States cannot ignore that Iran is overwhelmingly Shiite and Shiites — including U.S.-backed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki — are the largest sectarian group in Iraq.

At some level — though certainly not the presidential level — the United States and Iran are going to have to negotiate, not just about Iran’s neighbor, Iraq, but about Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The U.N. Security Council is pressing Iran on the latter issue, but, not surprisingly, Ahmadinejad is being recalcitrant. The next president will know going in that nothing about Middle East relations is simple or easy or quick.